THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH OF GOD

Jesus states and Paul affirms that workers and slaves differ from the sons/daughters of God because the former are without spirit and life. We may generate an ‘active church’ but more than activity is required to be alive in spirit and truth and to propagate Kingdom life. The ‘Worker’ may typically resist revival because of his investment in ‘earning god.’

WHAT MISSION?
When talking mission and it is noted that our foundation is Christ – and someone responds, ‘That’s a given,’ we remain impotent if our christ is false and our gospel is crooked. There is a dead way of hindering the Kingdom and a Living Way of expanding it. The Living Way is the way of Christ, the apostles, Church Fathers, Reformers and ministers of Christ come in our flesh. If we are not part of the Garden of the Christian Church and separate from its tradition. If we are living as a pot-plant of our own in reference to ourselves and our own brand there is a strong likelihood that we are not part of the Christian Church and the Kingdom Jesus began.

LIVE IN YOUR RICHES
We are called to live incarnated because this is the Gift we already possess. If our gospel is not Christ’s and the apostle’s Gospel – no matter how active we are -   we will remain dead in our spirit and the life of the community will be diminished. People will be sick in soul and crippled in spirit and live as ‘lesser selves’ while being workers instead of sons. This is particularly so when we work to achieve the acceptance/union with God that is already ours. The result is a misguided and debilitated us, presenting a debilitated rendition of the Kingdom. The essence of Kingdom Christianity is that Christ has come in you and in us to be us. Ensure that you represent the universal church and not a sect or a cult.

When Christ is our life. He has come in our flesh and we will be doing what Jesus means us to be doing – not someone else’s misguided/Martha version of ‘Mission.’

COMES IN YOUR BODY
‘This is how we know if they have the Spirit of God: If a person claiming to be a prophet acknowledges that Jesus Christ came in a real body, that person has the Spirit of God’ 1 John 4.2 NLT. Not only did Christ come in a real body. He comes in your body – which is the meaning of the Lord’s Table.

THE EXPRESSION OF CHRIST
‘Christ come in the flesh’ has a double application. God came among us as Jesus of Nazareth and Christ comes in you by atonement and incarnation. This is the Gospel of the Kingdom and life in the Spirit. ‘Life in the Spirit’ is never old covenant separation from God with the gifts added. Neither is the old covenant the Spirit of sonship. Sonship has happened as the spirit of adoption resulting from the cross. Sonship is yours by the One Spirit which is your union with God. Sons are agents of Christ’s Kingdom. Workers are spreaders of more workers.

TRUE LIFE, TRUE YOU BECAUSE OF TRUE CHRIST
“Righteousness is not primarily a forensic term to be fitted into a legal scheme of atonement but signifies true life from above, life derived solely from the life of God. Righteousness and life cannot be separated .. any more than sin and death.” (1) You are made one with God and God has woven Himself into your being in the manner in which the trinity are part of each other, yet distinct persons. This is perichoresis. This is your re-joining to God and your fruitfulness.

THE FOUNDATION
Therefore, the Lord’s Table and not the anointing and gifts of the Spirit is the foundation of our life in God. As a christian man I was talking to many years ago observed, ‘There is something more foundational than spiritual gifts, house churches and healing miracles. It’s our already achieved union with God.’ Oneness with God is prior to community and the gifts. It’s the soil of both. It’s the difference between Christ’s gospel and ‘other gospels.’

WITH AUTHORITY
Jesus has authority that surpassed that of the scribes because He and His Father were one. It is in oneness with Father than we are authentic as persons and authoritative as daughters and sons. We have this oneness in the post cross world. It’s not something we earn or deserve through stint of moral achievement. It’s the effect of Christ come in our flesh. Jesus does not make us someone else. The impartation of Christ makes us - us. The fruitful you as a river of Kingdom Life.

SONS NOT GODS
Myk Habets observes that, “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’.  ..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.”

EXPRESSION OF THE WHOLE
People wonder why Holy Spirit revivals are not as fruitful as was hoped; why they fade, and the church does not triumph. Probably because the primary issue is not the anointing, or the gifts. Our foundation is our reconciliation by atonement, our gift of oneness with God in Christ. It’s Adam undone and in Christ we are one. Kingdom Life is less religion and more incarnation.

A gospel of the Spirit and the Gifts disconnected from the incarnation is not the Gospel of the Kingdom. Gifts of the Spirit bolted on to the law and old covenant are not Christ’s Gospel and should not be seen as such. ‘Christ your life’ means that we take on the nature of our Father as daughters and sons as expressions of Jesus. In this communion we are sons in spirit and truth and positioned to receive the Spirit without limit.

SUBTLE MISCONCEPTION
‘I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist’ 2 John 1.7 NIV.

(1) McSwain, Jeff. Simul Sanctification: Barth’s Hidden Vision for Human Transformation (Princeton Theological Monograph Series Book 232) (p. 4). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.