NOHUMDRUM88

ADVENTIST ALIVE

YOU CAN GET A GRIP ON REALITY

Recently a thoughtful person wrote, ‘We need to move past the idea that everything is up for debate.’ Supporting this with a quote she observed that "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts." In similar vein someone else wrote, "We may all have the right to an opinion but that does not make our opinion right.’
 
Are you one with Father’s opinion and what He has done for us in Jesus?
 
HOW TO REASON
 
There are things that are not opinions because they just are. They are entities themselves whose nature is determined by what they are and not what people surmise them to be. For example, the moon is the moon and not cheese. Cannibalism is not ok because it’s that tribe’s culture. A deviant gospel is not legitimate because it’s your brand. The nature of certain things in themselves separates them from the opinions of scholars and the perspectives of schools of thought. They are what they are. This is so about God and the plan He has revealed for us in His Son.
 
The world is round and not flat. Gravity is a pulling action towards the centre of the earth. “People with a distorted image of self, world, or God will be largely incapable of experiencing what is really real in the world.” (1)
 
Our status with God in this age is a new covenant status – not an addition to the old covenant, a mixture of the old and the new or simply the old covenant put into effect with Jesus’ help. The incarnation is life in the Spirit and the foundation of the new creation.
 
CHRIST IN US
 
The new covenant is the radically new and living way of relating to God in the person of Jesus. This WAY is as unconditionally correct and undeniable as the statement that the earth is round. No room for ‘our perspective’ with this one. We are either in His gospel of the Kingdom or in a gospel of conceit and deception. Curiously speakers who bleat about being deceived are the most deceived and imprisoned in a false reality.
 
STRAIGHT AND CROOKED THINKING
 
Fair commentary does not mean that two perspectives are correct just because they are held by people with different views. ‘Fair and balanced commentary around, say, climate change does not mean that we have to counter the weight of an actual scientist and their quantifiable research with the opinions of someone who loftily refers to themselves as a  man of ‘common sense’ or "climate change sceptic.’ Similarly with the new and living way of the new covenant. A Believer is free to live out Christ as His life according to His unique personhood. But there is no other way that is life to the full, other than Christ – no way of the law, no keys or hoops through which to jump, no altered and amended gospels on account of visions real and bogus..
 
CHRIST’S PERSPECTIVE
 
Neither should we adopt a misguided pluralism where the new covenant is concerned. We have no right to any perspective that is not the new covenant, that denies it, weakens it, waters it down or alters it to carve out a place for self-effort and law-mongering. Why? Because to do so is to step out of the Kingdom of God.
 
Why is this? Firstly, because the new covenant is not a theology. It is what God has done in securing our relationships with Him despite our ups and downs, false starts, sins and immoralities both subtle and gross. The new covenant is our living, moving and having our being in God. The opposite of Adamic separation, it is union with God. The core of Kingdom life is that Christ is our life. The womb of the new creation is that we are one with the trinity.
 
VINE AND BRANCHES
 
Christ’s person is the new and living way in which we live in God and He lives in us. In this inter-change of spirit and sharing of being, heaven comes to earth in ordinary folks like you and I. Jesus is replicated in people. People are hidden in Christ and marinated in our Father. The effect is that Father’s nature and vision is replicated in the earth.
 
This has nothing to do with law or the knowledge of good and evil and everything to do with Christ come in our flesh. Don’t be vain enough to adopt a perspective that is not God’s perspective on Himself and you. Don’t commit yourself to pumping up a religion that God never began. There is one way, the new and living way who is Christ our life. We are the manifestation of Jesus as the church.
 
MULTIPLICATION OF GUFF
 
An author writes, ‘We are living in very troubling times when it comes to factual analysis and respect for the disciplines of academia. Opinions are not the same as reasonable deductions. They're certainly not the same thing as facts, particularly when based on little more than passionate opposition to what those facts may be.’
 
Similarly, a perspective is not valid because it is your perspective – particularly when the theology of this perspective indicates that one does not know what God achieved for you in Jesus and that your belief has made you pretty much ignorant of how the Kingdom of God is incubated out of the incarnation. We are at liberty to be who we are in Christ to become ingenious and creative branches of His vine. But we have no right in the name of God to change the vine, distort the vine or alter the new and living way. No right at all to abort the new covenant, turn the cross on its head and substitute the living way with the flesh come in the flesh.
 
‘I solemnly declare to everyone who hears the words of prophecy written in this book: If anyone adds anything to what is written here, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book’ Rev 22.18 NLT.
 
IGNITED YOU
 
The new covenant is the burning bush lived. It is the prophetic working out of Christ’s resurrection in His people. The instrument of this ‘working out’ is the incarnation of God in our being. Christ come in our flesh is Christ come in our flesh. No place for the law here or even bits of it.  The genius of the new covenant is Jesus manifest as you. This is the Kingdom of God in spirit and in truth.
 
‘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.
 
(1) Rohr, Richard . The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Chaos, Reorder (pp. 130-131). Franciscan Media. Kindle Edition