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IT'S TIME TO RETIRE THE 'CHRIST-KILLER' CHARGE
Christ-killers! That charge has been leveled against Jews for two- thousand years. It has led to horrible, brutal persecutions, culminating in the Nazi Holocaust and the death of Six Million Jews. The Holocaust brought about deep theological soul-...
Meet His Sacrifice
Would Jesus go to through all the suffering of the cross If God's promises were a lie? Do we truly believe the entire Bible is the infallible word of God When we discount it's application to the modern day church? When Jesus said we could do...
The Simple Enormity of Catholicism
Why the Catholic Church is the Only Church That Fits God
While driving to Mass the other day, a bumper sticker caught my eye. It read, "God is too big to fit into one religion." As I passed the driver, it occurred to me that this would only be...
The Story of One Soul...So Far...
The Story of One Soul…So Far… Author Interview with Matthew Lickona, Swimming With Scapulars: True Confessions Of A Young Catholic by Lisa M. Hendey O.K., I’ll admit it…he had me with title. Before I even cracked the cover of Matthew Lickona’s new...
Why I Don't Speak In Tongues - Part II
In part 1 of "Why I Don't Speak In Tongues" I discussed the purposes of tongues given in the New Testament. Speaking in tongues (or being able to speak a language in which one has not been trained) was given to the apostles and certain others in...
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Christ In You means No Degrees to Spirituality
The Myth of Degrees of Spirituality
I do not agree that there are degrees of spirituality, or that there is anything a believer can do or not do to be more or less pleasing to God. Read on to see why there is actually no heirarchy of spirituality in Christianity.
The Bible clearly speaks of the fact of the indwelling Christ, our only hope of Glory. We are told that we live by the righteousness of God. That we partake of eternal life and divine nature, that we are seated with Christ in Heavenly places. If all this were true as we read in the word of God, then why are so we quick to attempt to explain it away as a figment of our imagination?
This "in Christ" position is the most often mentioned doctrinal statement in the whole of the Bible, more than baptism, communion, faith, love or anything else. Yet the centrality of all of these doctrinal statement is made perfect and complete in Christ as the central figure of all that exists.
The world, the angels, heaven and earth and every living thing is brought together in Him, and by Him they exist. By Him were they all created, in His name and by His power. It is through Him that we live and move and have our being. Though sinhas tainted much of creation, God is still Lord of All and every knee in heaven and earth will tultimately bow to Him. Every man is answerable to God as His creator, in fact, it is the ultimate betrayal for the created to deny the existence and need for His creator. Like an atheist on His funeral day, all dressed up and nowhere to go. In their denial they are judged and given what they want, an eternity in Hell, apart from the presence of God.
God is just and righteous and when Jesus said,"Be holy even as your father in heaven is holy." He was giving man a clue of His ultimate salvation. If you are in the Son, then the Son dwells in you. The spirit of Christ ultimately fulfilled what the law in all of it's perfection, was unattainable and impossible to fulfill for man. The Law through our own failings to uphold it, leads us to a God who gives us a part of Himself, a rib so to speak,whereby we may live by His righteousness to His glory.
In order to be a son we must partake of the Father's nature, nothing short of that will do. If we have the son we have life, because the life is in the Son. Spirit brings forth spirit. We live by the faith, love, peace and righteousness of God (1 Cor. 1:30).
Apart from Christ, we are nothing. If our identity is in Christ we become one with Him, just as two become one in marriage, we take on a new self and a new identity in Him. We do not become God, but we do become as Him, He does not become us but He does become as us!
So if we have the righteousness of God, what of sin? Do we have no sin? Can we do wat we like knowing that the righteousness of God covers any evil? This is not a license to sin and neither does it disregard the fact that we still sin.
The answer is in 1 John, for there is a sin unto death which we do not pray for, this is a sin out of a sinful nature and the only way out of this is to have Christ in us as an exchanged nature, sin is put out and Christ is our righteousness through salvation. There is also a sin not unto death, where we still sin, but our new nature in Christ offers us forgiveness, in place of our old nature which gave us the wage of death. For the sin not unto death we pray for and God is faithful and willing to forgive us of all unrighteousness.
There is not two types of righteousness, one by Christ and another by us, for none is righteous before God, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We are spiritual beings, but that dimension of our lives, the third dimension, (body being first dimension, the soul (mind will and emotion)
being second), the spirit (the third dimension) is not utilised fully until Christ fills it and becomes the fourth dimension to our lives. Where ordinary becomes extraordinary and natural becomes supernatural.
This fourth dimension is not dependant on anything we do and nothing can change it, similar in fact to the fact that I am the son of Clifford and Isabelle Cartwright! I may well do terrible things and the family may disown me, but many brithright is not something that can ever be taken away from me. The same is true in Christ, He is your birthright.
There are no standards of spirituality, because our only standard of righteousness and holiness is Christ, not anything we do or don't do, nor how long we spend doing or not doing it! Christ has become our only life to the Father, by sharing in God's one and only son, we become partakers of Jesus' birthright and one with God in our spirit.
Every believer in Christ is on an even standing with every other believer. If I have been a Christian for twenty years and there is another believer who has just become a Christian, there is no difference between us to God. I am a firm believer that religion has divided us along denominational grounds as well as spiritual standing erroneously. A new believer needs his mind renewed just as much as an older believer and would benefit from reading and having a revelation from God of who He has become in Christ. No man can give that to Him, only God, though He does it through many means.
When we become Christians, we read the Bible and take it at face value, reading Ephesians 1 we are captivated by who we have become in Christ and believe every word as a child, hearing for the first time the story of his birth from the lips of his father. Sadly as we grow up many of us lose our first excitement because we are told from all sides many reasons to disregard what the Bible says about us.
So we become indoctrinated as early believers and lose touch with what God says we are over who our denomination or church says we are. We begin to judge others by standards other than Christ in us and Christ in other believers. We judge by how useful or gifted others are, how they look, how they speak, how long they pray and how much they study.
Obviously, these are not always indicative of where people are with God of course, because one learns to perform ultimately, bragging of how much they pray, how long, how many days of fasting. When these standards are lifted up above Christ, they look hypocritcal because we are, by design, never supposed to save ourselves or becoming anything in and of oursleves.
But when we instead lift up Christ above all else as our fulfilment, He will draw all men unto Himself. Can we dare to believe what we read in Ephesians 1 and other portions of the Bible and take them at face value trusting that God will correct any ideas of God that are erroneous?
Taking hold of Christ in us is the polar opposite of suicide, but the way to both poles is through despair for life. When we realise that we are at the edge and end of ourselves, that is where Christ can begin for us. Ultimately there will be no middle ground. We choose one road or the other, the road to suicide is wide and straight. The Road to life is hard and treacherous. But we are all travellers, the journey is worked out through our identity and what we place it in. I choose to place mine in Christ, because He has deemed me worthy to place His identity in me.
We work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
log onto the site at www.god-life.com to read more articles!
About the Author
Christ in you expressed as you, www.God-life.com, a site to cellebrate Chritianity's Best Kept Secret, that God lives in the believing human being.
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