ORDINARY FOLK WITH AGENCY
09/11/24 14:38
We have declared that the Gospel of Christ’s Kingdom is based on the finished atonement and the incarnation of Christ in our being and community. That life in the Spirit means precisely this - that the trinity make their home in our being when we believe in Christ.
REJECT NON-AT-ONE-MENT GOSPELS
So, there is no separation in Christ Jesus, for in Him God is not somewhere else. Rather God is in us and with us as Jesus assured the disciples. Jesus does not abandon us when we sin deliberately or by omission. We are included in Him. This is our new covenant certainty of belonging in Jesus. We need to live from this position rather than from specious cliches such as ‘keeping close to Jesus’ and the self salvation this implies. Jesus is the new covenant and the Guarantee of your inclusion in the Communion that is God.
SPIRIT OF CHRIST’S LIFE IN YOU
God is not in things but is in Himself and in those who believe His Son. Christ mediates Himself directly to You. It is God and God’s daughters and sons who mediate Christ to the world that needs His Life.
Andrew Louth, writing in The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, observes that, “For Plotinus, the higher is not the more remote; the higher is the more inward: one climbs up by climbing in, as it were. .. As the soul ascends to the One, it enters more and more deeply into itself .. Ascent to the One is a process of withdrawal into oneself.” When Christ is in you, we can do better than be a grab-bag of externalities. We understand ourselves correctly and we and grow into our true self.
CHRIST COME IN YOU
Oneness with Christ is being still and knowing that God is God and agreeing with Christ that He is come in our flesh. Church growth has its place, but the real church always begins in the spirit of those who are one with Christ in the inner person. A life in externalities, observances and busy-busy ‘Martha-ism’ will not produce sons and daughters of God. Mary people are those who multiply daughters and sons for Christ. A church of workers has little kingdom agency. A church of sons and daughters has a lot.
THE LIVING WAY IS THE EASTER WAY
We might recall that that even in the Old Testament God encouraged us to ‘Be still and know that God is God’. But it took the incarnation – Christ coming to be with us as human beings and then coming into our being by the Spirit at Pentecost. Now God is so close to us that He is woven into our being and we into His. We are the sons/daughters of the Adam Christ. The agnostic, atheist and legalist finds no salvation in self illusion. But the sons of God are sons because Christ has drawn them into His life of oneness with Father.
KNOW WHERE HE HAS POSITIONED YOU
God is as close as us. God is not found in externalities. Sure, we might go to the desert or the bush to contemplate and be alone with God but He is just as much in our being in our daily living as He is in the desert or the monastery. Part of the discipline of Kingdom life is leaning to live in the reality that He has given us. We belong. God is in us. We are not orphans. We are incarnated with the triune God. We can practice living incarnation by just being. By being in God. The result will be much fruit.
