YOU ARE COMPLETE IN CHRIST

I met a brother at a Christian conference. In conversation he urged that I needed to press into the gift of tongues* to gain completeness in God. Unfortunately, it had become clear while talking to him that he was anything but complete in Christ. He was not a total wreck but was a coping-shambles and certainly not fully alive in His experience of God. There are malformations in our souls that manifestations and the anointing will not fix. That’s because real fixing come from our union with Christ and living in this oneness that is ours.

The healing of our person originates in Christ’s undoing of the separation between us and God that Adam began. In Adam we were separate from God. In Jesus Christ we are one with God in His person. When Jesus cried on the cross, ‘It is finished!’ he was declaring that the separation between humanity and God was undone. Atonement had be made. We had been made one in Christ’s death and certified in Christ’s life in His resurrection. We are included in all that Jesus has done and in all that is His.

SEEING THE KINGDOM
Jesus told Nicodemus, that without being born again he could not see the Kingdom of God. ‘Born again’ begins when we agree with Christ that His life is our life. This is to say that we change from a life in religion to a life in which Christ is us. This is the one Living Way in which we become Godly and most truly ourselves.

Yet people may ignore this and continue to live in their imagined ‘contract with God’, namely. “I will do this” in the expectation that “God will do that”. That’s old covenant, pre-cross and was actually the fabric of feudalism. I heard a pastor preach this analogy once, as though this was the gospel of the Kingdom. It’s not. It’s the gospel of Adam and the regime of the knowledge of good and evil with its manufactured grace and its threadbare sanctification.

THE GIFTS
A gospel of gifts and anointings by itself, together with formulae for gaining the presence is not the full Gospel. It was Jesus, Son of God, who joined our humanity to live a life and die on the cross who undid our separation from God in His own body and in our humanity. Our reconciliation with God comes from Jesus’ atonement. Holy Spirit witnesses to this and affirms this. But a gospel of gifts and anointings is not the full Gospel of Christ and the apostles.

We can practise spiritual gifts and even quite striking gifts yet remain fundamentally unhealed ourselves. We must understand that the experience of God is not only with us but in us. Does our inner person live in the oneness that is ours? Christ’s life and death have made us one with God. Adam’s separation is undone and we now live in fellowship with Father, Son, Holy Spirit and the inhabitants of heaven.

There is nothing more precious than the gift of you. You become who you are in sonship with Father. Sonship is what we have on account of Christ. We have it in union with Christ and oneness with Father and Holy Spirit. Sons/daughters have kingdom agency and authority better than the scribes.

SHARING IN JESUS’ COMMUNION WITH FATHER
The foundation of our life in God is that “The followers of Christ share the Oneness that Jesus had. The awareness of Oneness was supposed to be the distinguishing characteristic of Christians, and the means that would draw people to faith in Christ. Jesus was a proclaimer of nonduality, and he prayed that his followers would experience the same Oneness that he knew.” (1)
DUALISTIC ILLUSION
Many charismatic concepts of ‘the presence’ are dualistic. They assume a kind of silo in which the presence and the gifts manifest. Christ’s life is not separated to everyday life. It is this life. Without the oneness that is ours by atonement and incarnation gifts/anointings have no power to heal the soul. It’s our direct union with the trinity that does this. Jesus is our baptism into soul healing. He mediates His healing life directly to us.
RIB-CAGE OR SON/DAUGHTER
The acts of the apostles are amazing. They are the result of our at-one-ment with God, not the cause of them. It’s a shame to live in the law and old covenant and then affix some gifts of the Spirit to the carcass of the law. And as a result  remain lame and unhealed and wallowing in emotional disease because we still live in the separation of the old covenant. In an Adamic mindset we are not one with God.* Obedience is to have the mind of Christ. Jesus Christ draws all people, all parts of the self and all things into Himself. Your modus operandi as a Believer is Christ incarnated in you.
INCARNATION IS PRACTICAL
There is no ‘godliness’ that is separate from everyday life. Neither is there a life in God that is separate from you. There is not a spiritual life that is separate from your normal life at home or at the supermarket. There is an incarnated life in which you are one with God that is yours. This oneness is imparted to others, your family and the world of everyday by you. You don’t have to ‘get an anointing’ to do this. You are anointed in Christ with the oneness of God. All real life comes from the Spirit. Jesus is our inclusion in the Spirit of Life. He joins us to the kind of oneness that the trinity have with each other in Himself.
KINGDOM ADVERTS
Nevertheless, the gifts of the Spirit are real and there to be practised and utilised for the Kingdom. But this anointed life is not separate to our incarnated life in new covenant oneness with God. But it  can be practised  by people who are quite unaware of the fullness of God incarnated in them. This truncated effort is not the full Gospel any more than a gospel without the power of the Spirit is a full gospel. A life not founded on the atonement/incarnation will always leave us with less than there is and a self, much smaller than we are. If we think of ourselves as a car, why have a three cylinder motor when you can have eight?
* What we believe is crucial because we make our reality out of our beliefs.
(1) Marshall. Davis - Experiencing God Directly: The Way of Christian Nonduality (p. 33). Marshall Davis. Kindle Edition.
*Tongues is an effect of the Spirit. But the Spirit is not the effect of tongues.