NON-GOSPELS BE GONE
09/06/21 14:08
There are sincere folks you say they preach grace continually. Yet the core of their doctrine is the law. Either you are in the law or you are in grace, in the letter or in the Spirit. Either Christ is our life or we are in some form of the letter which is the culture of the knowledge of good and evil. If the latter, we will be amenable to double talk about law and grace because our spiritual vision is dim. As Paul says,
‘The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit’ 1 Cor 2.14 NIV.
Here Paul is talking about those who have not grasped what heaven did for us at the cross. His topic is our new covenant life in the Spirit. Paul called this ‘Christ our life.’ Those who think this foolish are imprisoned in the belief that Christ gives their flesh life. But Christ come in our flesh is not the law come to save us. It is JESUS COME TO BE OUR LIFE.
GLORY IN CHRIST YOUR LIFE
‘To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory’ Col 1.27 NIV. Your glory is to be yourself as the manifestation of Jesus.
BENDING GRACE TO SAVE THE LAW
Grace is not an abstraction. It is not a Band-Aid. Neither is it a fix for the law. This is to say that grace is not a ‘Jesus way’ of helping you deal with the law and maybe keep it in some fitful and desultory fashion. Grace is a person.
Grace is a life in you that is not you.
Grace is Christ’s life as your life. Grace is both Christ’s life instead of yours and Christ’s life as yours. This is the genius of life in the Spirit – life in the Spirit of Christ.
YOU PARTICIPATE IN GOD
‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law’ Gal 5.22,23 NIV. No law because the Spirit of Christ is expressed as your flesh.
There is no law because Jesus the person has replaced what would have been the law before the cross. Paul is not describing some novel kind of new testament behaviour. This statement is not a variation and refinement of old testament law. Paul is describing the expression of Jesus in you. Big difference.
LIFE IS YOU
If we are in Christ there is no law. But there is life, joy, love and the order that belongs to those joined to God by Christ.
This is why in Christ we are alive and in law we are dead. Joined to law, we remain dead in the law even if we go halfway around the world to minister to third world people. Here we are dead people talking. Law is for the separated. This is why Paul asserts that law is for sinners. Life is for all who are one with the Father and the Son by the Spirit.
‘For the law was not intended for people who do what is right. It is for people who are lawless and rebellious, who are ungodly and sinful, who consider nothing sacred and defile what is holy, who kill their father or mother or commit other murders’ 1 Tim 1.9 NIV.
OBTUSE SIN
We don’t have to kill our Mums to be sinners. All we have to do is live from the law and by doing so deny Christ as our life.
In Christ there is union, togetherness, love and harmony. Unity and harmony do not occur because everyone is keeping the law or laws. They happen because all of us personally are the life of God expressed as us.
SONS ARE ONE WITH FATHER
You will never be yourself, never have a real identity if joined to the law. We will always be whole with Christ as our life.
To be without ‘law’ is not to be in chaos. The new creation is the manifestation of the person of God in all that exists. We are who we are and creation is what it is because we and creation exist in the person of God. Both John and Paul teach this. Paul with ‘In Him we live, move and have our being and in Him all things hold together’. John with his depiction of Jesus as the living word or logos – the order and purpose of the universe in the person of The Son.
‘The whole is more important than the sum of the parts.’ In the law we live in parts and the illusion that we are whole. In Christ we live in the whole (the trinity) and impart their life to the parts. Life in its totality and truth resides in the person of Jesus who lives in us.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind’ John 1.1-4 NIV.
MISTAKEN COVENANT VIEW
Let’s be clear. In the new covenant we are not ‘improved’ and ‘getting more righteous’ because we have seen the cross and on account of this we now so love Jesus that we would not offend His ways.
Actually we would! We would because our love is not that good!
FANTASY FICTION
This sentimental notion is a travesty of new covenant life. It leaves the onus on us to ‘love enough;’ to love so much that we attain a righteousness of our own. It may be directed towards Jesus but it is still our righteousness or our attempt at it and as such we are not up to the mark.
‘Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law’ Gal 2.16 NLT.
CHRIST YOUR LIFE
In the new testament age you are not the expression of the law – unless you are confined to a spiritual wheel chair. You are really the expression of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. How simple can it be. By the Spirit, Father manifests as you.
Father is revealed in you as a son. Yet you retain your individuality and represent Him as the sons and daughters of men. Why? Because Christ is multiplied in all who believe His gospel.
THE EXPRESSION OF FATHER
When we read that the key feature of this age is Christ come in the flesh we are being told that the person of Jesus and the entire God-head is infused by the Spirit into our being. We are constantly enveloped, continuously infilled and always in the company of the Holy Family. And we are in them. Never let yourself be degraded by teaching whose origin is the pit. Your mentoring comes from heaven as Jesus reveals Himself to your heart.
‘I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist’ 2 John 1.7 NIV.
‘The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit’ 1 Cor 2.14 NIV.
Here Paul is talking about those who have not grasped what heaven did for us at the cross. His topic is our new covenant life in the Spirit. Paul called this ‘Christ our life.’ Those who think this foolish are imprisoned in the belief that Christ gives their flesh life. But Christ come in our flesh is not the law come to save us. It is JESUS COME TO BE OUR LIFE.
GLORY IN CHRIST YOUR LIFE
‘To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory’ Col 1.27 NIV. Your glory is to be yourself as the manifestation of Jesus.
BENDING GRACE TO SAVE THE LAW
Grace is not an abstraction. It is not a Band-Aid. Neither is it a fix for the law. This is to say that grace is not a ‘Jesus way’ of helping you deal with the law and maybe keep it in some fitful and desultory fashion. Grace is a person.
Grace is a life in you that is not you.
Grace is Christ’s life as your life. Grace is both Christ’s life instead of yours and Christ’s life as yours. This is the genius of life in the Spirit – life in the Spirit of Christ.
YOU PARTICIPATE IN GOD
‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law’ Gal 5.22,23 NIV. No law because the Spirit of Christ is expressed as your flesh.
There is no law because Jesus the person has replaced what would have been the law before the cross. Paul is not describing some novel kind of new testament behaviour. This statement is not a variation and refinement of old testament law. Paul is describing the expression of Jesus in you. Big difference.
LIFE IS YOU
If we are in Christ there is no law. But there is life, joy, love and the order that belongs to those joined to God by Christ.
This is why in Christ we are alive and in law we are dead. Joined to law, we remain dead in the law even if we go halfway around the world to minister to third world people. Here we are dead people talking. Law is for the separated. This is why Paul asserts that law is for sinners. Life is for all who are one with the Father and the Son by the Spirit.
‘For the law was not intended for people who do what is right. It is for people who are lawless and rebellious, who are ungodly and sinful, who consider nothing sacred and defile what is holy, who kill their father or mother or commit other murders’ 1 Tim 1.9 NIV.
OBTUSE SIN
We don’t have to kill our Mums to be sinners. All we have to do is live from the law and by doing so deny Christ as our life.
In Christ there is union, togetherness, love and harmony. Unity and harmony do not occur because everyone is keeping the law or laws. They happen because all of us personally are the life of God expressed as us.
SONS ARE ONE WITH FATHER
You will never be yourself, never have a real identity if joined to the law. We will always be whole with Christ as our life.
To be without ‘law’ is not to be in chaos. The new creation is the manifestation of the person of God in all that exists. We are who we are and creation is what it is because we and creation exist in the person of God. Both John and Paul teach this. Paul with ‘In Him we live, move and have our being and in Him all things hold together’. John with his depiction of Jesus as the living word or logos – the order and purpose of the universe in the person of The Son.
‘The whole is more important than the sum of the parts.’ In the law we live in parts and the illusion that we are whole. In Christ we live in the whole (the trinity) and impart their life to the parts. Life in its totality and truth resides in the person of Jesus who lives in us.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind’ John 1.1-4 NIV.
MISTAKEN COVENANT VIEW
Let’s be clear. In the new covenant we are not ‘improved’ and ‘getting more righteous’ because we have seen the cross and on account of this we now so love Jesus that we would not offend His ways.
Actually we would! We would because our love is not that good!
FANTASY FICTION
This sentimental notion is a travesty of new covenant life. It leaves the onus on us to ‘love enough;’ to love so much that we attain a righteousness of our own. It may be directed towards Jesus but it is still our righteousness or our attempt at it and as such we are not up to the mark.
‘Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law’ Gal 2.16 NLT.
CHRIST YOUR LIFE
In the new testament age you are not the expression of the law – unless you are confined to a spiritual wheel chair. You are really the expression of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. How simple can it be. By the Spirit, Father manifests as you.
Father is revealed in you as a son. Yet you retain your individuality and represent Him as the sons and daughters of men. Why? Because Christ is multiplied in all who believe His gospel.
THE EXPRESSION OF FATHER
When we read that the key feature of this age is Christ come in the flesh we are being told that the person of Jesus and the entire God-head is infused by the Spirit into our being. We are constantly enveloped, continuously infilled and always in the company of the Holy Family. And we are in them. Never let yourself be degraded by teaching whose origin is the pit. Your mentoring comes from heaven as Jesus reveals Himself to your heart.
‘I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist’ 2 John 1.7 NIV.