His Kingdom in the World
We are in need of grace to escape the degradations of sin and we should utilise grace as a narrow door to escape from the tunnel of deception – the non-gospel- that some of us have lived in for our entire lives. Grace will get us into heaven but it will not fill us with spirit and life when we insist in burying much of our inheritance in the ground.
If you desire to know God as God is – you will. Should you be careless enough to coast along in religion you may not – at least not for a long time and probably not until you have suffered a severe enough calamity as to seek rebirth and embrace a re-invention of yourself in Jesus. C. S . Lewis observed.
A passion to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent comes from God – from God who is incarnated into the fabric of your being. As a friend assured me once, ‘God’s truth is universal. Any seeker after life and after God will find it. He will be drawn to it and it to her by a mysterious spiritual attraction.
“What I call my ‘self’ now is hardly a person at all. It’s mainly a meeting place for various natural forces, desires, and fears, etcetera, some of which come from my ancestors, and some from my education, some perhaps from devils. The self you were really intended to be is something that lives not from nature but from God. Your real self, rises from this kind of ‘grave’ when Christ becomes your life and you are reborn in the spirit of sonship. But be assured of this. The spirit of sonship does not inhabit those who are born of the law.
If we have never emerged from religion, one thing is certain: We have never been birthed into life. Religion is religion no matter what kind. Should we be in it we may have glimpsed life and felt some droplets on our face. But when we agree that Christ has dawn us into Himself we have become one with LIFE. Life is God and life is us. It’s fathers, sons and daughters jubilantly enjoying the raw colour of existence that is alive because we are.
In the law we can neither ‘know’ or ‘be’. We remain a kind of eunuch. With Christ as your life you are alive in your spirit and one with God’s Spirit. You are potently yourself. In Jesus you know your faceand people see it. In the law your face is forever hidden, you nether know yourself and are never revealed as you are to other – always clouded and always shrouded you are an un-you stifled by an un-gospel.
KNOWING LIFE
Richard Rohr observes, “In the human mind of Christ, every part of creation knows itself as (1) divinely conceived, (2) beloved of God, (3) crucified, and (4) finally reborn. He carries us across with him, assures us it is okay, and thus models the full journey and final direction of consciousness.” (1) Rohr is talking of the logos and of the pattern of the life lived out by Him in fellowship with us. This is the life of His that is ours. ‘In Him is life and that life if the life of you.’
Because Christ is in you and with you – you will come to know what He knows. It will come into your mind. You will hear it in conversation with God-seekers, it will appear like gold in enlightened sermons and you will discover it in apostolic books. There is a ‘voice’ that is within you and in the creation. It is deeply personal, woven into your being, yet as much of a person as you are an more. As I AM Jesus is the Real Self and the spirit by which you become your real self in all its colour and subtlety. Thus Rohr adds, “God is never an object to be found or possessed as we find other objects, but the One who shares your own deepest subjectivity—or your “self.” _(2).
This why God is not an abstraction or a law but a life-giving spirit who imbues you with spirit and life.
(1) Rohr, Richard. Immortal Diamond: The search for our true self . SPCK. Kindle Edition.
(2) Rohr, Richard. Immortal Diamond: The search for our true self . SPCK. Kindle Edition.
CHRIST IN YOU 