YOU CAN KNOW GOD WELL

Should we only have a knowledge of God through the law, we will not know Him very well. Under the law Moses only saw God’s hind part. Jesus Christ reveals who God is and who you are.

Looking at Jesus out the window of the law distorts Him and saps the life out of us. The law saps everything of life because it belongs to the realm of the knowledge of good and evil – the realm of separation and death. Life comes from life, which means that it comes from the trinity via the person of Jesus Christ.

ENCOUNTER

Scholars note that, “The Bible is like a love letter you can read, but until you actually encounter the One that it’s talking about, you really don’t understand the letter. It’s only when you participate in the love of God and Christ that Scripture makes sense. Theology needs to be rooted deeper than simply in the text of Scripture.” (1)

If we have been schooled in the letter and formed in the law, we will think that truth is found in definitions and proof texts. But it never is. That which is real is the product of persons and relationship. Which is why Christ your life is the only real life and the rest is phantom and shadow.

God is muffled by the law. If law is your Christian culture it is certain that you have been well insulated from Jesus as well as from yourself. A ‘knowledge of good and evil scheme of knowledge’ (epistemology) warps everything it touches, leeching it of spirit and life. The law has not been relevant since Jesus cried, ‘It is finished!’

ONE LENS

God is known as He is through the person of Jesus. Life is known for what it is through the person of Jesus. Truth is revealed through the person of Jesus because all that exists finds its togetherness in Him. The paradox about the world of things is that these things find their meaning and purpose in the Christ of God.

GROSS PERVERSION

The reduction of God to the law and the diminution of Jesus to a subservient custodian of the law is one of the grossest perversions of the Christian Message ever. Yet people cling to it and carry it about as though they have some advantage to offer. As they are doing God and people a service by spreading this non-gospel that is a curse. As Paul wrote,

RETREATING TO FOLLY

‘I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!’ Gal 1.6-9 NIV.

(1) Anderson, Ray; Colyer, Elmer; Dawson, Gerrit; Deddo, Gary; Kettler, Christian; Kruger, Baxter; McKenna, John; McSwain, Jeff; Newell, Roger; Young, Paul. Trinitarian Conversations, Volume 1: Interviews With Ten Theologians (You're Included) (p. 27). Grace Communion International. Kindle Edition.