THE REAL GOSPEL
04/10/23 13:21
It is unfortunate that a lived union with God has been called mysticism – because there is not much that is mystical about it.
PROPHESIED
This mystical union is the interwoveness that the Lord demonstrated through Abraham and which Paul applies with the words, ‘Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother’ Gal 4.25,26.
ABOVE
The Jerusalem that is above is the church who is one with God in Christ by the Spirit and whom the Spirit of God lives on earth in the church who lives in the incarnation. The mystical nature of this church is that it is one with God in heaven in Jesus and at the same time the manifestation of God on earth by the Spirit of Sonship.
THE FREE WOMAN
Abraham talked with the Lord and received the miracle of a son born by the free woman in his old age. But he did not live in the oneness with God that is available to every Believer today. This came with the Messiah, the atonement, the incarnation and the ministry of Holy Spirit.
KNOW WHAT ‘IN THE SPIRIT’ IS - ONENESS IS THE ESSENCE
Abraham did not live in the Spirit. We are not in the Spirit because we have ‘the gifts’ and certainly not while constrained in the law. You are included in Christ and have what it His – communion with Him, Father and Holy Spirit. We are in the Spirit when we agree with Christ that He has included us in His life. We live in the oneness with God that is our inheritance in Christ. But we are not one with Christ in our living if we insist on being one with the law. Here we are in separation with Adam and Moses.* In Christ God and man have been made one. The life of God is our life.
WHAT MYSTERY?
There is no mystery in mysticism. It refers to that which is the easily accessible inheritance which belongs to every Believer. This is the treasure in the field that is Christ in us. Jesus lived from it. He said, ‘No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’ Matt 11.27 NIV. In Jesus you have this union and this ‘knowing the Father.’ This is a continuous revelation enjoyed by all who follow The Lamb wherever He leads. We don’t enjoy the benefit of this light if we insist that the Lamb follows where we lead. This is the problem with ‘other gospels.’
GENUINE FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD
This intimacy, this union and communion with the Father and the Son becomes the possession of those who live from the state of being that is Christ our life. In this living way, the oneness of Jesus and Father has become our oneness with God. You don’t earn it. It is yours.
HIS LIFE IS OURS
Jesus urged us to live from this union when He said, ‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20. We are born again when we have made this day ours by living Galatians 2.20.
JILL AND GEORGE
The incarnated life is the new wineskin of the post cross age. We begin to mature as sons of God once we depart religion for union with Christ, because the Son is woven into our being, meaning that Christ has come in our flesh. Each Jill and George becomes a manifestation of the Christ.
We enter the communion of the trinity in our person and our community by agreeing with Jesus that we have been drawn into His life in God. Agree with Him that you have been drawn into His life and that you belong. In this living way you become a living sacrament.
BAD MARRIAGE
Certain types of Christian teaching are scarcely a Christian Gospel. Marriage to the law suffocates our union with God and stifles our personhood. Our ‘One Husband’ is Christ by whom we become pregnant with His progeny. This fruitfulness is sons and daughters of God and projects that are anointed with Christ’s purpose and presence. Fruitless effort is often the result of religious rather than incarnated living.
FOLLY
We can deny genuine Kingdom agency by living from the law. Or we can stifle it by making religion out of the effort to possess that which we already have: God incarnated in our being.
Oneness with God is mysterious only in that it is of the Spirit. But it is actually quite simple and profoundly substantial. Far more substantial than a nominal attachment to some denominationally sacralised commandment that has become a community’s reason for being.
THE CHURCH JESUS BUILDS
Jesus’ church is the manifestation of His Person. We need to ponder on this because it renders what might be called the Christian Industry a deadening encrustation.
We need to understand what the church actually is. Christ come in our flesh is Christ come as you and Bob and Jill, and Susan and all the Christians. This is His church and the church that is the actual Body of Christ.
PART OF HIM
‘The Body’ is a state of being. It’s ontological, which means that it’s much more than a description or institution. If Jews could be circumcised in the flesh but not in the heart, then Christians can go to church but not belong to the Body in any meaningful way.
CHRIST OUR LIFE
If we could stop living from church or Christian routine and just live in God and His incarnation – which is Christ our life, we would have something to offer the world. Jesus can incarnate institutions if invited. But we need to realise that the institution and the religion is not God and that He is the one who imbues our plans and motions with spirit and life.
ONENESS WITH GOD is what Jesus prayed for, went to the cross for and what He has achieved for all. Oneness with God. The greatest counterfeit to this is oneness with religion – like drinking the milk carton instead of the milk. Abandon forms of Christianity that are not Christian or a cult.
THE GLORY
‘That all of them may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I am in You. May they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. I have given them the glory You gave Me, so that they may be one as We are one — I in them and You in Me—that they may be perfectly united, so that the world may know that You sent Me and have loved them just as You have loved Me’ John 17.21-23 NIV.
CATHOLICITY
There is one God, one Christ and one Body of Christ because in Jesus Christ we participate in God. We and God are of one substance by the spirit of adoption. To be alive in the Spirit we must ensure that we are one with Christ so that we are one with the trinity and one with Gospel of the Kingdom taught by apostolic teachers and cultivators of wheat paddocks rather than fields of tares.
SUSTAINED LIFE
James Radcliff quoting Thomas Torrance writes, “It is only when Greek Patristic Theology is studied and interpreted in the strong Biblical perspective restored through the Reformation of the Church in the West that its permanent place in the foundations of Evangelical Theology may be appreciated in a new way . . . [and] when Reformed Theology is reassessed and interpreted in light of its ancient roots in the evangelical theology of the early centuries that its essential catholicity and its unifying force are to be understood. (Thomas F. Torrance, Trinitarian Perspectives, 21–22.)” (1)
As Athanasius said, ‘God became what we are so that we can become who Christ is. This is what Paul declared in Galatians 2.20,21. But know that Paul was not describing how we become religious or how we become Christians. He was describing how we become the manifestation of God – the sons of God in spirit and in truth.
* We are not actually separated but are living as we are. Perichoresis means we are woven into God and God is woven into our being. This is why we do well to live in the truth and not in a lie.
(1) Radcliff, Jason Robert. Thomas F. Torrance and the Church Fathers: A Reformed, Evangelical, and Ecumenical Reconstruction of the Patristic Tradition . Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.
PROPHESIED
This mystical union is the interwoveness that the Lord demonstrated through Abraham and which Paul applies with the words, ‘Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother’ Gal 4.25,26.
ABOVE
The Jerusalem that is above is the church who is one with God in Christ by the Spirit and whom the Spirit of God lives on earth in the church who lives in the incarnation. The mystical nature of this church is that it is one with God in heaven in Jesus and at the same time the manifestation of God on earth by the Spirit of Sonship.
THE FREE WOMAN
Abraham talked with the Lord and received the miracle of a son born by the free woman in his old age. But he did not live in the oneness with God that is available to every Believer today. This came with the Messiah, the atonement, the incarnation and the ministry of Holy Spirit.
KNOW WHAT ‘IN THE SPIRIT’ IS - ONENESS IS THE ESSENCE
Abraham did not live in the Spirit. We are not in the Spirit because we have ‘the gifts’ and certainly not while constrained in the law. You are included in Christ and have what it His – communion with Him, Father and Holy Spirit. We are in the Spirit when we agree with Christ that He has included us in His life. We live in the oneness with God that is our inheritance in Christ. But we are not one with Christ in our living if we insist on being one with the law. Here we are in separation with Adam and Moses.* In Christ God and man have been made one. The life of God is our life.
WHAT MYSTERY?
There is no mystery in mysticism. It refers to that which is the easily accessible inheritance which belongs to every Believer. This is the treasure in the field that is Christ in us. Jesus lived from it. He said, ‘No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’ Matt 11.27 NIV. In Jesus you have this union and this ‘knowing the Father.’ This is a continuous revelation enjoyed by all who follow The Lamb wherever He leads. We don’t enjoy the benefit of this light if we insist that the Lamb follows where we lead. This is the problem with ‘other gospels.’
GENUINE FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD
This intimacy, this union and communion with the Father and the Son becomes the possession of those who live from the state of being that is Christ our life. In this living way, the oneness of Jesus and Father has become our oneness with God. You don’t earn it. It is yours.
HIS LIFE IS OURS
Jesus urged us to live from this union when He said, ‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20. We are born again when we have made this day ours by living Galatians 2.20.
JILL AND GEORGE
The incarnated life is the new wineskin of the post cross age. We begin to mature as sons of God once we depart religion for union with Christ, because the Son is woven into our being, meaning that Christ has come in our flesh. Each Jill and George becomes a manifestation of the Christ.
We enter the communion of the trinity in our person and our community by agreeing with Jesus that we have been drawn into His life in God. Agree with Him that you have been drawn into His life and that you belong. In this living way you become a living sacrament.
BAD MARRIAGE
Certain types of Christian teaching are scarcely a Christian Gospel. Marriage to the law suffocates our union with God and stifles our personhood. Our ‘One Husband’ is Christ by whom we become pregnant with His progeny. This fruitfulness is sons and daughters of God and projects that are anointed with Christ’s purpose and presence. Fruitless effort is often the result of religious rather than incarnated living.
FOLLY
We can deny genuine Kingdom agency by living from the law. Or we can stifle it by making religion out of the effort to possess that which we already have: God incarnated in our being.
Oneness with God is mysterious only in that it is of the Spirit. But it is actually quite simple and profoundly substantial. Far more substantial than a nominal attachment to some denominationally sacralised commandment that has become a community’s reason for being.
THE CHURCH JESUS BUILDS
Jesus’ church is the manifestation of His Person. We need to ponder on this because it renders what might be called the Christian Industry a deadening encrustation.
We need to understand what the church actually is. Christ come in our flesh is Christ come as you and Bob and Jill, and Susan and all the Christians. This is His church and the church that is the actual Body of Christ.
PART OF HIM
‘The Body’ is a state of being. It’s ontological, which means that it’s much more than a description or institution. If Jews could be circumcised in the flesh but not in the heart, then Christians can go to church but not belong to the Body in any meaningful way.
CHRIST OUR LIFE
If we could stop living from church or Christian routine and just live in God and His incarnation – which is Christ our life, we would have something to offer the world. Jesus can incarnate institutions if invited. But we need to realise that the institution and the religion is not God and that He is the one who imbues our plans and motions with spirit and life.
ONENESS WITH GOD is what Jesus prayed for, went to the cross for and what He has achieved for all. Oneness with God. The greatest counterfeit to this is oneness with religion – like drinking the milk carton instead of the milk. Abandon forms of Christianity that are not Christian or a cult.
THE GLORY
‘That all of them may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I am in You. May they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. I have given them the glory You gave Me, so that they may be one as We are one — I in them and You in Me—that they may be perfectly united, so that the world may know that You sent Me and have loved them just as You have loved Me’ John 17.21-23 NIV.
CATHOLICITY
There is one God, one Christ and one Body of Christ because in Jesus Christ we participate in God. We and God are of one substance by the spirit of adoption. To be alive in the Spirit we must ensure that we are one with Christ so that we are one with the trinity and one with Gospel of the Kingdom taught by apostolic teachers and cultivators of wheat paddocks rather than fields of tares.
SUSTAINED LIFE
James Radcliff quoting Thomas Torrance writes, “It is only when Greek Patristic Theology is studied and interpreted in the strong Biblical perspective restored through the Reformation of the Church in the West that its permanent place in the foundations of Evangelical Theology may be appreciated in a new way . . . [and] when Reformed Theology is reassessed and interpreted in light of its ancient roots in the evangelical theology of the early centuries that its essential catholicity and its unifying force are to be understood. (Thomas F. Torrance, Trinitarian Perspectives, 21–22.)” (1)
As Athanasius said, ‘God became what we are so that we can become who Christ is. This is what Paul declared in Galatians 2.20,21. But know that Paul was not describing how we become religious or how we become Christians. He was describing how we become the manifestation of God – the sons of God in spirit and in truth.
* We are not actually separated but are living as we are. Perichoresis means we are woven into God and God is woven into our being. This is why we do well to live in the truth and not in a lie.
(1) Radcliff, Jason Robert. Thomas F. Torrance and the Church Fathers: A Reformed, Evangelical, and Ecumenical Reconstruction of the Patristic Tradition . Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.