DONT GIVE UP
09/12/21 11:56
Jesus is life in Himself. He is our justification and sanctification as His Person. Our sins are forgiven by Him and His life is made ours through the incarnation. This is life in the Spirit, which means that God is in us and with us. Baxter Kruger explains that the incarnation means the trinity in you. God is not contained in compartments of time or place. Since the cross and Pentecost God is in you, in us and in the world. Our role is to be agents of His life and advance the new creation that is His life in society and the nations.
SOCIALISED ERROR
Some people have been socialised to believe that their religion/denomination is the path to God. A religion that is about religion has little life from God. Life from God is ours in Jesus Christ and this life is direct. With the Holy Spirit Jesus mediates Himself directly to you and us. Christ is in you, has come in your flesh and is your life as the water of life. This is the spirit and life that is the ultra-life of God alive in you.
ABANDON GOD?
We can abandon God out of anger or because we were immersed in religion as an ideology and never knew God. This can be the case with some of the most active Christians. Some exit God and never come back. Others make their way back in time because they have found Christ in communities that have not been anaesthetised by false religion and aberrant doctrine.
FALSE MEDIATOR
If we have made religion our mediator by equating our religion with God we may give up on God when we find ourselves wounded by people in it with feet of clay. We may become un-believers should we find that the teachings of the church are riddled with cunningly devised fables. That’s if religion has been our pseudo-god. If we simply have a thirst for God and His limitless life we can seek the light and we will find it. This light is Christ. ‘The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day’ Prov 4.18. Christ in you will reveal His truth to you in person.
There’s no condemnation in Christ Jesus. Just acceptance, belonging and the impartation of new life. Jesus imparts life without limit. He lives to fill our cups with life to the full.
LAW FUTILITY
To imagine that the law is the core of spirituality is an oxymoron. Law compartmentalises, judges and condemns. Grace is not something that helps us cope with the law. Grace is Christ and the unlimited life of God that we enter through Jesus and which enters the world through all in whom God is incarnated. The only thing that Jesus condemns is unbelief and hypocrisy, both based on lies and both forms of degradation and death.
ISSUES
The issue of life is not the law and compliance to it. The issue is the Fatherhood of God, the Sonship of You and your inclusion and belonging in God.
RAGE
There’s a lot to be angry about in this present life like the way people have treated us, despoliation of the earth for the sake of greed, the ruination of the Great Barrier Reef for the sake of mammon, the reign of dictators and the perversion of democracy where blind people choose blind and incompetent guides as their political leaders - and the promotion of partisan gospels for private gain. Road rage, murder and right-wing terror cells are symptoms of the smouldering anger generated in people by the injustices and futility of much of social life.
Nevertheless, for the Believer, Christ is our life and we must work on allowing this to BE OUR BEING rather than a slogan. If all we have is Christianity as religion, we are a limp leaf. If we are incarnated sons and daughters of God we are agents of Christ’s new creation life. The incarnated Believer is victorious in death and even more so in life.
SNARES TO AVOID
“Irritation, sarcasm, suspicion, anger, and self-pity are snares that will neutralize you. Whatever happened in your life to cause anger, resentment, self-pity or regret, is now past tense and history; to continue to harbor these thoughts within you, keeps the poison in your system. Forgiveness based upon our true original value redeemed in Christ, releases the flow and healing virtue of the love of God. Titus 3:2-5.
Faith speaks the truth about you. Faith only communicates what love inspires. Instead of blame, bless, instead of complain, praise. Even the biggest failure feels encouraged and challenged rather than intimidated or condemned in the presence of faith. Jesus was known to be the friend of sinners. No one ever felt condemned or judged unworthy by him. He only judged religious hypocrisy and unbelief.” (1)
DON’T REJECT LIFE
Jesus judges unbelief because life is found exclusively in Himself and His Gospel of the Kingdom. A casual or partisan attitude to truth aligns us with the Father of Lies and the culture of spiritual death. We can manifest an artificial grace while living from ‘another gospel’ because our insulation from truth makes us blind folks. But only because we are anesthetised to life and not awake to it. We come alive in our spirit and experience health in our souls when Christ Himself is our life. This is an ontological reality and never a doctrinal position or construct. The Kingdom is not a religion. It is Christ as you and Christ as us all. This spreading reality becomes the new creation and the new earth.
(1) Du Toit, Francois. God Believes in You . Mirror Word Publishing. Kindle Edition.