No one, meaning the Father pours life in the Spirit into something that He has dispensed with. Obedience is defined as being in alignment with what the Father is doing now. God will not pour new wine into and old wineskin.
I met an old friend last year in the super market. He spoke with cynicism and despair about the woodenness of his church, confiding in me, ‘You know they have an answer for everything.’ Indeed they do. The people of his church live in a closed system that they call ‘the truth,’ It is a version of ‘truth’ to which even the Bible must take second place.
Believing that they are a kind of chosen people they have convinced themselves that they have a treasure in jars of clay, calling themselves in some contexts ‘Keepers of the Flame.’ This a version of history designed to perpetuate the old covenant as the new and provide justification for their identity driven theology. Unfortunately this ‘treasure’ is not the glory of Christ in us. It is the imagined glory of distinctive teachings. The result is that for the typical church member, it is not Christ incarnate in us of which the words jar of clay are a metaphor. It is the church captured and hugging itself to itself in its fleshly jar of clay.
The sons of God, on the other hand are not captured in jars of flesh since they live for God in the Spirit of Christ’s Son.
There was this pastor I knew. He got to manage quite a large church because he thought he deserved it. Always an apologist for his denomination, any issue would be adeptly rationalized by him to show that either he or the denomination was always right. To anyone with a mind or who is remotely spiritual, this church has a problem with credibility. Captive to the old covenant, contemptuous of its claims and a child of the law it is forced to live in a spirit of self-justification or admit that there is something fundamentally unsound about its theology.
Grace is accepted by many in my friend’s church. But not in its new covenant meaning. Grace for most in this setting is a balm to cover the inability to keep the law. Immersed in “service,” code for “I’m paddling hard for a place in heaven” grace is tied to law. Grace aids and abets the law, even though Paul assures us that if righteousness comes via the law Christ died for nothing (Gal 2.21). Christ does stand for something in this mentality however. He has become subservient to law; a toady of the law since He lives to help people keep it.
People from many denominations are legalistic in some way and many have only dipped their toes into the new and living way of life in the new covenant, which is the total immersion of one’s being in Jesus. But those of my friend’s church are immersed in law to a much greater depth than any of these. They are driven by the need to vindicate their ‘package.’ This is a package of beliefs, behaviors and assumptions that supposedly affords security and certainty. In an effort to maintain this package their theologians have developed convoluted arguments to prove to themselves that the new covenant is really the old covenant and that Moses is maintained through the good graces of Jesus. Sadly, the main heresy of this church is that Moses and Jesus are equal.
The fact is, however that Jesus does not exist to help us keep the commandments. The Holy Spirit does not live to minister success in commandment keeping. He ministers Jesus who is the righteousness of God in us. Jesus lives and ministers His life to us so that we can be like Him – a son of God. Sons of God live in the Son of God by the Spirit. We have a much higher calling than being a worker or a slave hostage to law and performance. Livng in Galatians 2.20by the One Spirit, we are the sons of God. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty and righteousness. But if we live from the law we are severed from Christ (Gal 5.4).
No comments:
Post a Comment