Jesus is normative for Kingdom life. Jesus did not come among us and then return to heaven in order that we may multiply that institution called church. He came to multiply Himself in us – first in the disciples and then in people. It is these JESUS MANIFESTED PEOPLE who are His church.
MEDIATOR
Anything not Jesus is extraneous as a mediator. Jesus is the mediator of God in His fullness and He lives in you. Intuitionalism is the visible form of the letter that kills. The truth that resurrects is INCARNATION.
‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ 2 Cor 3.6 NIV.
PLANTING WHAT?
Don’t assume that a planted church is an expression of Jesus. Jesus as His people is the expression of Christ – the church built without human hands. I have seen such churches in India, many of them. They are pastored by ordinary people who live in Jesus and have a passion to draw people into His life. They are not institutions plonked somewhere in the assumption that such institutions mediate the life of Jesus. Jesus mediates the life of Jesus. This is a simple incarnational fact.
Any culture that assumes that the law or religion mediates the life of God will suffocate life, create spiritual dwarves and generate a religious industry that offers itself as a priesthood. But our priesthood is vested in Jesus alone. Every Believer has personal access to the fullness of the God-Head bodily. Why? Christ lives in you.
CHRIST IN YOU
Jesus is among us by Holy Spirit and active today. We are here to multiply what Jesus began – not a religious routine. The Kingdom of God is not about multiplying churches. It’s about multiplying people who live in the living Christ. There are thousands of people being healed today and I and my colleagues have participated in this demonstration that Jesus is real in India. We have seen the deaf healed on the spot and men with heart conditions go to the doctor who declares them free of the disease they presented with a week before.
THE MAIN THING
Nevertheless, signs and wonders are not the main event of the new testament age. Neither are spiritual gifts and anointings. The Dynamo is the incarnation: The trinity in us. Christ come in our flesh is the essence of the Kingdom. This is the locomotive of which the above are the carriages. Signs, miracles and spiritual gifts are a function of our already achieved union with God. This union heals our God wound. We are here to multiply what Jesus began. By themselves these things are not the Kingdom. In their new covenant context, they are the demolition of forms of godliness without power. What is the essence of our new covenant living? Simply this: ‘You will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20 NIV.