THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
19/11/24 07:31
There is no authentic Gospel other than that of Jesus and the apostles and no accurate rendering of the beliefs of the Christian Church, other than that of the apostles, Church Fathers and Reformers who have explained and delineated what it means to be a Believer in the One Christian Gospel of Jesus Christ. If our church beliefs are not part of the Christian tradition, there is a good chance that we may not be a Christian Church.
ONE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM
There are not many gospels or versions of the Gospel but there are numerous ways in which the Gospel may be lived, since Christ lives His life in initials and groups. But there is one Gospel of the Kingdom. Not many.
NO CLONES
Since we live courtesy of the atonement and incarnation which is Christ alive in our being along with the presence company of Father and Holy Spirit as the eucharist reminds us we become the expression of Christ in His one Gospel. Any perspective that does not fit with the Gospel of Jesus, the apostles and Church Fathers is ‘another gospel’ of the kind Paul warned about and which Jesus described as a paddock of tares.
ONE GOD, ONE CHRIST, ONE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM
“God in his historical self-revelation is one and the same with the ultimate ground that God himself eternally is, for in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit God is wholly identical with the content of his self-revelation and self-communication.” In her book Real Presence, Leanne Payne made the point that God is congruent with Himself in that He is what He advocates. There is no dualism in God and no split life. THE I AM of God is His triune Self.
JESUS IS THE GOD OF GOD
“God reveals himself through himself, and what God communicates to us is not something of himself but his very Self, true God from true God. In him the Revealer and the Revealed, the Giver and the Gift are of one and the same Being.” (1) Thus, the Christ of God is the Living Way in which the ideal self is made one with the lived self. He makes the two one, healing our broken nature by including us in the trinitarian Being that is Communion. Not a description of communion but Communion itself.
Jesus is the I AM of God, God in His entirety and not beside or subordinate to an entity such as the law - a ploy that makes God and abstraction when He is a trinity of persons in unity.
IGNORE THE LAW DISTORTION
“In Jesus Christ God has revealed himself and given himself to us unreservedly in the fullness of his divine Reality, in such a way that what he reveals and gives to us is grounded in his ultimate Being as God. That is the central truth, the Deity of Christ, upon which the Christian conception of God and of his saving activity depends, as the great theologians and councils made clear once for all in the fourth century in their formulation of the crucial concept of the homoousion (ὁμοούσιος τῷ Πατρί) applied to the Son and the Spirit as the key truth they had to maintain against threats to the Gospel from every side.” (1)
Thus, Real You is made whole in Real God by Jesus Christ embracing you and becoming you by the Spirit.
We become whole and holy as we enter Christ who is our life in every way.
THE MOVEMENT FROM SEPARATION TO UNION AND IDENTITY
Our common idols can be our received beliefs, twisted through ignorance and misguided teaching along with unholy brainwashing disguised as Christian education.
WHOLENESS IN THE UNION THAT IS YOURS
Leanne Payne assures us that “There is great beauty in the movement of the soul as it forsakes its alienation and its inability to hear and know God, and comes into a position of listening, illumination, and union with Him. There is a splendid simplicity to it. On entering the Presence, no matter how twisted and bent the soul has been toward its idols, it receives the grace to renounce them. As one’s will is thoroughly converted and made one with God’s, one has a new backbone, upright and strong, with which to stand erect in the vertical, receiving position with the Father. The soul sees, it hears, it comes into holy converse… A new self, with one face, turned up to God, seeing and hearing with singleness of heart, is born. Christ, the Word, comes to birth and is formed within that soul, and there is therefore the capacity to communicate with the Father.” This happens when we agree with Christ that He has included us in Himself and what is His – belonging in the Communion that is God.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 21). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
(2) Payne, Leanne. The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul through Union with Christ (p. 55-56). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
ONE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM
There are not many gospels or versions of the Gospel but there are numerous ways in which the Gospel may be lived, since Christ lives His life in initials and groups. But there is one Gospel of the Kingdom. Not many.
NO CLONES
Since we live courtesy of the atonement and incarnation which is Christ alive in our being along with the presence company of Father and Holy Spirit as the eucharist reminds us we become the expression of Christ in His one Gospel. Any perspective that does not fit with the Gospel of Jesus, the apostles and Church Fathers is ‘another gospel’ of the kind Paul warned about and which Jesus described as a paddock of tares.
ONE GOD, ONE CHRIST, ONE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM
“God in his historical self-revelation is one and the same with the ultimate ground that God himself eternally is, for in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit God is wholly identical with the content of his self-revelation and self-communication.” In her book Real Presence, Leanne Payne made the point that God is congruent with Himself in that He is what He advocates. There is no dualism in God and no split life. THE I AM of God is His triune Self.
JESUS IS THE GOD OF GOD
“God reveals himself through himself, and what God communicates to us is not something of himself but his very Self, true God from true God. In him the Revealer and the Revealed, the Giver and the Gift are of one and the same Being.” (1) Thus, the Christ of God is the Living Way in which the ideal self is made one with the lived self. He makes the two one, healing our broken nature by including us in the trinitarian Being that is Communion. Not a description of communion but Communion itself.
Jesus is the I AM of God, God in His entirety and not beside or subordinate to an entity such as the law - a ploy that makes God and abstraction when He is a trinity of persons in unity.
IGNORE THE LAW DISTORTION
“In Jesus Christ God has revealed himself and given himself to us unreservedly in the fullness of his divine Reality, in such a way that what he reveals and gives to us is grounded in his ultimate Being as God. That is the central truth, the Deity of Christ, upon which the Christian conception of God and of his saving activity depends, as the great theologians and councils made clear once for all in the fourth century in their formulation of the crucial concept of the homoousion (ὁμοούσιος τῷ Πατρί) applied to the Son and the Spirit as the key truth they had to maintain against threats to the Gospel from every side.” (1)
Thus, Real You is made whole in Real God by Jesus Christ embracing you and becoming you by the Spirit.
We become whole and holy as we enter Christ who is our life in every way.
THE MOVEMENT FROM SEPARATION TO UNION AND IDENTITY
Our common idols can be our received beliefs, twisted through ignorance and misguided teaching along with unholy brainwashing disguised as Christian education.
WHOLENESS IN THE UNION THAT IS YOURS
Leanne Payne assures us that “There is great beauty in the movement of the soul as it forsakes its alienation and its inability to hear and know God, and comes into a position of listening, illumination, and union with Him. There is a splendid simplicity to it. On entering the Presence, no matter how twisted and bent the soul has been toward its idols, it receives the grace to renounce them. As one’s will is thoroughly converted and made one with God’s, one has a new backbone, upright and strong, with which to stand erect in the vertical, receiving position with the Father. The soul sees, it hears, it comes into holy converse… A new self, with one face, turned up to God, seeing and hearing with singleness of heart, is born. Christ, the Word, comes to birth and is formed within that soul, and there is therefore the capacity to communicate with the Father.” This happens when we agree with Christ that He has included us in Himself and what is His – belonging in the Communion that is God.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 21). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
(2) Payne, Leanne. The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul through Union with Christ (p. 55-56). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.