THE HUBRIS OF SELF-MADE ICONS
01/03/22 08:02
To invent a package of salvation that distorts the life of Christ – to promote it as though you have something special when it’s actually weird in the name of Christ is a sad delusion. Gnostic gospels disguise themselves as Christian when they are pagan.
TRUTH IS THE CHRIST OF GOD
Truth is the person of Jesus Christ. Paul called Christ our life because He is our Representative vis a vis God. We have become co-joined to the trinity through the person of Christ. ‘Truth’ is the gospel of the Kingdom as represented by Jesus and taught by Paul and the apostles. The ‘word’ as declared by John is not just words. Not definitions and positions. This word is the Son of God. This is the Word that is sharper than a two-edged sword that discriminates between truth and fables. This is the word that is a state of being. It’s your state in oneness with God. With Christ as our life we are living ‘words’ as a manifestation of Christ.
Truth in God’s narrative is expressed in two ways: As God Himself and as you as son/daughter.
GOSPELS AND GOSPELS
God’s truth involves the undoing of the lies that vitiate Adam. As a result we must ensure that Christ’s gospel is our gospel and not some ‘other gospel.’ Paul identifies ‘other gospels’ as attracting a curse because they perpetuate the lies that caused the fall. They leave us separated in our minds (not separated in actuality) from God – the God who has gained us union with Himself.
SANCIFIED IN THE TRUTH
You are free in the incarnated Christ to represent Him in the Spirit as yourself, but neither you or communities of faith are free to devise your own gospel and your own ‘way’ to the Kingdom. Unless you are comfortable with a false gospel and a false christ. Such paths always prove a cul-de-sac and a dead-end. They are the ways that lead to death. ‘There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death’ Prov 14.12 NIV. Your way and the way of the church is the new and living way that is Christ our life personally and as communities of faith.
ATHANASIUS
This is put somewhat quaintly [below] but it expresses the truth that God became part of us so that we can become woven into God as sons/daughters. ‘You will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20 NIV. Before we realise this we are notionally of the Body of Christ. One we realise it we one with Christ in spirit and in truth.
“Athanasius expressed this truth through a paraphrase of our Lord’s words, ‘For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they may be sanctified in the truth’. ‘Truth, being the Father’s Word, [I ]give to myself become man, the Spirit, and myself, become man, do I sanctify in him, that henceforth in me, who am the truth (for “thy Word is truth”) all may be sanctified. If, then, for our sakes he sanctified himself, and does this when he is become man, it is very clear that the coming of the Spirit upon him was a coming upon us because of his bearing our body. It did not take place for the sake of the Word but for our sanctification, that we might share in his anointing.” (1)
FORMULAIC MOTIONS
When we reduce justification and sanctification to Sabbath-keeping and peculiar doctrines we need to realise how threadbare this is. Jesus Christ in what Paul called Christ our life is justification and sanctification.
We share in His truth, His way and His life which is why we celebrate the eucharist. Our life in the Son of God has substance in spirit and truth. So we should avoid worshiping in flesh and fiction. Nevertheless Christ’s life lived by the Spirit in our person will be known to us and seen by others.
WHAT BODY IS THAT?
There’s a story in C S Lewis’s Last Battle in which a monkey clothes himself in Aslan’s robes and poses for a time as Aslan Himself. The story does not end well for the monkey or for those who followed monkey ways. It’s a parable of gospels that are no gospel at all and a picture of those that are of a body but body of something else.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 281). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.