It’s good to be familiar with the scriptures, to know their meaning in context and in the sense of what the people were discussing in the period in which they were written. Ignorance is not bliss and the leading of the Holy Spirit is not authentic leading if it purports to be of God yet posits things that are not endorsed by His written word.
Entire denominations have arisen rooted in distortions of scripture while much of the futility in the Middle East has its source in ignorance of the new covenant and the salience of the incarnation for the regeneration of the earth in its entirety. The engine of new creation is not Israel or anything that is not Jesus Himself. The engine of new creation is the incarnation: The trinity in us and our manifestation as the sons and daughters of God.
TARES
We need to follow the Christ of God and not our own christ. It is life-giving to participate in His gospel and not a ‘gospel’ of our own. It’s of great benefit to be ‘wheat’ and not a contemporary example of a tare and to be part of the living body of Jesus and not captured in this ‘body of death’ that is the pre-cross old covenant life of Adam.
What are tares as sons of the Evil one? Probably not wicked people. But just people rendered impotent in religion by fictions, veils and ‘other gospels’ - since the sons of God are those who live vitally in the spirit of sonship.
‘I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!’ Gal 1.6-9 NIV.
What is ‘another gospel?’ It undoing that cross, annulling the atonement, side-lining the incarnation, re-establishing the law and abolishing or watering down the new covenant to some version of the old. What is the curse? Crippled spirituality, suffocation of spiritual discernment and inability to realise the Kingdom of God.
SONS OF GOD MANIFESTING OUR FATHER
Yet knowing the Bible is not always Godliness, spirituality or grace and truth unless Christ lives in us and we have desired to share in His person and nature. To be part of the one loaf we need to eat the bread of life (Jesus Himself) and not some foreign or ‘made-up bread’ that we have concocted as another gospel. One does not have to be a scholar or an ideologue to do this - Just trust Jesus to be our life and be willing to let Him have His way in our being. Stephen Crosby writes,
“The Scriptures declare that the world is not waiting to be persuaded from the Bible. The world does not care about our “Bible” and our opinions about it. The Scriptures tell us that the unbelieving world has a right to “taste” of us, to savour us, to see if the aroma of Christ is present or not. The world is waiting to see a quality of life manifested on earth. Frankly, the world is waiting to see if we resemble Jesus or not.” (1)
ENCHANTED TREE
Self-enchantment dulls spiritual perception. Don’t fall for the latter day enchantments of the tree of knowledge. You have an identity in Jesus that is all encompassing and permitting of no other.
You have an identity in Jesus exclusively on behalf of our Father that undoes the fissure created by Adam. In Jesus you have sonship in spirit and in truth of the kind that is only notional in those with extraneous identities. The easy way to dilute your identity as a son of God is to resort to an extraneous identity in something else - as with Adam seeking a ‘bonus’ in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you regard Jesus as Lord, then He has the right to monopolise your identity. If you have authenticity as a son, then you will treasure this exclusivity as your life.
‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God’ Matt 5.8 NIV. The undivided in heart will see God as He us and know themselves as they are. The impure will live in their illusions and think this is God.
CHRIST YOUR LIFE
We will not resemble Jesus if we live from the law. He did not live from it. He lived from His Father. As such He was the perfect expression of a son. Criticism, judgment and self-deprecation are not the only fruits of the law. It may be passivity or an incapacity to discern Kingdom from religion. Or that we never rise above being a pale ghost of who we really could be if we chose to live in our inheritance and simply allow Christ to manifest Himself in us. One can live a passable semblance as ‘a worker’ from the realm of the knowledge of good and evil. But what we cannot be is a son of God in spirit and in truth if we are contained in Adam and Moses.
The law undoes our authority as Kingdom Builders. In Adam/Moses we are not competent or authentic members of the Body of Christ. There is no content to our belonging until we agree that Christ is our life.
(1) Crosby, Stephen. How New is the New Covenant?: Discovering the Implications of: Jesus is Lord (Kindle Locations 1178-1183). Stephanos Ministries. Kindle Edition.