NOT THE OLD TESTAMENT WITH A DOB OF JESUS
09/12/24 14:40
The beauty of the post cross age is that Jesus has introduced us to life with the Father. In His person, Jesus has taken us within the Holy Family so that in Christ we are in God – which means to be in the communion of the trinity. Thus, holy communion must be seen as more than a sacrament of bread and wine. It’s not mourning about the cross. It’s rejoicing with Jesus in the ‘joy set before Him’ of our having become one with Christ and hence one in communion with Jesus with the triune God.
WOVEN INTO CHRIST AND GOD INTO US
Jesus promised that He would be with us and in us. He, Father and Holy Spirit are woven into our being in His person.
Mike Habets commenting on Thomas Torrance observes that, “The phrase, ‘we are in Christ Jesus’ does not signify that we are located somewhere within the physical confines of the incarnate Christ, but points analogically to the fact that we are in a relationship with him. This applies to Christ being in the Father and to men and women being in the Son. As Athanasius and the tradition puts it, the ‘inter-relations of the Father and the Son must be thought out in terms of “abiding” and “dwelling” in which each wholly rests in the other. This is the doctrine of perichoresis.” This too is our state of being in God. We were made to live in God. We have been redeemed into communion with God and God has come to live in us because Christ has come in our flesh as the Messiah to the world and as the Savior into you.
RELIGION IS NOT SPIRITUALITY
Religion is not spirituality. This is the common misconception of humanists and legalists. Spirituality is oneness with God of the kind that has been won by God for us in the enterprise of the trinity. Spirituality is Christ active in you and more. Spirituality is the union with God that is yours in the person of Jesus.
To believe in Christ as our Messiah is to be graced with the entirety of His life. ‘Jesus replied, "Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them’ John 14.23 NIV. This is spirituality – it’s union with God. This is a union that is personal, un-religious, not pious and a genuine companionship with the almighty. It’s the kind of union that makes us sons rather than workers and slaves. This union unites us with ourselves, other people and the entire creation.
