CHRIST HAS COME IN YOU
13/11/24 08:06
The way of Kingdom life is narrow (but not narrow-minded) and not necessarily the way of institutionalism. A large chunk of what Believers call Christianity is not the inheritance Jesus has given us. His gift to us was not a religion called Christianity. It was and is His life as our life. Thomas Torrance explains this well when he writes, “Jesus Christ is one person whose word is wholly involved in his act and whose act is wholly involved in his person. We cannot therefore think of his person apart from his atoning work, or of his atoning work in abstraction from his person.” (1)
LIFE VERSUS RELIGION
Leanne Payne makes the same point in ‘Real Presence.’ In the knowledge of good and evil these dimensions are a frame outside us. But in Christ by incarnation His life is us.
Christ’s life/holiness is something apart from Himself because it is Him. Because He is in us, it is also who we are becoming. Unless we can accept His gift of incarnation we exist in a mere sliver of His gift of life to the full. The thing is, ‘Do you want to be a construct or a son?’
WHOLE AND HOLY
One is not made Godly through good works or religion. This is shocking to the masses who are workers rather than daughters/son. But we are ‘Godly’ by participating in God which we can do. Participating in God is ours since the atonement is complete and the incarnation is operative. The spirit of sonship is ourselves living Christ our life. In this union, accomplished by the enterprise of the trinity and personally by Jesus Christ, Son of God, we can find delight in fullness of life.
WRONG FOCUS
Jews were not made holy by the law and Christians are not made holy by good morals, ethics and living out Christian principles. We can’t rise up to Godliness in any way. God comes into us in the Messiah and incorporates us in in the communion of Godself. In Jesus we are woven into the trinity and the trinity is woven into our being. Live in this and you will be holy as God is holy and full of grace, kind works and Truth.
DOGS LIFE
Don’t accept the fake piety of the law. We can live at peace in union with God because of Christ. Or we can live in the dog-kennel of the law, yapping at people who have more freedom and life than we do.
AT-ONE-MENT
The undoing of Adam is the renewing of the union with God that was lost at the fall – with improvements. The interwoveness that is ours as a result of the Son of God becoming the Son of Man is closer and more exquisite than the pre-fall communion.
INCARNATED IN OUR BEING
The union with God that is ours in Christ is as real as the transfiguration of Christ. While not visible Christ is incarnated in our being so that we are one with God, yet fully ourselves. In this perichoresis we are one with God yet we retain our identity and personhood. We are not deified, however. But are made one in the spirit of sonship. This is not an anointing. It’s a state of being in which the anointing is rooted.
NOT GODS BUT SONS/DAUGHTERS
Myk Habets writes, “Torrance argues against the idea of human nature being ‘deified’, if by ‘deified’ one means ‘made divine’ in some non-human way. This is why he places so much stress on theosis understood through the Chalcedonian doctrine of the hypostatic union. Human nature is ‘reaffirmed and recreated in its essence as human nature, yet one in which the participant is really united to the Incarnate Son of God partaking in him in his own appropriate mode of the oneness of the Son and the Father and the Father and the Son, through the Holy Spirit’. This participation in the Divine life (theosis) is an eschatological mystery that Torrance is careful not to delve into inappropriately. Theosis begins now as we participate in the new creation through the Spirit; it is also ‘not yet’ as we wait for the Parousia of the Lord when God in Christ will make all things new.”
Because Christ is us and we are living Holy Communion as a life we can be doers of good works filled with the Spirit of Christ and in so doing spreading His new creation life without contrivance but with freedom and joy.
(1) Thomas Torrance, The Incarnation, chapter 2.
(2) Myk Habets, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance, P 44.
LIFE VERSUS RELIGION
Leanne Payne makes the same point in ‘Real Presence.’ In the knowledge of good and evil these dimensions are a frame outside us. But in Christ by incarnation His life is us.
Christ’s life/holiness is something apart from Himself because it is Him. Because He is in us, it is also who we are becoming. Unless we can accept His gift of incarnation we exist in a mere sliver of His gift of life to the full. The thing is, ‘Do you want to be a construct or a son?’
WHOLE AND HOLY
One is not made Godly through good works or religion. This is shocking to the masses who are workers rather than daughters/son. But we are ‘Godly’ by participating in God which we can do. Participating in God is ours since the atonement is complete and the incarnation is operative. The spirit of sonship is ourselves living Christ our life. In this union, accomplished by the enterprise of the trinity and personally by Jesus Christ, Son of God, we can find delight in fullness of life.
WRONG FOCUS
Jews were not made holy by the law and Christians are not made holy by good morals, ethics and living out Christian principles. We can’t rise up to Godliness in any way. God comes into us in the Messiah and incorporates us in in the communion of Godself. In Jesus we are woven into the trinity and the trinity is woven into our being. Live in this and you will be holy as God is holy and full of grace, kind works and Truth.
DOGS LIFE
Don’t accept the fake piety of the law. We can live at peace in union with God because of Christ. Or we can live in the dog-kennel of the law, yapping at people who have more freedom and life than we do.
AT-ONE-MENT
The undoing of Adam is the renewing of the union with God that was lost at the fall – with improvements. The interwoveness that is ours as a result of the Son of God becoming the Son of Man is closer and more exquisite than the pre-fall communion.
INCARNATED IN OUR BEING
The union with God that is ours in Christ is as real as the transfiguration of Christ. While not visible Christ is incarnated in our being so that we are one with God, yet fully ourselves. In this perichoresis we are one with God yet we retain our identity and personhood. We are not deified, however. But are made one in the spirit of sonship. This is not an anointing. It’s a state of being in which the anointing is rooted.
NOT GODS BUT SONS/DAUGHTERS
Myk Habets writes, “Torrance argues against the idea of human nature being ‘deified’, if by ‘deified’ one means ‘made divine’ in some non-human way. This is why he places so much stress on theosis understood through the Chalcedonian doctrine of the hypostatic union. Human nature is ‘reaffirmed and recreated in its essence as human nature, yet one in which the participant is really united to the Incarnate Son of God partaking in him in his own appropriate mode of the oneness of the Son and the Father and the Father and the Son, through the Holy Spirit’. This participation in the Divine life (theosis) is an eschatological mystery that Torrance is careful not to delve into inappropriately. Theosis begins now as we participate in the new creation through the Spirit; it is also ‘not yet’ as we wait for the Parousia of the Lord when God in Christ will make all things new.”
Because Christ is us and we are living Holy Communion as a life we can be doers of good works filled with the Spirit of Christ and in so doing spreading His new creation life without contrivance but with freedom and joy.
(1) Thomas Torrance, The Incarnation, chapter 2.
(2) Myk Habets, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance, P 44.
