THE LIVING YOU IN YOUR INHERITANCE OF INCARNATION

The post cross inheritance of all Believers is incarnation. This is Christ alive in us by the Spirit of Sonship. In the Spirit we become the manifestation of God as daughters and sons. The best disciples of Jesus live in the sonship He has provided in Himself. Sons and daughters of God are much more than good people trying to copy Jesus. They are people, so to speak, being Jesus.

I read an article recently about the incarnation in which the author spoke of its centrality in the Christian life – but then went on to assert the importance of the belief that Christ becomes the actual bread and wine of the Lord’s Table. I was disappointed that what would have been an excellent article on the incarnation, diverted into an attempt to uphold a dogma and religious distraction. No, the eucharist means that Christ becomes you and us in a manner in which we become the real us as sons. The is the way to peace of mind and genuine growth into being holy as God is Holy.

EUCHARIST MEANS
The point of the incarnation is that the Real Presence lives in you and is woven into you so that you become – not God – but a genuine son/daughter of God. Eating the Bread and drinking the wine illustrates what is already the REALITY OF A LIFE IN JESUS. In the incarnation we are one substance with Christ. This is our belonging, our wholeness and our holiness. It’s our Daily Bread.

OBFUSCATION
Insisting that Christ becomes the bread and the wine is a distraction.* It’s a religious stumbling block that draws attention away from the Reality that is Christ in us, to the symbol of that Reality which is the Lord’s Table.  There is no life in the symbol. The life is in the life. Thus Paul declares Christ as our life.

Real Life is not found in the adoption of Jewish rites and practices. Or in any religious externality. Real life is ours by eating Jesus the Bread of Life. The only life that is real and capable of uniting the human spirit is Christ come in our flesh.

THE REALITY
When Paul said. ‘Reality is Christ’ he was making a personal and a cosmic statement. The application of this Reality to all of us is described as the vicarious humanity of Jesus. But the actuality of this is the incarnation lived every day.

CHRIST IS IN YOU AND WITH YOU
A sacralisation of a rite or any element of religion distracts us from the un-adulterated limitless life that is Christ come in us. John calls this Christ come in our flesh and bluntly attributes dilutions of this to the spirit of anti-christ. Christ is one substance with us as human beings. This is not an add-on to the Christian life. It is the Christian life.

DISTRACTION
The ‘out-sourcing’ of the Real Presence of God to religion as a generality or to a rite that seems iconic to the identity a community dilutes the Christ and muffles in the Believer the sustenance that is theirs. In this situation malnutrition is our normal Christian life.

DEPLETING PIETIES
The attempted making of a case for transubstantiation is redundant given that Christ is directly and un-dividedly in us. This distraction is similar to the insistence that the Sabbath Day is our rest when it’s Christ Himself who is Our Rest, our peace and our life.

Such pieties may appear harmless in themselves, but they actually leech Christ from our being. Leech, dilute and insulate us from Him because they are more of us and less of Him. As Jesus said, ‘The Spirit is life. The flesh counts for nothing.’

Irenaeus of Lyons succinctly put it, ‘The glory of God is the human person fully alive.’ Alive because His Spirit is expressed in your body, your soul and your being.
* These kinds of distractions have more to do with the human insistence that we are in some way in control of the ministry of salvation when the life that creates new life is entirely in Christ.