To Reign on the Earth

The image of the invisible God, visible as you!

I knew a man once. He had an administrative position in the organization. He was vain, critical and performance driven. He judged himself like he judged others. When his moral indiscretions became known he acted as judge and jury on himself. He drank a bottle of weed-killer and was no more.

To live under law is to live under a curse. It’s like drinking weed-killer when we could have been eating the Son of Man. This is another way of saying, ‘I’m consuming life!

‘Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’ John 6.53 NIV.

It’s not that God breathes a breath of weed killer over people. It’s not Him that curses people. But by living from law we place ourselves outside His Presence and outside the life-giving Spirit that ignites the spirit in the sons of God. In union with God we shine incandescently. But in the law we are a smoking wick.

Law-keeping separates people from their inheritance which is to be a son of God with authority; to have the Spirit without limit and to reign in the earth, over nature and over demons. Any brief spurt of life that comes from law is only that – a spurt. It dissipates and fades. It is innately a fizzle because its nature is DEATH. It’s very sad that some people have built a religion around death. But Jesus, the righteousness of God in you, is unlimited life that multiplies exponentially because it has an eternal weight of glory.

The life found in Jesus is not only eternal. It has unlimited potency and is supremely powerful to advance righteousness and demolish every work of the Enemy.

‘What was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts! 2 Cor 3.10.11.

Any  gospel that propels the law of  Moses into the New Testament age is no gospel at all. Many if not most Adventists love God. But they need to consider the possibility that their religious culture stems from a false gospel. Paul condemns anyone who would pervert the gospel given to Him by Christ. It appears that Adventists read the entire New Testament through the lens of the Sabbath rather than through the Person of Jesus Christ. Thus the gospel is not only made powerless but Christ is subordinate to the Sabbath and the law. The entire new testament is subverted to the project of Adventist identity formation and status.

Typically Adventists will pass over the things that Paul says such as, ‘If righteousness could be gained through law, Christ died for nothing,’ to land on a verse in Hebrews which says, ‘I will write my laws on their hearts.’

Is this a proof text? Not really. Jeremiah, who first penned the words, could not have understood the nature of an incarnate Jesus who imparts Himself into our hearts by the Spirit. We must be consistent with Paul’s assertion that the ministry that brought death was engraved on letters of stone – a clear reference  to the laws of Moses – otherwise known as the law of sin and death. These are the laws that mandated Jesus’ death and will ensure YOUR DEATH if you insist on living in the instead of making Jesus your life. We either live in law or live in the Kingdom of God.

The law of sin and death in its religious and secular forms has its source in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fruit of this tree causes chaos in the world and putrefaction in the church. The sum of this is in the religious and secular spheres is Babylon.

In contrast to this we have Jesus, the Son of God, Son of Man and last Adam who is the personification of life and the order that is God. He is the one in whom all things hold together. Jesus is THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE. Live in Jesus by the Spirit and ‘togetherness’ will grow in your life and among those connected to you. Life in the Presence, with the reality of Jesus in our hearts gives us hearts not of stone but of flesh. Not flesh in the carnal sense but hearts that are human filled with the love that is God. We are made truly human by the Son of Man breathing into us the spirit of life. We become able to love because the One who is love fills our being.

‘I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh’.11.19 NIV.

In Christ our separation from the Father is healed. Our divided heart is healed. Our divided being is made one because we have been delivered from the body of this death through Jesus Christ. Now we not only pursue righteousness but WE BECOME RIGHTEOUS because Jesus releases Himself within us. Having been made one with Christ we are a new man/woman. The law is not outside us. Christ the law of the Spirit of life is in us. He becomes us.  We are the one new man who lives in unity with God and ourselves. The old dualism has gone. We are one with God (John 17). The new and living way who has taken us into the Presence of God is the Way that the Spirit of sonship is multiplied in us.

Let’s not beat about the bush. Only those who live in Jesus by the Spirit are capable of living a holy and whole life. More to the point, only by living in the Spirit can we represent the Kingdom of God. But wait, there’s more. Only by living from the new covenant can we live in the Spirit.

‘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 NIV.

Why live in the Spirit? Because that’s how sons and daughters of God live.

Sons of God are not perfect and they rely on Jesus’ blood, but they are able to grow consistently in holiness and wholeness. Why? CHRIST IS THEIR LIFE.

They take on the dignity and authority of sons and daughters of God who live in freedom and authority over their affairs and the schemes of the Enemy.

Living in Christ ‘sons’ are able to advance into doing what Jesus did. But best of all, by LIVING IN JESUS the sons of men are sons of God.

Adventists who ‘come into the Spirit’ understand the role of the Holy Spirit in imparting the life of Jesus to our person. Yet many remain locked into the notion that through the Holy Spirit, Jesus enables us to ‘keep the ten commandments.’  In the minds of many Christians, commandment keeping defines righteousness. But that fact is Jesus defines righteousness. He is righteousness and more. He is the Son of God. All who live as sons live in Jesus!

Hebrews 1.1-3 shows that righteousness is defined as the Son of God. The Ten Commandments do not define righteousness for believers. They are there to hold sinners to account. Their purpose was to lead people to Christ. For the believer, Jesus is our life in every way.

‘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.

‘Righteousness’ in the New Covenant has a Name: Jesus. The righteousness of God is a Person and is defined as a Person: Jesus. The lifted-up Jesus draws all people to Himself. Jesus never draws attention to the law. Why? Because He is the beginning and the end. He is the One in whom all things hold together.

‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. All the fullness of God lives in Him.’  Jesus sustains all things by His powerful word because He is law personified. He holds the cosmos together.

Jesus is the law of the Spirit of life. But this is not the law of Moses which was only a shadow of the reality – your wholeness is Christ. Why sit in a classroom under the school master of the law, like so many elementary pupils, when God through Jesus has graduated you into the Presence of God and union with Himself? Why be a slave when you can be a son? Why try to make a righteousness of your own when Jesus is the righteousness of God in you. Righteousness that is by faith from first to last is Jesus who lives in you!

‘For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith’ Rom 1.17 NIV.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross’ Col 1.15-20 NIV.

 

Keith Allen, June 1, 2011