Authority superior to the scribes

LAW BASED OR KINDOM BASED? Son of the slave woman or daughter of the Free Woman?

What would you do if your daughter was living in poverty and degradation when she was actually a princess with a huge fortune and privileges? What would you do if your son was paralyzed from the waste down and you knew that his paralysis was entirely due to the way he saw himself and had nothing to do with an objective physical condition? I hope you would restore them to who they actually are. You would do all in your power to set them free. This is the mandate of all in whom Jesus lives.

‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed’ Luke 4.18

To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor’ Isa 61.3.

The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is released to ensure that every member of the House of God reflects the glory of God and multiplies the authority of Jesus Christ. You have been given authority to expand the Kingdom of God. The spirit of anti-christ exists to oppose these plans by robbing people of their humanity and authority as the sons and daughters of God. Anything you grow without such authority may be church – but it will not be the kingdom of God  and hence no threat to the Enemy.

‘The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law’ Mark 1.22 NIV.

Three unclean spirits like frogs (Rev16.13) are seen coming out of the mouth of the beast. These spirits are an apt figure of spirits who have robbed Adventists of their inheritance in Christ. They have been robbed of their identity as sons because they live in the law. Adventists have imagined themselves under law and hence under condemnation.  As a consequence they live in fear of deception and of the Second Coming. They have been separated from the Body of Christ because their law based life separates them from Jesus, from themselves and from other people. Adventists have the cross and they have jesus [sic] but their cross is robbed of its power and their jesus [sic] plays second fiddle to the Law as will be seen below.

These unclean spirits are the progeny of the chief religious spirit who is the Father of Lies. They are lying spirits who gain their power from false doctrine – doctrine that sounds believable but which is really a distortion of the truth. The result of these lies is that God’s people are made to be like frogs rather than be what they really are: Sons and daughters of God.

Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet Rev 16.13 NIV.

Adventists live in horror of being deceived. This because their denomination began in deception. A spirit of deception releases an influence that makes people so afraid of ‘being deceived’ that many have developed an ‘immunity’ to the truth. It’s not uncommon for sincere and usually Godly people to live inside silos of belief that effectively excludes the ability to perceive the glory of the Truth that is Jesus.

Adventist beginnings explain why those who are so sure they have the truth actually live in deception and fear deception. The initial deception was that Jesus was coming in 1844. Despite the fact that the Bible clearly says that no one knows the day or the hour other than the Father in heaven, it was steadfastly claimed that Jesus would come in 1844.

The first lie was then compounded by another deception – the notion that Jesus, instead of doing the second coming, went into the most holy place in 1844 to begin a work called the investigative judgment. He was engaged here in an ongoing enquiry to establish who keeps the commandments and who does not. Those who do not of course get the kybosh. This of course is not sound doctrine. Those whose life is Jesus get eternal life.

The Bible says sinners were acquitted for every sin at the cross. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus  Again, Jesus took His Place beside the Father on His ascension to heaven. His installation at the right hand of authority and power beside the Father was marked on earth by the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Now the Son of Man would multiply Himself by living by the Spirit in the sons and daughters of men. Jesus Christ would become the life of all who ate His flesh and drank His blood in the Spirit.

Christ’s message is that we are forgiven by His blood and restored to the glory of sons by His life. We have been seated in Christ since He took His place beside the Father on His ascension. While there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus this is not so for those who live in themselves and their self-effort through keeping the law.

The third lie is related to the second, with its implication that he old covenant has not passed away but is in fact perpetuated by jesus [sic] who empowers people to keep the law of Moses. ‘Jesus lived out of the law and kept it’ so the it is claimed. Now by Jesus’ strength we can keep Moses laws just like Jesus did, the argument goes. The idea became inculcated into Adventism that Jesus helps us keep Moses. But doesn’t the book of Hebrews emphasize that Jesus is above Moses and above angels and that in fact all things are under Jesus’ feet?

According to the scriptures, Jesus lives to impart to us Himself. This is because the highest entity in creation is being or person – not abstractions and behaviors. In other words NOT LAWS. Significantly God is ‘I AM’.  Not ‘I DO.’ We become human doings by living in behaviors. We are sons of God by living in God’s Son. We are sons because in Jesus we are placed in the Father.

According to scripture Jesus did not live in reference to law or live out of law. He lived in union with His Father. His was not a law-centered life. It was a Father centered life. He lived as a son in union with His Father. Jesus’ righteous life exceeded the finite righteousness of the law to the extent that a mountain exceeds a grain of sand. But Jesus’ wholeness, holiness and authority over demons, disease and death was entirely the result of living in the Father – in the Father as son, with the authority not like the teachers of the law.

Jesus lived as a son in the manner in which Adam had not. Significantly Adam was told to keep away from the tree. But trusting in the Father Jesus advanced relentlessly towards it and was crucified on it. Thus through the genius of God the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was turned into the tree of life. Life in the knowledge of good and evil was put to death on the cross and life in God through His Son became ours at His resurrection.

Let’s embrace what really happened. Through the crucified Jesus, Adam and the regime of the knowledge of good and evil (law of sin and death) was put to death and a life in God was made the possession of the sons and daughters of God. That’s you.

‘For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!’ Gal 2.19-21 NIV.

Once the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was dead the law was dead. Now you are alive in Christ to live as sons of God in God’s Son. The righteousness sent from God is Jesus who lives in you to conform you to Himself. Jesus is the righteousness of God in you and the One whose resurrection power in you steadily raise you up in conformity with Himself. It that good or what!?

It seems that the plain teaching of scripture has never been a barrier to Adventist ideology which is a religion of law and letter confining people to the limitations of the old Adam and his body of death. In contrast genuine Christianity is lived in the Spirit as the Spirit of Sonship imparts to us the life of the one new man. Far from being frogs believers are God’s kings and priests called to reign on the earth.

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ Romans 7.21-25 NIV.

‘Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault’ Col 1.22 NLT.

A friend of mine had a dream in which he saw Ellen White standing on her head. Another friend had a vision in which the cross was seen suspended upside down in a church. I had a dream in which a woman was up-ending Adventist people and abusing them. The sad things was that they accepted that this abuse was sound Christianity. But the Lord was showing that Adventists have attached themselves to an upside – down gospel. The law leads to Christ. But Jesus does not lead to law. We either live in the law or we live in the Kingdom of God.

The Bible says the law is a school master to lead to Christ. It is a tutor, a method, a device of God to push us in the direction of union with God’s Righteousness: The Person of Jesus. But many Adventists believe that Jesus exists to empower us to keep the laws of Moses. Not so. Jesus lives to make us like Himself.

According to Adventist teaching Jesus plays second-fiddle to the law. The implication is that Jesus is subordinate to the law. If true this would mean that He is not really God but some lesser being who exists under a superior entity. Adventists could well examine the possibility that they worship a false christ. According to Ellen White, the real source of Adventist the Great Reality at the center of Heaven is not the Father and not Jesus. It is the law.

‘The law of God in the sanctuary in heaven is the great original, of which the precepts inscribed upon the tables of stone and recorded by Moses in the Pentateuch were an unerring transcript’ Great Controversy 434.

But the Bible contradicts such an assumption. The Bible says that the law and the temple services were shadows to lead us to the Great Reality: The reality that is Christ. The reality that the glory of God’s Kingdom on earth is Christ in you. Due to the incarnation, Christ not only live in you. He manifests AS YOU.

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ’ Col 2.16,17.

But you say, ‘I don’t live in the law.’ If you believe that Jesus lives to empower you to keep the law, you do live in the law. But if you believe that Jesus lives in you to transform you into His likeness You live in Jesus and you live as a son.

Do you want to live real as live as a shadow. Do you want to be a whimp, a wraith, a flitting ghost or do you choose to be reborn as a real son of God in whom the Son of God lives by His Spirit?

The law and the prophets pointed to Jesus. The law and the temple services were a shadow of the reality that is Christ. But the writings that have shaped Adventist theology and which have assumed greater authority than the Bible have portrayed Jesus engaged in the project of upholding the law.

In the Desire of Ages Jesus busily goes about to heal people on the Sabbath day as a means of establishing the sanctity of the Sabbath and supremacy of the law. But this is an imposition on the text. Jesus was doing nothing of the kind. What He was demonstrating was the compassion and life-multiplying nature of His Father, and its contrast to the life-denying nature of the law’s custodians. We become what we live out of. With these healings, Jesus  drawing all men to Himself to live as the life of sons in the Father. He was illustrating the difference between one who lived in God and those who lived in the law. In the latter case rules and strictures are more important that people  – and ultimately more important than God. ‘So let’s kill him to preserve our place and our nation.’

Law and temple had a purpose. But they came to an end over 2000 years ago. Now instead of living in religion God’s people would live in God.

‘Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law’ Gal 3.23-25 NIV.

God is not only the Father of truth. Truth is what He is. He does not promote information that is actually a lie. Since He is love, He lives to reveal Himself as He is and to reveal us as we can be. As the Son of God Jesus revealed God. As the Son of Man, Jesus revealed the glory of man.

God’s greatest exposure of Himself is the revelation that is Jesus. The Bible says that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father, He sits in equality beside the Father and that all things are under His feet. The Ten Commandments were never a description of the Father’s character. Was He ever on guard to ensure that He did not worship things that were not Him? Clearly the Decalogue is about us. Clearly this was a list of rules founded in the framework of the knowledge of good and evil to hold people accountable until the advent of Jesus.

‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word’ Hebrews 1.3 NIV.

There is only one description of the Father’s character: Jesus. It is this Jesus who comes to live in you and impart Himself to you. The new and living way is not the old and dead way. It is Jesus in you. This is entirely a work of the Holy Spirit. Significantly those who represent the Kingdom of God live in the Spirit by the One Spirit. They don’t live by a trinity of religious spirits spreading the notion, that with sufficient effort we can be like gods defining good and evil and rising like gods above chaos. No. To live in Jesus is to live in life itself and have this life transform you from glory to glory.

Keith Allen, May 25, 2011

Make sure your lens is perfect

1. Many years ago the Psalmist wrote, ‘In your light we see light’ Ps 36.9. Solomon wrote, ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ The question is, ‘Where are we situated. Where is the ground of our being?’ We need to ascertain if we live in God or live in the knowledge of good and evil and are attempting to construct an image of God from this position. Anyone still living in old Adam will be unable to comprehend the real nature of the Kingdom of God.

The most blind and obstinate people in Jesus’ day were the teachers of the law. Yet simple people whose heart connected  to Jesus could see what they could not: That Jesus was the light. That Jesus had authority and power that the custodians of law and letter did not. So blind were they that they remained paralyzed in their categories even when they one that had killed rose from the dead.

To live in God is to live in Jesus by means of the Spirit. To live in law is see with a distorted lens, even when god has removed us from the real of darkness and immersed us in the light of His Son.

2. Before the appearance of Jesus on earth people could make a fair degree of sense out of the Old Testament using the lens of the law and the temple. Bu the Kingdom of God cannot be understood with old testament eyes.

The law was a temporary measure used by God to lead people to Christ. All that came before was a shadow to lead to the reality that from now on people would not live from law or temple. They would not live in religion. They had been delivered from the tyranny of the knowledge of good and evil with its laws of sin and death. They would live in Christ. In Christ they had received a lens with which to interpret the future and all that had come before.

By living in Jesus they would see accurately and ‘do’ in a Godly fashion. Having been made one with God through Christ their life would be harmonized with God and His creation. They would be alive, sighted and righteous in the Law of Spirit of Life who is the Person of Jesus.

‘Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death Romans’ 8.2 NIV.

3. Through Jesus Christ we are able to interpret the Bible and make sense of our lives. A good lens is Jesus. He is the only accurate lens. We see clearly when we live, move and have our being in Jesus. We get a distorted picture when we attempt to interpret the New Testament through the law and performance. The new testament is a new and living way. Not an old and distorted way. Any perspective on what life is meant to be through the lenses of the knowledge of good and evil is a distortion. We have a new and accurate lens in Christ. We can live and see through Him.

‘Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come’ 2 Cor 5.17 NASB.

4. One of the principles of interpretation is that you see what you expect to see. If you think the new testament is just an extension of the old you will subvert everything in it to law and make Jesus a proponent of the law. For example you might fasten onto the words, ‘He will write His laws on their hearts’ as supporting the belief that Jesus lives to facilitate the keeping of the commandments.

But Jesus drew attention to Himself and His Father. He did not draw attention to the law. He said, ‘I am the way.’ He did not say ‘The law is the way.’ He said ‘ I and the Father are one.’ He did not say I and the law are one.’ Jesus said, ‘If I am lifted up I will draw all people to Myself.’ He did not say I will draw them to the law.

Paul says ‘If righteousness can be gained by law, Christ died for nothing.’ He also writes, ‘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. In the light of this the writer if Hebrews cannot mean that Jesus abolished the law so that we can keep it. And of course he does not. Quoting Jeremiah, who could not have understood the incarnation whereby Christ lives in us to become our life, He means that by the Spirit the Person of Jesus infuses our heart and life so that Jesus actually becomes our life.

5. The law is a bad lens through which to view God. Adherence to law will eventually  provide us with the view that a law-bound, judging, condemning God is not a very nice person. And using this lens we can never become a gracious and joyful person.

It presents a God that is more like Allah than what God is really like: Jesus Christ.

‘There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’ But there is for those who live in law. We condemn ourselves, others and God. Our sad plight is that living outside of Jesus we live under the condemnation of God. So choose your lens carefully.

A Kingdom of Self-effort but not the Kingdom of God’s Son.

Have you wondered why Islam is on the march and much of Christianity is on the back foot? Could it be that what we call ‘Christianity’ is not actually about Jesus and His Kingdom? It’s about us and the lesser kingdoms of our self-effort.

Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world. Those who live in me will never walk in darkness but have the light of life.’ Those who are one with Jesus by the One Spirit are lights in the world. Everything they do multiplies light. In them is no darkness at all. They exude freedom and multiply freedom, wholeness, righteousness and the Kingdom of the King.

Since they live in the Spirit and not the flesh, they are His kings and priests who reign on the earth. They reign over Satan and his schemes demolishing every work. They reign over the circumstances life brings to them through the resurrection authority of Jesus. Since they live in Him under whom are all things, the affairs and things of life are brought to order under their feet as they begin to reign as the sons and daughters of God.

‘You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth’ Rev 5.10 NIV.

To live in the flesh is to remain in the regime of law that was part of the knowledge of good and evil. Little if any of the above is ours if we are sons of the slave woman. Here we are of the earth, the flesh and carnality – carnality often masked as religion.

‘What do the Scriptures say about that? “Get rid of the slave and her son, for the son of the slave woman will not share the inheritance with the free woman’s son’ Gal 4.30 NLT.

To have one toe in the law is to have your body in the law. To live from performance is to live from law and bind people in its more subtle manifestations. To be sons of Sinai is to be sons of the slave woman To be a son of the slave woman is to be without an inheritance – which is to reign in the earth. To live from a law based ‘christianity’ is to bind people and diminish people with ‘another gospel.’ It is to bind people to the earth when they have a life in the Spirit that comes from heaven.

The issue at the time Paul was writing was circumcision. But the principle here is clearly that any piece of law, letter or performance based living is impotent to transform us into sons and daughters of God.

‘Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation’ Gal 6.15 NIV.

We can be people who experience occasional glimmers of light or we can be lights in the world. Should we remain in the old covenant clutching at our identity as a people, we are denied an identity in Christ with the authority and power of the sons of God. We may live in hope but that’s all we will live in. We may get excited about glimmers but we will inevitably get glummer.

‘The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life’ John 6.63 NIV.

We may have a degree of authority but only the authority of scribes. Not the authority of those who are seated in Christ beside the Father. In Jesus we can say, ‘I and the Father are one.’ But living in law-letter-performance we only get to experience the Kingdom through a glass darkly. We can mutter words of knowledge while living in defeat. We may glow occasionally as embers that never burst into flame.

On the other hand we can step into the New Testament by leaving Moses behind to live in Jesus. We can leave behind Adam who lived in the knowledge of good and evil to live in Jesus who lived in God and who is God. By the One Spirit the life and Presence of God is imparted to the sons of God who prevail in the earth. Now we manifest the Presence of God as the torch and the sword. The torch is the Presence of Jesus beside us and through us. The sword is His word spoken by us with authority and power.

Keith Allen, May 18 2011

Yam Stew and the Kingdom of God

Faith as a grain of mustard seed is not grainy faith or flaky beliefs.

During my middle years as a teacher I taught at a government school blessed with a kindly deputy head master who had one theme. He enunciated it with decorum but without effect every assembly day: The need to tidy the grotty campus. It was this dutiful deputy principal who told the boys that it is better to have any faith than no faith at all.

Any faith? I have thought about this over the years. I’m not sure that I agree. Maybe ‘a faith’ does structure life somewhat while relieving us of the anxiety of living in a void. Perhaps one could overcome ‘voidism’ and the null feelings it invokes as a surfer and make a simple belief system from waves and weather. A more simple faith like that of an animal might be food good and hungry bad, or as a famous work put it,  ‘Four legs good, two legs bad.’ But if communism was a paradise it was a paradise that needed walls to keep people in paradise. Some faiths are lame. Others are toxic.

Cannibalism might be thought of as a faith. It was underpinned by the notion of victory over an enemy and ingesting his essence. These ideas may structure tribal life but the man sitting in the pot might well wish the cannibal had no faith at all. ‘Abandon faith all ye who chant about my ear!’ he shouteth as he blendeth with the yam stew.

Nazism of the World War Two years was a cruel and arrogant faith based on the survival of the fittest and racism. Was this better than no faith? The belief that might makes right is not far removed from the belief that greed is good; that wealth is a sign of merit and that lack of wealth is the badge of the undeserving. Pity that Jesus said the wealthy would struggle to enter the Kingdom of God. But then again the Kingdom of God consists of those who live in God and not in configurations of good and evil

It is, perhaps, impossible to have ‘no faith,’ since all of us are socialized into some kind of matrix that forms a structure to our lives. ‘Faiths’ have an effect. An identity based on the certainty that we are sons, born of God is quite a different identity that based on the assumption that we started in a primordial soup that was struck by lightning. Again the destiny of one who knows they are sons of the free woman is different to one who is a child of the slave woman. The former develops in an atmosphere of infinite largesse. The latter attempts to live in the taunt, ‘If you are a son of God.’

Some faiths are toxic. Other faiths are a lie. We are what we think. If what we think is a lie our group life will be a lie. Christian fundamentalist sects can be a sad example of a crippling faith – a tissue of lies producing crippled people. Cages of faith are made from lies and false ‘certainty’ constructed from the planks of bad doctrine. Carefully assembled from the tree of knowledge these penitentiaries provide false security and real bondage. Then people bow down to their bondage and say, ‘Behold our god.’ But Jesus says, ‘Live in Me and experience your freedom!’

‘It is man’s fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it’ Isa 44.15 NIV.

Toxic ‘faith’ makes people smaller than they would have been if they had no religion at all. This is why the agnostic or the atheist is sometimes of larger spirit than the scribe and teacher of the law. Why? He has not adopted limitation in the name of God. His soul and spirit are not constricted by a mean deity that is a projection of the religious self. Have you noticed that many idols are ugly? That’s because the self projected as ‘god’ is an unsightly and monstrous being.

On the other hand the righteousness sent from God is Jesus who gives the Spirit without limit to produce the sons of God. Largeness of spirit is the result of Christ in you!

Law bound versions of Christianity are not only contradictions in terms. Formed in the letter they kill. The letter kills human stature, nobility, Sonship and authority. The letter kills the image of Sonship in sons. The letter has us imagining we are glorious when we are actually nude. The letter stultifies and limits. The letter fades and jades  because the letter is the chief fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. But Jesus’ the living Word makes us sons. Christ for us and Christ in us is our right to the tree of life and entrance into the city of God.

‘But what does the Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son’ Gal 4.30 NIV.

No Christian group planted in the letter can flourish, even if it is Spirit-filled. As Galatians asserts the Spirit is extinguished by the law. It is seed cast on rocky soil. It will wilt like wheat planted on cotton wool in a saucer.  It will produce communities who live under a glass ceiling. The people under this old covenant covering will grope about in the twilight of a glass darkly. But in Jesus we see light. In Jesus we are the children of the free woman with an infinite inheritance as the sons and daughters of God.

‘But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away’ 2 Cor 3.16 NIV.

‘For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit’ John 3.34 NIV.

God is a Spirit. Jesus is a Spirit. ‘In Him all things hold together and find their purpose.’ Every physical and sentient thing finds its real nature in Jesus who created and redeemed the earth. Your order, righteousness and purpose is realized as your being is found in Jesus. All things are being brought together to function according to their proper nature in Jesus. Jesus, the Person is the law of the Spirit of life. Live, move and have your being in Jesus.

‘For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen’ Romans 11.36 NIV.

Keith Allen, May 15. 2011

Deep soil. Great authority.

We have an inheritance in Jesus which is to multiply the authority Jesus exercised over sin, sickness, death and the devil. We do this by living in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit is the life of the Kingdom of God.

This is more than exercising spiritual gifts of healing and words of knowledge, although it is related to it. The Holy Spirit was given as God’s Personal implementation of the new covenant as well as to anoint believers with the supernatural power of Jesus to defeat the devil and His works.

But there’s something Adventists who come into the Spirit need to know. The Kingdom of God cannot be represented on earth from a position in law. Some evidence of the gifts of the Spirit may be seen in those with one leg in the law but the fullness of Kingdom authority and power will elude them. It cannot be wielded by any who remain in law for one simple reason: The new covenant, which is life in the Spirit, is the Kingdom of God.

One whose being is sourced and shaped in law does not participate in the inheritance known as ‘the sons of God.’ He or she remains a child of Hagar, a slave son of the slave woman. This is not my opinion. This is what the Word of God affirms. Is what we believe sound doctrine or ‘our doctrine?’

The gifts of the Spirit are sometimes received with great joy. But the result is a relentless fade-out. Even as we speak Adventist believers are coming into the knowledge of the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit is sovereign. He will not have Himself utilized to promote Adventism. But more to the point His authority and power cannot be sustained by anyone who lives out of law with law’s inherent death producing nature. Let’s be clear. We live out of law if we believe Christ lives to empower us to keep the Ten Commandments. We live in the Spirit if we believe that Christ imparts Himself to us to make us sons of God.

Attempting to build a life in the Spirit on the law is to ignore what Paul has written in Galatians and what the author of Hebrews wrote in Hebrews. But more than this, it is attempting the fruitless task of sowing kingdom seeds on rocks covered with a thin layer of soil. Plants quickly spring up and quickly fade. Fellowships and Kingdom enterprises simply cannot be sustained on this basis. They embody innate fade out because they are a body of death.

‘Some fell on rock, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture’ Luke 8.6 NIV.

‘We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away’ 2 Cor 3.13 NIV.

‘For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory’ 2 Cor 3.9 NIV.

‘But what does the Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son’ Gal 4.30 NIV.

‘He has enabled us to be ministers of his new covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws, but of the Spirit. The old written covenant ends in death; but under the new covenant, the Spirit gives life’ 2 Cor 3.6 NLT.

The Spirit of Grace is the Life-giving Spirit

It has been said that grace is unmerited favour. It is but it is more than a way of papering over our inability to keep the law. Grace is God’s Way of making His Son’s life ours.

Grace is not an opportunity for sin. Neither is it an excuse to live in impurity and indulgence. Grace is the means by which the life of Christ is imparted to those whom Jesus is transforming. Grace is the means by which we live in God’s Son to be transformed into sons. Grace is the means by which we live move and have our being in God.

Grace is God loving the world so that the world can become the Kingdom of His Son. Grace is Jesus, given to us by the Father and imparted to us by the Holy Spirit. Grace is the manifestation of Jesus in your world through you. Grace is the authority of Christ restored to your marriage, family and business. Grace is the Person of Jesus in us and more. It is the Spirit of Christ as us.

‘Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do’ Eph 2.4-10 NIV.