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 is a definition of the righteousness of God: Jesus.
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.
Read more at daringadventist.wordpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment