RIGHTLY INTERPRET THE WORD OF TRUTH
17/11/24 07:29
A lady once stoutly declared that she would sooner believe ‘Bible truth’ when exposed to a more expansive gospel than that in which she had been contained. But sadly, her version of ‘Bible truth was not what the Bible taught or the Gospel of Jesus and the apostles.
BELIEVING IS SEEING
There is something in the notion of ‘Believing is seeing.’ This is to say we are likely to believe what we think we are seeing, whether this is real or not. If steeped in the law/legalism as our cultural mindset, we will see a different gospel to that described by John and Paul. We will have glued ourselves to ‘no gospel at all,’ as Paul would say. We can, if this amended and lesser gospel has become our idol – reject all evidence to the contrary, because the bottom line for us, is that our ideas are more important than life – given than this distorted gospel is our life.
POST CROSS IS ENTIRELY NEW
Thomas Torrance notes that, “Those early Christian theologians were, therefore, surely right when they insisted that we may acquire knowledge of something quite new or hitherto unknown, not through processes of explicit reasoning, important as they may be within the brackets of what is already known, but only through an ontological act of recognition and assent which cannot be further analysed, and which arises compulsorily in our minds as we allow what is new to authenticate itself to us in its own reality and to disclose itself to us in its intrinsic significance and truth.” (1)
STATE OF BEING
This is to say that Christianity is more than a religion to which we give an assent. More than a religion Kingdom Life is a state of being in which we live union with Christ as the Living Way. This is us in which Christ has come in our flesh as John writes and Christ who is our life as Paul writes. We are talking here of Christ, Father and Holy Spirit incarnated in our being – the deep meaning of life in the Spirit as compared to the shallow impression of a collection of gifts and the anointing. These of course are dependent, subsidiary and the result of the separation precipitated by Adam being annulled in the Person of Christ. Be it known that the basic healing in which our new creation life rests is the undoing of adamic separation and the doing of real union with God in the person of Jesus Christ. We may have a words of knowledge, heal a deaf ear and cure a blind eye. But if we are not healed in our being – not living in the union with God that Jesus has won for us in Himself, WE ARE NOT HEALED in any meaningful way.
Fullness of grace comes from the fact that Grace is Jesus Christ and the Christ who is both God and a human being. Thus, Jesus reveals God to us from the being of God, reveals God to us from the point of view of a man and us as our real selves as we are realised in Him. Let’s be clear. You are one with God in Jesus Christ and you grow into your real self through Christ who is our life – theosis in which we take on Christs nature, grace and the ability to love self and others.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 20). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
BELIEVING IS SEEING
There is something in the notion of ‘Believing is seeing.’ This is to say we are likely to believe what we think we are seeing, whether this is real or not. If steeped in the law/legalism as our cultural mindset, we will see a different gospel to that described by John and Paul. We will have glued ourselves to ‘no gospel at all,’ as Paul would say. We can, if this amended and lesser gospel has become our idol – reject all evidence to the contrary, because the bottom line for us, is that our ideas are more important than life – given than this distorted gospel is our life.
POST CROSS IS ENTIRELY NEW
Thomas Torrance notes that, “Those early Christian theologians were, therefore, surely right when they insisted that we may acquire knowledge of something quite new or hitherto unknown, not through processes of explicit reasoning, important as they may be within the brackets of what is already known, but only through an ontological act of recognition and assent which cannot be further analysed, and which arises compulsorily in our minds as we allow what is new to authenticate itself to us in its own reality and to disclose itself to us in its intrinsic significance and truth.” (1)
STATE OF BEING
This is to say that Christianity is more than a religion to which we give an assent. More than a religion Kingdom Life is a state of being in which we live union with Christ as the Living Way. This is us in which Christ has come in our flesh as John writes and Christ who is our life as Paul writes. We are talking here of Christ, Father and Holy Spirit incarnated in our being – the deep meaning of life in the Spirit as compared to the shallow impression of a collection of gifts and the anointing. These of course are dependent, subsidiary and the result of the separation precipitated by Adam being annulled in the Person of Christ. Be it known that the basic healing in which our new creation life rests is the undoing of adamic separation and the doing of real union with God in the person of Jesus Christ. We may have a words of knowledge, heal a deaf ear and cure a blind eye. But if we are not healed in our being – not living in the union with God that Jesus has won for us in Himself, WE ARE NOT HEALED in any meaningful way.
Fullness of grace comes from the fact that Grace is Jesus Christ and the Christ who is both God and a human being. Thus, Jesus reveals God to us from the being of God, reveals God to us from the point of view of a man and us as our real selves as we are realised in Him. Let’s be clear. You are one with God in Jesus Christ and you grow into your real self through Christ who is our life – theosis in which we take on Christs nature, grace and the ability to love self and others.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 20). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
