THINGS THAT MATTER
09/11/20 20:02
The idea that Sabbath-keeping can make one right with God would be laughable if so many people did not believe it.
Beliefs that we inherit can seem so right if we are content to live passively. Although Jesus’ cross atones for all and His life is available to all we have to answer His invitation to participate in the fulsomeness of this life. We learn things as we go, if we have a heart to learn. I leaned many years ago at a conference taken by a Godly pastor that one can go through to eternal life – without representing the Kingdom of God in this life. Kingdom people are sons of God in spirit and in truth. They possess agency as life-givers.
BARNACLE LIFE
People can attach themselves go lesser gospels and false christ’s in good conscience and a lazy passivism. A false Christ is a Christ that is the product of our own experience and thinking and the ideas we have absorbed from a religious view of God.
INTERWOVEN INTO GOD
A good starting point for our advance as a son is to realise that the Kingdom of God is not a religion but a person. A second tonic is to understand that true Godliness is not what we have worked up, but God in us sharing Himself with us.
REALIZING
‘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. This is the day we are born again from slaves into sonship with God. From this point on we represent the Kingdom Jesus began rather than the kingdom of religion.
Jeff Turner observes, “Because God is jealous for His loving reputation, when we persist in beliefs that portray Him as angry, retributive and just plain old and mean, we will inevitably hit a wall and realize that our concepts simply do not work. While seeming so right initially, we find that they’ve left us crooked, bent in the wrong direction, disillusioned and desperately longing for reformation. Ideas and doctrines that we think will lead us into spiritual enlightenment and freedom often lead us, instead, down a path of darkness, depression, and spiritual death.” (1)
This is the reason why our relationship with God must not be the opiate of the people. It must be Christ our life.
NO OTHER WAY BUT UP
Nevertheless a bankrupt religion can precipitate the start of our real life in God and the beginning of our true self. Jesus described it to Nicodemus as the new birth. He also told him that without it we cannot see the Kingdom of God. We may live in and construct kingdoms and identities of our own but they leave us bereft of our true self. Our sharing of them binds people in their lesser selves and leaves people crippled rather than whole in soul and spirit.
The Way to Kingdom life is narrow but visible and open to all. It is seen by those who love life more than their familiar ideas and who seek an identity in Christ rather than an identity in a ministry or a denomination.
(1) Turner Jeff, Saints in the Arms of a Happy God. Chapter 1.