RELIEVED OF THE BODY OF DEATH
13/07/22 12:25
We can be certain about everything and right about nothing. Legalism gives a false certainty and a delusionary righteousness. In the law we have a mindset of separation from Christ despite the fact that Jesus has made us one with Himself. Legalism is a culture that undoes the cross and captures us in Adamic/Mosaic separation from God.
Grace is not a method of coping with law. Grace is Christ our life.
TEACH US TO SEE
The law/knowledge of good and evil lens distorts God and cripples the self. Spiritual discernment is not found among legalists because true seeing and knowing comes from union with Christ. When Christ is our life, we share in His seeing and knowing. Jesus makes us able to see. It’s difficult when raised in a law-view of God to shake dualism and its split life off. Some try to add the anointing and the gifts to a law base, but the Spirit does not take root in the law. It’s rooted in the incarnation – in our union with God.
SEEING
We grow in the ability to SEE in oneness with Christ. This oneness is a union of being rather than the efforts of doing. Richard Rohr writes, “The contemplative mind does not tell us what to see, but teaches us how to see what we behold.” The best seeing starts with being -which is to say being one with Christ and hence one with God.
JESUS’ RELATIONSHIP IS OURS
What would living and walking in the light look like? Baxter Kruger writes, “The Holy Spirit discloses Jesus to us so that we can know and experience Jesus’ own relationship with his Father, and be free to live in the Father’s embrace with Jesus.”
Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” But Christians do walk in darkness, in fogs of confusion, misguided insights and legalistic judgments. Why? Because they live from the religion that takes Christ’s name instead of the oneness with Jesus that is there for all. Some Believers just go along with anything while others cannot be taught.
SONSHIP IS OURS
We become sons and daughters of God in the Son of God who is the Son of Man. We become so as a result of the life and accomplishments of Jesus Christ for us and now in us and as us. The incarnation of Jesus Christ in our being is complete, not compartmentalised or segmented. The whole of Christ in the Spirit is mediated to the whole of us so that Jesus is woven into and expressed as our being. Jesus is us towards God, towards others and to our ourselves.
Christ’s life as our life is the law of the spirit of life which is the trinity in us and the living channel of ultimate life into our being. You are not earning Christ or taking steps to Christ. In the Christ of God, Jesus has included us in God.
CHRIST FOR US
Thomas Torrance observes that, “We are to think of the whole life and activity of Jesus from the cradle to the grave as constituting the vicarious human response to himself which God has freely and unconditionally provided for us. That is not an answer to God which he has given to us through some kind of transaction external to us or over our heads, as it were, but rather one which he has made to issue out of the depths of our human being and life as our own.” (1) We are more linked to God than we know. Our hearts sometimes know this more than our heads. The union you have with Christ, with Father and Holy Spirit is more imitate than any human intimacy. Learn to live in what you have already.
INCLUDED IN GOD
Jesus has united Himself to the depths of our humanity to His divinity and oneness with Father. Jesus is our human response to Himself as the Christ and to God in Himself. As a human being Jesus has joined Himself with our being and by the Spirit He has imparted Himself to our person.
PERICHORESIS
‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20. The day we realise this is the day our new birth begins.
Christ come in the flesh, to use John’s words, is the incarnation of the Christ into our being – which is the meaning of the Lord’s Table and the meaning of Jesus’ assertion than unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood we have no life in us. That is to say, no spirit and life and as a result no multiplication of the Kingdom of God flowing from our being.
POST TRUTH DELUSION
An author in The Melbourne Age, commenting on the appearance of the ‘post-truth world’ described how ‘post truth’ works in this season. ‘A story is set and “facts” are constructed to suit them.’ People invent theologies in the same manner. Thus, people interpret the gospel through the law when truth ordains that we interpret it through the Jesus Lens.
DEAD -END ROADS
Distracted Believers can set up religion and the law as the frame and then adapt the words and teachings of scripture to fit their frame. They do this even when it is shown that their religion is based on fraud. In this frame Christ becomes the King of Moralism rather than the Prince of Life. Some adopt a narrative originating in some deviant school of theology and spread delusion like a virus.
THE PEN OF POLLUTED INSPIRIRATION
Others embrace an extra-biblical account of origins and the achievement of rightness with God from supposedly prophetic sources. They interpret the Bible and the plan of salvation through this narrative rather than allowing the Bible and the Spirit of Christ to be their instructor. They live in this bubble because what they think they know is more important to them than what Christ wants them to know. The result is another christ and another gospel and the curse of un-life of which Paul warned the church. Some are very adept at conforming the gospel to this alternative narrative. It results in careers, academic qualifications, misguided missions and whole denominations living from the frame of the law instead of the communion of oneness with God in fellowship with the trinity. It results in a culture of death.
INSIGHT
A fellow Believer once told me that the Lord was impressing him that the law, legalism and a law-culture was a kind of witchcraft. When we understand the narrative suggested by the serpent in the tree of knowledge, we can see how this can be.
LEGALISTIC FOOTWORK
For example, Paul Molnar following Thomas Torrance observes, “We use the moral law, ‘seizing the ethical imperative of God, making it an independent authority which is identified with human higher nature’ and thus escape God by ‘deifying humanity – “you will be like God”’. Human moral awareness in other words ‘tends to sever its connection with God’ becoming ‘autonomous or semi-autonomous’ SO THAT OUR RELATIONS WITH GOD CEASE TO BE DIRECT AND BECOME INDIRECT.” We become insulated from direct union with Christ and wither in our self-made ‘godliness’.
LAW CENTERDNESS IS SIN
Molnar continues, “Sin always produces a ‘legal outlook’. Sinners fall back upon legal observance of the law to validate their actions. But in that way they ‘can yield obedience formally to the law [Like the Rich Young Ruler] without actually surrendering the citadel of the soul’ and thus exchange the ‘spirit for the deadness of the letter’, and ‘God for an ideal’.” (2)
Such legalism derives not only from a false narrative. It is a perpetuation of the original sin.
‘But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!’ Gal 1.8,9.
(1) Torrance Thomas, The Mediation of Christ. p.80
(2) Paul Molnar, Thomas Torrance and the Problem of Universalism, p 179.
Grace is not a method of coping with law. Grace is Christ our life.
TEACH US TO SEE
The law/knowledge of good and evil lens distorts God and cripples the self. Spiritual discernment is not found among legalists because true seeing and knowing comes from union with Christ. When Christ is our life, we share in His seeing and knowing. Jesus makes us able to see. It’s difficult when raised in a law-view of God to shake dualism and its split life off. Some try to add the anointing and the gifts to a law base, but the Spirit does not take root in the law. It’s rooted in the incarnation – in our union with God.
SEEING
We grow in the ability to SEE in oneness with Christ. This oneness is a union of being rather than the efforts of doing. Richard Rohr writes, “The contemplative mind does not tell us what to see, but teaches us how to see what we behold.” The best seeing starts with being -which is to say being one with Christ and hence one with God.
JESUS’ RELATIONSHIP IS OURS
What would living and walking in the light look like? Baxter Kruger writes, “The Holy Spirit discloses Jesus to us so that we can know and experience Jesus’ own relationship with his Father, and be free to live in the Father’s embrace with Jesus.”
Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” But Christians do walk in darkness, in fogs of confusion, misguided insights and legalistic judgments. Why? Because they live from the religion that takes Christ’s name instead of the oneness with Jesus that is there for all. Some Believers just go along with anything while others cannot be taught.
SONSHIP IS OURS
We become sons and daughters of God in the Son of God who is the Son of Man. We become so as a result of the life and accomplishments of Jesus Christ for us and now in us and as us. The incarnation of Jesus Christ in our being is complete, not compartmentalised or segmented. The whole of Christ in the Spirit is mediated to the whole of us so that Jesus is woven into and expressed as our being. Jesus is us towards God, towards others and to our ourselves.
Christ’s life as our life is the law of the spirit of life which is the trinity in us and the living channel of ultimate life into our being. You are not earning Christ or taking steps to Christ. In the Christ of God, Jesus has included us in God.
CHRIST FOR US
Thomas Torrance observes that, “We are to think of the whole life and activity of Jesus from the cradle to the grave as constituting the vicarious human response to himself which God has freely and unconditionally provided for us. That is not an answer to God which he has given to us through some kind of transaction external to us or over our heads, as it were, but rather one which he has made to issue out of the depths of our human being and life as our own.” (1) We are more linked to God than we know. Our hearts sometimes know this more than our heads. The union you have with Christ, with Father and Holy Spirit is more imitate than any human intimacy. Learn to live in what you have already.
INCLUDED IN GOD
Jesus has united Himself to the depths of our humanity to His divinity and oneness with Father. Jesus is our human response to Himself as the Christ and to God in Himself. As a human being Jesus has joined Himself with our being and by the Spirit He has imparted Himself to our person.
PERICHORESIS
‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20. The day we realise this is the day our new birth begins.
Christ come in the flesh, to use John’s words, is the incarnation of the Christ into our being – which is the meaning of the Lord’s Table and the meaning of Jesus’ assertion than unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood we have no life in us. That is to say, no spirit and life and as a result no multiplication of the Kingdom of God flowing from our being.
POST TRUTH DELUSION
An author in The Melbourne Age, commenting on the appearance of the ‘post-truth world’ described how ‘post truth’ works in this season. ‘A story is set and “facts” are constructed to suit them.’ People invent theologies in the same manner. Thus, people interpret the gospel through the law when truth ordains that we interpret it through the Jesus Lens.
DEAD -END ROADS
Distracted Believers can set up religion and the law as the frame and then adapt the words and teachings of scripture to fit their frame. They do this even when it is shown that their religion is based on fraud. In this frame Christ becomes the King of Moralism rather than the Prince of Life. Some adopt a narrative originating in some deviant school of theology and spread delusion like a virus.
THE PEN OF POLLUTED INSPIRIRATION
Others embrace an extra-biblical account of origins and the achievement of rightness with God from supposedly prophetic sources. They interpret the Bible and the plan of salvation through this narrative rather than allowing the Bible and the Spirit of Christ to be their instructor. They live in this bubble because what they think they know is more important to them than what Christ wants them to know. The result is another christ and another gospel and the curse of un-life of which Paul warned the church. Some are very adept at conforming the gospel to this alternative narrative. It results in careers, academic qualifications, misguided missions and whole denominations living from the frame of the law instead of the communion of oneness with God in fellowship with the trinity. It results in a culture of death.
INSIGHT
A fellow Believer once told me that the Lord was impressing him that the law, legalism and a law-culture was a kind of witchcraft. When we understand the narrative suggested by the serpent in the tree of knowledge, we can see how this can be.
LEGALISTIC FOOTWORK
For example, Paul Molnar following Thomas Torrance observes, “We use the moral law, ‘seizing the ethical imperative of God, making it an independent authority which is identified with human higher nature’ and thus escape God by ‘deifying humanity – “you will be like God”’. Human moral awareness in other words ‘tends to sever its connection with God’ becoming ‘autonomous or semi-autonomous’ SO THAT OUR RELATIONS WITH GOD CEASE TO BE DIRECT AND BECOME INDIRECT.” We become insulated from direct union with Christ and wither in our self-made ‘godliness’.
LAW CENTERDNESS IS SIN
Molnar continues, “Sin always produces a ‘legal outlook’. Sinners fall back upon legal observance of the law to validate their actions. But in that way they ‘can yield obedience formally to the law [Like the Rich Young Ruler] without actually surrendering the citadel of the soul’ and thus exchange the ‘spirit for the deadness of the letter’, and ‘God for an ideal’.” (2)
Such legalism derives not only from a false narrative. It is a perpetuation of the original sin.
‘But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!’ Gal 1.8,9.
(1) Torrance Thomas, The Mediation of Christ. p.80
(2) Paul Molnar, Thomas Torrance and the Problem of Universalism, p 179.
