ITS ALL ABOUT LIFE
01/12/24 14:51
The Real Gospel affords spirit and life. This our being alive, rather than being undead. A life in the ‘letter that kills’ leaves us dead folks talking/walking. This is the bane of every legalistic gospel.
It is ours because Christ has joined us in His person to trinitarian life. Never insist on being a piece of cardboard attempting to be a tree. Incarnated with Christ the fullness of God will dwell in you. Rivers of living water instead of just words will flow from your being.’
A PERSON OF SPIRIT AND LIFE
Not everyone ministers life. Some give religion but are not themselves alive in their spirit. We are truly alive when Christ is us by incarnation and the eucharist lived. Christ is truth because He is life. If we are truth we are life. We participate in the divine nature by living and telling the truth. Limbs are not alive because they belong to the Body of Christ. They are alive because they are one with God in Christ. As sons in spirit and truth, we are alive with Christ’s life.
CHRIST MINISTERS HIMSELF
Righteousness is not an abstraction as the knowledge of good and evil would like you to believe. Righteousness is Christ your life. The lie of legalism is that it does not make you righteous because it is not righteous, whole or personable. It is just words, positions and often virtue signalling. But Christ come in you is The Living Word manifest as you and as us.
Jesus does not minister something less than Himself to you – which is why He does not minister rules and behaviours. He ministers Himself to us, with the result that Jesus come in us infuses all our behaviours with His life.
Jesus does not minister a list to you. He ministers Himself to you because He is woven into your being. Goodness, holiness and righteousness have never been an abstraction separate from God. God is life which means that any virtue is Christ in us. That God is love enables us to love.
JOINED TO CHRIST AND HIS LIFE
Myk Habets observes that Torrance “Stated that ‘through the Spirit Christ is nearer to us than we are to ourselves, and we who live and dwell on earth are yet made to sit with Christ “in heavenly places”, partaking of the divine nature in him’” (1)
I knew this before I read this statement. Not because I am clever but because one’s spirit committed to the supremacy of Christ knows that this is true. The most peaceful and gracious Christians know this as do those who have undergone extensive inner healing and who live at peace with their soul.
ONENESS IS HERE
We are insulated from God in the law/religion, insulated from self and separated from others. Legalism suffocates the True Self. Self-knowledhe is ours in oneness with Christ. Christianity as a religion is an externality. Christ as an incarnation is a continuous communion with the triune God.
It is this exquisite communion with God in His Son that opens us to our own humanity and that of others. Not only this, but it opens a direct stream of spirit and life from the Holy Family to us so that we are not only enfolded in God. We are channels of His spirit and life.
(1) Myk Habets, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance.