FREEDOM IS CHRIST'S LIFE AS YOU

I’ve been watching some dystopian movies on Netflix. Most of them strive to rise above human-bound despair but don’t, and they are depressing as a result. Frequently the ‘salvation’ offered involves the deaths of many bad people and thousands of good ones. But there’s common theme that is more disturbing than this. People are consistently betrayed by bad people, but alarmingly by leaders who are sincere people, sincerely committed to the cause of bettering human life.

CHARADE OF LEADERSHIP

For the. last four years the United States had a self-proclaimed ‘messiah’ sowing division and chaos. Chosen by people who chose not retain God in their knowledge – at least not the God who is Jesus Christ - but a figment god, a false christ of their imagination; a christ who serves the god of the market and mammon. This is the false christ to which the entitled defer in support of their sucking life out of people and the earth for personal gain. This is the morality in which money is more important than people. It’s the Religion of the Market and the motivation that denied covid 19 for the sake of the Economy.

BE A LIFE-GIVER

Living to promote Christ as our life we do not betray people, destroy the earth or promote a selective morality that turns a blind eye to our destruction of social life and our collective irresponsibility for the effect of the idol of unlimited growth. What counts is the ‘way’ that people are bettered. Jesus is both the way to fullness of life, the truth who is that life and the life itself in person. Summarised in new covenant terms, the way to infinite and eternal life is found in Christ your life.

TOO PRACTICAL FOR CHRIST

Some might say, ‘Jesus does not pay the bills.’ They are short sighted about that. Jesus is the living way in which we get a society that is called the new creation Kingdom of God. The loaves and the fishes is an examples of not only the food of life. It illustrates that in Jesus there is always more than enough. Jesus is THE WAY in which God and the culture of heaven is incarnated in us personally, in the church and in society. Via the incarnation of the trinity in us, heaven comes to earth.

Heaven invading earth is more than a leg healed at the front of a hall in a healing service. Heaven invading earth is the trinity manifesting as you and us, and society. Heaven has invaded earth when we are just as turned off about killing the earth as we are about those who murder people.

THE TRUTH

Here’s a fact. If you are aligned with the Christ of God and not some self-defined christ. If you are preaching the gospel of the Kingdom and not some gospel that belongs to the kingdom of your personal inclination. If you are drawing people into a vision of themselves that is Jesus writ personal and Jesus writ large - you can rest in peace and satisfaction. You can luxuriate in the comfort of the fact that you - in your life - will have promoted life to the full.

NOT OF THE LETTER

‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ 2 COR 3.6 NIV.

The letter is selective and self-serving. Christ our life is holistic and all embracing.

RAISING THE DEAD OR KEEPING THEM DEAD



Here’s a fact that flows from this: As minister of the new covenant, it can never be said of you that you betrayed even one person. But if you are satisfied to present what you have assumed to be the truth when it is not – out of inertia or because of a childish attachment to some identity you think you need in addition to Jesus. If you have convinced yourself that this un-gospel is a real gospel, when it is a charade - you cannot be certain that you have not betrayed people, their hopes and their right to life without measure. It’s probable that you betrayed not only yourself but many others who had a right to know better.