BEYOND A MUDDLED FAITH

‘Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” John 8.12 NIV. The Light of Life and the Bread of Life go together. They become ours in the Christ of God. Poor vision and spiritual starvation are the result of our trying to sustain ourselves with false christ/gospels.

CATTLE RELIGION
We can, like a herd of cattle in a paddock have no understanding of life other than munching our stuff. Or as a community of people be contained in a twisted religious view of life. The effect of a lived union with the God who is God (who is not a construct or false christ) is penetrating spiritual discernment. To live from the reality of Christ our life is to live in the light and be the light - the Light who is Christ who not only shines but teaches us how to see.

THE WORD IS CHRIST
‘For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart’ Heb 4.12 NIV.  To live in oneness with this word is to be a new covenant, apostolic bearer of truth and life.

 
HOW WE SEE
 
At first sight, this verse may appear to be about the Bible. It is partially. But the fullness of this scripture refers to the Living Word who is the Light of Life. It’s about how we see in the new covenant (read in our newborn oneness with God).

 
ALREADY OURS
 
To live in the oneness of Christ is our already gift to possess an exquisite and sharp spiritual discernment that separates flesh from religion and life from death. Any culture of the knowledge of good and evil lives in confusion about good and evil and life and death. This is to say that to be constrained in the separation of the old covenant is to live in confusion about what is alive and what is dead. This is why to live the Kingdom, Christ must be our life.
 
VEGETABLE OR SON?
 
We can live from the law and have the spiritual discernment of a pumpkin or live the oneness of Christ our life and grow into the discernment of Jesus. Spiritual discernment is excellent for advancing the Kingdom as the Kingdom and for separating bogus gospels from the Gospel of Jesus and the apostles.
 
‘This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God’ 1 John 4.2 NIV. He has come in your flesh when you agree with Him that He has.
 
CHRIST OR ANTI-CHRIST

Conversely any spirit who maintains that the law has come in our flesh is not of God.
‘Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist’ 2 JOHN 1.7 ESV.

THE PEARL OF YOUR RICHES
Your inheritance is better than a Jesus-copied way of being a Christian. It’s Jesus’ way of expressing Himself as you: Incarnation.  The prize of the cross is our union with God. This is the treasure in the field that we must not leave in the ground if we are to be people alive with spirit and life.
THE MUDDLED FIELD
We need to know that the parable of the Sower is not about un-renounced sin. It’s about our inheritance of incarnation that has been ignored, forgotten or opposed.
JESUS IS MORE THAN WITH US
This life and togetherness in God is described by C. Baxter Kruger in the following way, “The Christian God is interested in relationship with us, and not just relationship, but union, and not just union, but such a union that everything He is and has—all glory and fullness, all joy and beauty and unbridled life—is to be shared with us and to become as much ours as it is His. The plan from the beginning, in the Christian vision, is that God would give Himself to us, and nothing less, so that we could be filled to overflowing with the divine life.” 
 
THE DIVINE LIFE
 
In recent times the issues of climate change and the covid pandemic have shown that people can believe what they want to believe irrespective of the evidence. Some of the populaces have given themselves over to ‘making it up’ while some politicians have used the expanding ignorance to get themselves into power.
 
One would hope that Believers would believe the truth because truth is life. The truth is that Christ is our life and that to believe this is to BE ALIVE IN WHAT JESUS WON FOR US AT THE CROSS.
 
TAKING OFFENCE
 
What is the offence of the cross? The apostles teaching, the doctrines of the Church Fathers and the Nicaean Creed are plain enough. But based in the atonement and incarnation of Christ as our life, the gospel of Jesus and the apostles is a threat to the very existence of old covenant/legalistic sectarianism. It threatens the ego, the idol of institutionalism and the careers and supposed identity that go with it. Separatist religion is an anti-life in which we commit to earn what we already have. It is ant-christ and anti-us. Don’t live the dullness of the flesh come in the flesh by way of religion and law. You have Christ in you and with you.
 
ENFOLDED IN THE DIVINE
 
God’s Gospel is that He has enfolded us in His Fellowship. The living truth is Christ our life. Not an abstraction but the enfolding of our humanity in God and the anointing of our humanity with the indwelling trinity. In the person of Jesus we become enfolded in the ‘Godness’ of God.
 
TOGTHERNESS/SEPARATNESS OF THE TRINITY
 
“All three divine Persons have their Being in homoousial [one substance] and hypostatic [oneness] interrelations with one another, and they are all inseparably united in God’s activity in creation and redemption, not least as those activities are consummated in the incarnate economy of the Son. In refusing to spare his dear Son but in delivering him up in atoning sacrifice for us all, God the Father reveals that he loves us with the very Love which he bears to himself, and that with Jesus Christ he freely gives us all things. If God is for us in this way what can come between us?” (1) The oneness of the trinity with each other is God’s oneness with you in Jesus. In Christ you participate in this life.
 
BE PART OF HIS LIFE
 
You want to be a better person? Most of us do. It’s not difficult. Jesus said, ‘Ask and you shall receive.’ You receive His union with Father and you receive His nature. This is life in the Spirit and Christ come in our flesh.
 
YOU ARE INCORPORATED INTO UNION WITH GOD
 
The union that we have with God since the cross is the union that the trinity have with each other. What indeed could come between this union? Nothing. ‘Neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ Rom 8.39 NIV. This love is no mere abstraction. God is love means God is trinity. This mutual communion and joy of togetherness is love. It’s the love with which God binds us to Himself in Jesus.
 
In the new covenant the chief spiritual gift is you. The main manifest presence of the Spirit in the post cross age is you as a manifestation of the trinity. This is the healing of your being and the agency of you as a life-giver to a bereft world.
 
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 162). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.