REAL GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM
14/11/24 17:17
It’s possible to be socialised into a version of Christ that is not particularly likeable. There’s nothing attractive about a christ who is subordinated to legalism. Thus, it cheered me recently when my granddaughter unsolicited shouted, ‘Hooray Jesus! in response to Christmas scenes on TV.
In the more effete versions of the gospel, a gospel of the kind Paul calls ‘No gospel at all’ the culture of God is an abstraction that varies from an ideology to a belief system and extends into an obsession with sin and sin management. Life as Jesus Himself who engulfs everything else, is Christ’s Gospel of the Kingdom. Legalism distorts God and cripples you.
START WITH LIFE – THE PERSON
Baxter Kruger writes, “When you start with legal holiness, you have eyes only for the cross, and you never see that in Jesus Christ, nothing less than the eternal trinitarian life of Father, Son and Spirit is being lived out inside human existence. You never really get the staggering meaning of the incarnation.”
Theology is beliefs about God and our relationship to God but good theology which is sound doctrine of the kind we call the ‘apostles teaching’ is expressed in the person of Jesus and the personhood of God as trinity – and this trinity in you.
CHRIST IN YOU
As Paul says, we render the glory of Christ’s life visible when Christ is in us.
In the worst gospels, God is reduced to the abstraction of the law and holiness is reduced to legalism. The trinity is reduced to a monism and righteousness is reduced to the law, moralism and Christian values.
Life/righteousness in fullness is Christ. You as a Godly person live Christ your life.
NEW BIRTH, BIRTHDAY
‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20. The day we realise this is probably the day we are reborn.
The truth is that God is Relationship. As trinity God is relationship in Himself. Our life in God is our belonging and inclusion in this relationship. The big issue for salvation and the healing of the world is oneness with God. Thus, the invitation is ‘come to me’.
NON - SHODDY GOSPEL
A real Gospel holds that in Jesus Christ the trinity has reached out to engulf humanity in the Family of God so that we are now one with God and God is in us. Belief in Jesus Christ means we believe that Jesus is our life. He says, ‘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.
UN-GOD, UN-ALIVE YOU
There is no love in a static abstraction and a monistic god - which is why legalists find it difficult to love themselves and to love others. God is neither the Unmoved Mover or the Law. But God is life, relationship and love. God is trinity. Torrance writes, “This is not a static unmoved and unmoving Love, for God’s Being is an eternal movement in Love, and consists in the Love with which the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit ceaselessly love one another.
GLASS OVERFLOWING
“It is in the free gratuitous overflowing of this Love of God to what is other than God in creation and redemption that our salvation through Christ and sanctification in the Holy Spirit are grounded, and through its outward movement in the fulfilment of God’s economic purpose in reconciling and unifying all things in heaven and earth that they are actualised in our existence in Christ, and therefore in the Church which as the Body of Christ is ‘the earthly-historical form of his own existence” (1s).
It may be seen that it is difficult to express Christ by means of moralism, piety or any form of religiosity since anything that is not God is not alive or Godly. But you are alive when Christ is your life and only comatose and semi-alive when law and religion is your life.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (pp. 162-163). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
