The Source of Our Bliss

The Source of our Bliss…

“Who do you say I am?” Jesus asks Peter in Matthew 16:15 and in two of the gospels.  “You are the living God. The messiah,”  Peter responds.  

Is this what you believe?  As proclaimed “Christians”, we say we believe, but what does that mean?  How much faith do we need in order to “muster up” the holy spirit’s anointing?  If you have been around these Charismatic circles I think you know what I am getting at.  This is “man’s doctrine” but not “true authentic gospel.” The undiluted gospel is all about God’s FREE gift of GRACE to humanity.  “All judgement is to the son.” John 5:27.  Jesus says in John 3:17, “I did not come to condemn the world, but to save it.”

For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:22)

There is only one human nature, one humanity, of which we all partake. The Incarnation, God becoming man and dwelling among us (John 1:14), was not about creating a new and different humanity — that would have been a species alien to us — but it was Christ partaking of the one and only humanity there is. It means that Christ participates with us in our humanity, even as broken as it is so blind & broken, so to make us whole, bringing us back to our original design.  Gods plan is to restore ALL things, not condemn them!

So, the cross saves us in a very ontological way.  Christ died as one, with whom we participate together in the same humanity, dying as us, so that HIS death was OUR death, too, because his being shares in our being, in our nature as human beings. His death was our death, so that his risen life is ours, as well. This cannot be reduced to some sentimental way of thinking; is the objective reality of our own being participating together in the resurrected human being of Christ.  (Paraphrased from Galatians 2:20)

In the same way, we are righteous before God, not because of some legal accounting (imputed righteousness), or by receiving it from a source outside of us (imparted righteousness), but through Christ’s very real participation in human being, our mutual participation with Christ in the only humanity there ever was or shall be. This one and only humanity, which was once headed up in Adam is now headed up in Christ, which is why the apostle Paul can make the Adam/Christ comparison so extensively, in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15.