MORE OR LESS THAN WE ARE
27/11/20 11:36
Our salvation is complete in Christ. Because Jesus Christ is all God and all man we are made one with God in the at-one-ment of Jesus Christ. The fall is undone and the restoration of our union with God is accomplished. Humanity is joined to God and God to humanity in Jesus Christ.
EQUISITE ADOPTION
But we are not just adopted in Christ. An inter-woveness has taken place between Father and the sons/daughters of God. Myk Habets observes that “According to Torrance, .. we must give greater place in our understanding of atonement to the concrete conception of substitution together with incorporation. The Word did not enter history as a third party but as an historical individual, Jesus Christ. Christ entered our state of alienation from God and stood under the curse of the Law, he ‘stepped into the conflict between the covenant faithfulness of God and the unfaithfulness of man and took that conflict into His own flesh as the Incarnate Son and bore it to the end.” (1)
‘Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death’ Rom 8.2 NIV. We are never fully alive when attached to the law.
NON-LIFE ADDICTION
A religious attachment to all or any commandment ties us to Moses, to Adam, to separation from God and a culture that is the law of sin and death. In Christ God has done away with the law and replaced it with Himself. The law was always an interloper as a function of the false narrative of the father of lies. When Paul speaks of the law of sin and death, Paul is speaking of this law. When Paul speaks of the law of the spirit of life he is denoting the nature of God, God’s love for us and God’s identifying with us in the person of Christ in order to draw us into Godself and realise the vision of God celebrating life in company with the sons/daughters of God.
ONE SUBSTANCE WITH CHRIST
We are adopted but not ‘just adopted’. We have a union of being with God that is ours because Jesus Christ is both God and us. Not only has Christ come. He has come in our flesh. He forgives our flesh, graces our flesh with His own body manifesting Himself in us – in Jill and George by incarnation.
How does this affect you? God is never somewhere else. He is not more on some days than other days. There is not more of Him because you have done a good work. He is not in celebrity preachers but not in you. He is not more in Paul and John than you. Christ is with you and in you. So it’s not about ‘keeping close to Jesus.’ It’s about living in the oneness that is yours at all times and in all places. Don’t leave you inheritance in the ground like the unprofitable servant. Live in what you have. It’s presumptuous to live in separation when God has given us union in Jesus.
(1) Habets Myk, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance, p70.