FLOURISH IN THE SPIRIT OF LIFE
17/02/24 08:13
‘Not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’2 Cor 3.6 NIV.
WHY THE LAW IS DEADNESS LIVED
Australian explorers, Bourke and Wills died of thirst and starvation when both were at hand had they known where to look. Aborigines can live in the desert because they can find both here. We are alive in our spirit when we can identify the Spirit of Life and separated it from mere religion.
The following quotation from Thomas Torrance may appear abstruse. But closer inspection reveals why ‘the letter’ is a dead letter that purveys death and why a life in Christ is more than definitions and positions.
It explains why real life and the real self are found in the I AM of Christ, the Living Word and never in abstractions, constructs and legalisms. Keep in mind that Jesus, the Living Word is a person. A whole person approach cannot be found in the law because it is an abstraction. But the self as a genuine whole person is the expression of Christ his/her life. It’s incarnation.
GOD NOT A CONSTRUCT
Torrance writes, “If God is in himself what he is in the Person and activity of his incarnate Word and Son, then the being or ousia (oúcia) of God must be understood in a very un-Greek way. Applied to God Evoúgios Lóyog and &voÚGios EvÉpYEla express the fact that the being of God is not intrinsically empty of word or activity, not mute or static, but is essentially eloquent and dynamic.
DYNAMIC
“God's being is to be understood as speaking being, for his being and his Word inhere in one another. His very being is Word, and his very Word is being. Likewise God's being is essentially dynamic, for his being and his activity inhere in one another. His being is his act-in-his-being and his act is his being in-his-act.” (1)
CHRIST OUR LIFE
Thus, new creation life is not a construct, abstraction or expression of the letter that kills because it is the life of the Christ or God manifest as us.
‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’2 Cor 3.6 NIV. It follows that is our gospel is about moralism, the letter, the law it’s a construct of the knowledge of good and evil and we are not ministers of the Gospel of Jesus, Paul and John.
Our life in Christ is not law, morals or distinguishing ourselves from sinners. If it was Jesus would have declared it. What He did was to declare Himself as life, forgiveness, grace and the living way of being what sons of God are – expressions of Jesus Christ. There is a kind of christianity that robs people of life because it is not alive. If you want your thirst for life quenched you do not drink the bottle. You drink the water, which is what we do when we agree with Christ that He is our life.
