The testimony of Jesus, the Spirit and the Bible tells us that Wisdom is a Person. The insignia of government (authority) and its subsidiary ‘lawfulness’ is on His shoulders. His reign is imbued with the might of God, wonderful counsel and princely peace. One of Jesus’ Names is ‘Light of the World.’ Another is the law of the Spirit of life, meaning that He imparts His Spirit, His harmony and His life to all who live in God through Him.
Harmony is what non-believers do not have and harmony is also what old covenant christians do not have. But those who have Jesus have His peace.
Jesus does not create informed people so much as ‘sons’ who live in God. To live in God is to live in Christ by the Spirit. Jesus said “I AM” because He is. He said, ‘I am Way, Truth and Life’ because He is our door to God, the truth about God, the truth about ourselves, the truth about the world and the life that sustains all.
Jesus is so LIFE (so alive) that He turned the cross, the tree of death and emblem of the knowledge of good and evil into the tree of life – a tree where all may find forgiveness, at-onement, re-instatement and restoration. Restoration to what? Restoration to sonship, to a place in the Father’s royal house. This new birth by the Spirit begins the restoration of a personal and collective life lived in the Spirit. This Spirit-life grows in us, bathing our spirit in the One Spirit of God and increasingly reproducing in us the image of Jesus and the authority of the sons of God.
In the world the knowledge of good and evil produces this current, perverse, chaos that the Bible calls Babylon. To a large extent globalization is the spread of Babylon. But the Kingdom of God in which you operate with authority as a son of God is the new creation. We participate with Christ in the new genesis when we live a new covenant life in Christ.
In the church knowledge by itself produces information without life, values without transformation, talk without Presence, hope without fulfillment, knowledge without wisdom and perspectives without power. I have observed that certain groups of christians are sincere yet cynical. Why? Because personally the law cannot produce the righteousness they espouse and collectively the aims of their church are never be realised. The reason. All who live under law are under a curse. How might we define a curse? A working definition might be failure to live in the infinite life of God and hence failure to reign as God’s sons.
What words might these be? The words that Jesus is the living word and that He us life in itself – unless you eat His flesh and drink His blood in the Spirit, you will die. Unfortunately there a lots of dead people even in charismatic circles who are think they are alive when they are actually dead.
Life in the Spirit of Christ by the One Spirit is the genesis of the new creation. The wise shall shine as the sun because they live in God’s Son. To minister in the Spirit is to minister from the tree of life, distributing choice fruits of love, light, power and authority in living words. Such words spoken forth over the needy contain innate transforming power, because they are the life and Presence of God spoken through you. Jesus is the resurrection and the life in you. You are the hands and feet that multiply what Jesus began. Your life begins to radiate His vitality and your works are distinguished by His power. The lost and wounded will be drawn to you and the Enemy will flee from you. Unfortunately many religious christians will hate you.
‘Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever’ Dan 12.3 NIV.
When human beings became divorced from their Father, they departed the realm of intuitive holiness and entered the bisected, fragmented realm of performance. Here was a realm in which there was always a gulf between what they were and what they aspired to be. In this realm people constantly mistake parts for the whole, having a pathological attraction for living in parts and making religions out of them. Separated from God, humans would now have to perform in order to justify their acceptance with God and themselves. In this state of separation they would attempt to establish their own morality in order to be like God.
Many of them would become so introverted that they would presume to infer that God was like them. Because the remnants of their origins as sons of God lay buried in their slavery, they were sometimes successful in their efforts to achieve the good and eschew the evil. But often they were not and they habitually called good evil and evil good, even as the ways of God receded from their knowledge.
The summit of their folly was seen in the crucifixion of the One who had come to save them from their desiccation. Here among them lived the only One who did good because rather than live in parts, He lived in His Father as an obedient Son. But God is not mocked and their folly exposed the Wisdom of God and saved the people from their sin. Or should I say, it saves those who are careful to believe God’s Son and do what He commands. This means they shift their lives from the unstable sand banks of performance and establish their lives deep rooted in Christ and on Christ the Rock. All because of the love and grace of the Father has made them one with Himself.
There never was a transcript of God’s character until the appearance of Jesus – the exact expression of His being. Moses laws were a check box that made all accountable to God. But these laws were not a transcript of His character, unless we would argue that God too must avoid idolatry, adultery, covetousness and theft. God lives from Himself. His purity is absolute and He is entirely untainted by evil. He never was an expression of the knowledge of good and evil. He expresses Himself in spirit and in truth.
God is not dichotomized, compartmentalized, and separated from Himself in the dualisms that afflict man. God is. He is made in His image, not in ours. He simply is I AM. The good of God is not the opposite of some evil. God’s good is good because I AM is good. God is underived, self-contained righteousness that knows no darkness ( 1 John 1.5) and is distinct from shadows (James 1.17), which is why the righteousness that comes from God Has to be Jesus the son of God. All this so that Jesus becomes the righteousness of God in us.
Humans, on the other hand live a split life. The good that they want to do they cannot do. They live a life bisected between hope and despair, the real and the ideal, wholeness and fragmentation until Jesus comes and opens a door – the door to union with God; the door that makes the two one; the open door that when entered makes man one with God, one with Himself and one with others. So God, man and the creation become one by the One Spirit.
Jesus is the new and living way, quite distinct from the old and dead way of the law of sin and death that grates among our members. This new way is a river of life unto life. The Father has created the opportunity for man to live in Him who is both the ideal and the real, the part and the whole and the resurrection and the life. Thus to live in Him is to become one new and partner with Jesus to multiply the new creation which is the Kingdom of God. To live is Christ. To live is to have Christ live in you and through you. To be alive is to die daily so as to live daily in Jesus.
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” 2 Cor 5.21 NIV.
The carnal man lives in Himself. The spiritual person lives in Christ. The religious man attempts to use Christ to live in himself. The Spiritual man is one whose ‘self’ fades away, even as Christ enlarges him into a king and a priest. The more we decrease the more we grow in stature as a son or daughter of God. The main issue in life is authority. There are those on whom mountains fall and those who move mountains. This life in Christ identifies us as sons of God and furnishes us with the authority to order mountains to move.
‘I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done’ Matt 21.21 NIV.
The ‘letter’ is a term more subtle than ‘the law,’ although it is a variation on it. Unfortunately lectures on church growth, the Kingdom of God and spiritual gifts can all be given in ‘the letter’ which perpetuates the impotence of many saints even while pointing to something better.
For many of God’s people the letter connotes all the things Christians believe they should be doing. The letter to them is both specific as in being nice to people, moral as in not being adulterous, and cultural embracing all the understandings and behaviors that they call ‘christianity.’ All of this is commonly known as ‘the stuff.’ But is it is this stuff that keeps many of God’s people ‘stuffed.’ In this mode they have been baptized into themselves, when what we need is to be baptized into Christ. In Him, Jesus is the righteousness of God in us.
Jesus is the life that replaces our sentence from the tree of death. When for us Christ is all and in all, we live in obedience to the Father. We have life that flows from Christ’s resurrection. But should we stubbornly adhere to the old covenant, or re-formulate the new covenant into our update of the old, we remain subject to a malevolent spirit who has access to our hearts.
1. We are dead because we remain in disobedience to what the Father has done.
2. We are captured by our sinful habits and addictions.
3. We live in agreement with the devil and are subject to his unseen powers.
4. We remain subject to God’s anger (Eph 2.1-3).
Given the above we do not need to be rocket scientists to see what Paul asserts that all who live under law are under a curse.
Life in the letter today is often seen in an attachment to intellectualism (spirit of Greece), attachment to a law oriented denominational identity and a reliance on performance in every aspect of life. There is a subtle spirit that imbues a life in the letter. It is the spirit of robbery and opposes fullness in Christ.
This spirit is a religious spirit with the power to cripple and paralyze. Blind leaders and blind people fall into ditches. They accommodate themselves to their ditch and they live in their ditch with satisfaction and a misguided sense of achievement. Their culture of blindness becomes a lens through which the Bible is interpreted and a filter through which all light is sieved. It is for this reason that those who are rich in their own understanding find it difficult to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Sure they can do church, multiply religion and operate in some of the gifts of the Spirit but they do not possess the executive authority of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus lived in His Father totally, which is why He calls us to live in Him unconditionally. He was righteous, not because He lived according to criteria, but because He lived from within His Father. He has made a way for us to do this; made a living way for us to live in Him. The cross gives us our life back, the blood guarantees His grace and the Spirit achieves the miracle of our union with God. But the excellence of life in the Spirit of Christ is the reproduction of Himself in us. He forms us as sons – persons who reign to multiply the new creation. Those who live in Jesus are daily re-breathed as a new creation. We are alive in Him by the One Spirit. The sacrament of the Lord’s supper is a sign of that which is already a reality: our union with God in Jesus. We eat the bread and drink the wine as a sign that our life is in Jesus and Jesus is our life.
‘The person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him’ ! Cor 6.17 NLT.
‘We are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago’ Eph 2.10 NLT.
What good thing did He plan? He planned that we be daughters and sons to reign on the earth with Him. Yes dear friends. There’s a lot more to it than ‘getting to heaven.’ It’s about expanding the Kingdom of God’s sons on earth.
‘There is one body and one Spirit one Lord, one faith, one baptism one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all’ Eph. 4.4-6 (NIV )
Isaiah 61 Ministries, 2010 | Recent Posts | Ezra1 | 7th Angel | The Authority of sons!
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