NOT NOW YOU SEE HIM NOW YOU DONT
13/07/21 12:39
Every human being is not far from God. All belong despite their self-imposed alienation, their contempt for religion or even their contempt for God. Not only is eternal life on offer in the person of Jesus Christ. Union with God is too. But we must embrace it to possess it. Evangelism is about telling people that they belong and are sons and daughters of God. And alerting Believers to the truth that they are already in God – which means they need not strive to own what they already possess.
Jesus said, ‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20 NIV.
We are woven into God. Yet many have never realised this. Many live from an imagined position of separation in which they attempt to earn union with God with Jesus’ help. But Jesus is more than our help. He is our WAY, which his to say that in Him we are one with God as sons and daughters. The Son of Man has earned union with God for us. The scripture above describes new covenant fact. It explains and affirms normal New Testament life.
THE SEAMLESS GARMENT
We see that His life is ours and our life is His. As a man Jesus wore a seamless garment. This is most significant for oneness with God. The fabric of God is us and God woven together in Jesus Christ. This is the meaning of IN HIM WE LIVE AND MOVE AND HAVE OUR BEING and the truth of the Lord’s Table in which He is the Bread of Life who becomes us by the Spirit.
Recently I quoted Karl Barth’s observation. He cautioned that God’s plan and its meaning for us is not immediately obvious. It is so ‘not obvious’ that vast numbers of Believers ‘do not get it’ and find themselves believing, not in the gospel of the Kingdom but in another gospel and another kingdom. This is always a Christianised version of the knowledge of good and evil. It can be summarised as the urge to be believing the right things and to be doing the right actions. In other words we perform our way into God’s good books.
THE CROSS IS ATONEMENT – MEANING AT-ONE-MENT.
The performing mentality has been called the try harder gospel in which people live in imagined separation from God and set about to earn union by right belief and right action. But you are already in God. Your ability to be a son in spirit and in truth rather than as a religious and separated son comes from a simple acceptance of simple truth. You and Father are one.
YOUR WORTH
Your worth to God is not found in your doing for Him. It is found firstly in you and secondly in your union with Him. Our privilege is to be in Jesus. Not in religion, moral positions and charitable ventures. In Jesus we are in the Holy Family. In Jesus the trinity is in us. Our life as sons and their life as ours is Kingdom fruitfulness.
Jesus was fruitful because He and Father were one. Not because He was busy.
With Jesus as our life our everyday activities, behaviours and actions of kindness are alive with His spirit and life. Living from separation – which is the norm in the religious outlook - we live in the flesh. Here our deeds accomplish little for the Kingdom whose essence is the spirit and life that flows from God. Living as sons in the oneness that is ours, we stream the spirit and life of God without effort into everything we touch. But not only this. We are channels of spirit and life. Not Martha like makers of sandwiches that Jesus did not ask for. One with Father we do innately what He is doing.
‘The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you--they are full of the Spirit and life’ John 6.63 NIV.
UNDERSTANDING ONENESS
Oneness is the reason that any of us produce fruit that lasts. Oneness is already ours. Oneness means that God’s life is our life and we are His life. It means that we are channels of living water, that we overflow with His spirit and life and that we are sons and daughters who impart His life. In oneness we do more for the Kingdom in a a day than the religious person does in a life-time and with far less effort.
Francois Du Toit wrote on Facebook recently, ‘Our experience of his presence has its reference in our understanding of our oneness - we are not more one with him when we 'feel' whacked [by the Holy Spirit] or get the Goosebumps and less one with him when we feel nothing! Our union is a constant because of his doing. We live and move and have our being in him, nowhere else. That’s the truth. Nothing defines us more than this light of life that shone into our hearts to give us understanding that we are in him who is true.’