An adventurous and fruitful life

Worship is a life. There’s quite a difference between having Jesus as an add-on and worshiping Jesus as the Son of God. God literally is in us and goes about with us when Jesus is worshiped for what He is: The Son of God. In this position of worship, we are never alone, always secure and always equipped for any eventuality.

‘If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God’ 1 John 4.15.

The Roman officer was about to kill himself. That’s what you did if you were derelict in your duty. Or could be seen as such. Paul shouted, ‘Don’t kill yourself! Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you and your house will be saved!’

‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?’ The officer was saved from a lot more than imminent death. He was saved into eternal life. From that time on, eternal, infinite, life lived in Him in the Person of Jesus Christ.

It was easy for this man to believe. Paul was uncommonly honest with Him. There was an innocent power about him. The prisoners were all there. And the earthquake had followed the singing of songs about Jesus. There was the smoke of authority and the fire of freedom hanging in the air. Revelation and conviction targeted the Roman officer.

Paul had not fellowshipped with the physical Jesus as had John and Matthew. But he had met Jesus in the spirit, knew Him well and took delight in being His servant. Jesus was not just a construct to Paul. Jesus for Paul was the Son of God and as Son of Man who was rightful ruler of the earth.

It was in Jesus that Paul found his life and purpose. For Paul, Jesus was more real than the prison in which he was bound. It was because Paul believed that Jesus was the Son of God and His God that the walls fell down and the jailer and his family were saved. The physical structure and the spirit that had imprisoned Paul, was no match for the Spirit that was in him.

Paul loved Jesus with his body and his life. He put himself on the line for Jesus. God was clearly where Paul was, as Jesus had said, ‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him’ John 14.23 NIV.

Paul did not have an easy life. He had an adventurous and a fruitful one. He did what Jesus planned for him to do and in this quest overcame many outposts of Satan’s domain, expanding the Kingdom of God.

‘Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God’ 1 John 5.5

 

Keith Allen, August, 2011

 

Righteousness from God

Today we can enjoy the righteousness of sons by living by faith in God’s Son Jesus. ‘Not having a righteousness of our own’ but a righteousness that is by faith in God from first to last.

Humans originally lived in God as sons of God. But Satan deluded them into attempting to live in a righteousness of their own by living in the knowledge of good and evil instead of living in God. God promised Abraham an inheritance of life in the Spirit. This promise is fulfilled in the lives of those who believe God and live in Jesus. In the mean time God gave the Jews a set of laws that He listed within the frame work of what Adam and Eve had chosen – a righteousness of their own apart from God. This held them accountable, and showed all too clearly that they could not live up to their own standards and they needed a savior.

Any ‘righteousness’ that is lived in law is ‘a righteousness of our own.’ It came from Eve; it came from earth, not heaven; it was carnal, it separated us from God and it robbed us of our authority over nature and ourselves. The law that God gave us, framed as a righteousness of our own in the law of Moses pointed to a greater reality; the Reality of a righteousness from God who is Christ in us. Life in the Spirit is Christ in us and Christ in us is life in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit is a life in the Son with authority.

You can say with Paul and all who believe, “[I am] found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead’ Phil 3.9-11 NASB.

Keith Allen, August, 2011

 

Relinquishing the false-christ for the Son of Man

The Kingdom of God is Jesus planted among men and women. False gospels are the plantings of the Enemy in the hearts of men and women.

The Kingdom of God is not double talk. It is not yes and no. It is yes and amen!

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Do you get the Spirit by keeping the law?

Life in the knowledge of good and evil has ended. Life in God has begun – quite some time ago.

All died in Adam. But in Christ all have been made alive. To represent the Kingdom of Heaven we need to be living in the resurrection life of Jesus. If we are in Jesus and He is in us, we are resurrection and we are life!

Sadly, many Christians do not know that the fallen, perverted, life that began with Adam came to end at the cross. They need to know that resurrection life began when Jesus came out of the tomb to re-creates us from one degree of glory to glory to another.

‘Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds’ John 14.24 NIV.

The Kingdom of heaven is a yeast, a mustard seed and a tree of life. Life in the new Tree of Life that has been planted in the ground began at Jesus’ resurrection. The cross, marked the death of Adam as us. The resurrection marked the beginning of Christ as us. Here was the genesis of the one new man, or the man/woman who is one with God, one with herself, one with each other and one with the creation. Here is a union that occurs as all things are relentlessly brought together in Christ.

So the question is, are we still living in the fall or are we live in the resurrected Jesus? Are we living in the knowledge of good and evil or in God? Are we still in Moses or are we in Christ. Are rites, times and dates our life or is Christ our life? Have the books of Galatians and Hebrews done their work with us or have we let them go through to the keeper? The bottom line is, are we sons or are we slaves?

Anyone can have a Sabbath, but the notion of a Spirit-filled Sabbath is more problematic. Why? The law leads to Jesus, but Jesus does not lead to the law. Jesus leads to Himself and the Father – never to anything else. Jesus draws us out of dependency on rites and prescriptions to the life of the Spirit.

Those who come to the Father come by Jesus and those who come to Jesus are ignited by His life. This is life in the Spirit. The law of the Spirit of Life in you is Christ in you but it is not the law of Moses. The law of Christ is not an ‘it.’ The law of the Spirit of life is a Him and a spirit. He is Jesus who stands opposed to the law of sin and death and who multiplies spirit and life.

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

Life in the Spirit is not the gifts of the Spirit added to the old covenant or the gifts of the Spirit layered over a base of the law.

‘And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!’ 2 Cor 3.11 NIV.

Life in the Spirit is a life in Jesus. Totally. It’s a life in which Jesus imparts Himself to you and you become His life.  It is not a life lived from the constructs of good and evil. It’s not lived out of morality or ethics at all. It is the manifestation of Christ as you.

Such a transformation can only happen by the Spirit of God. The real meaning of the new birth is not giving up drink, drugs and fornication. The new birth is the Person of Jesus progressively transforming your life from within by the Spirit. Life in the Spirit is a life that is contrasted to Moses’ laws, which are designated by Paul as the law of sin and death.[1]

‘The ministry that brought death … was engraved in letters on stone’ 2 Cor 3.7 NIV.

Can you have a Spirit-filled Sabbath? Can you create a square circle? Can you make an up that is down? Can you make the old covenant the new covenant? Well, certainly we can, if we choose to go in the opposite direction to God.

We may choose to use all kinds of things to mediate God. But God is our only real mediator. Jesus mediates all of God to us. His infinite life is with us and in us. He is more than enough. But if we do use things to represent God; if we rely on things as substitutes, tokens, we weaken ourselves. We become the weaker brothers because we are weaker than those for whom Christ is their life entirely.

We either live Jesus or we live in something diluted – a concoction of our own. We are either free in Christ or we are bound in Moses. In Romans 8.2 the law of the Spirit of Life and the law of sin and death are contrasted in the same sentence. One is death unto death and the other life unto life. One is a life  in Adam, the other a life in Jesus. One is a life in the fall, the other our life in the Resurrection and the Life.

We either live in the Spirit or we live in the law. We either live in death or we live in life. So take off your grave clothes and let yourself go!

‘Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me’ John 6.57 NIV.

We live in the Spirit when Christ and only Christ is our life. The law of the spirit of life is a Person, not a list or set of constructs. Jesus, the logos and living Word is not a list or a matrix of abstractions since it is not an it. The logos is He in which we and the entire universe lives, moves and finds our being. Why? Because we were made to live in God. The creation was made to live in God. We harmonize with God and His creation by living in Jesus.

Through Jesus and the ministry of the Holy Spirit we are once again united with the Father as His daughters and sons. Thus the definition of a whole and holy person is not the keeper of lists but something more profound and comprehensive. The definition of a holy person is SON OF GOD. Only in Christ are we sons. Should we live in the law we are slaves.

‘Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children’ Gal 4.25 NIV.

There’s no such thing as Spirit-filled law keeping. The law leads to Christ but Christ does not lead to the law, bring attention to the law or glorify the law. The law points to the One who is life and who makes people and things alive.

‘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 idea that the Holy Spirit sanctifies law or any aspect of it is contradictory to what God has done in Christ.

‘I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!’ Gal 2.21 NIV.

You are alive because Christ lives in you and He is your life. The Holy Spirit multiplies the life of Christ – not the law and its regime of staleness, torpor and death.

The Father’s purpose is to fill all things with His Son, because all things are made through Him and for Him. You have a life that is filled with Christ!

‘And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself’ Eph 4.10 NLT.

When we live in Jesus our confusion (veil) is taken away. The idea that one can have a Spirit-filled Sabbath is as preposterous as the notion that we can have a Spirit-filled knowledge of good and evil or a Spirit-filled law. Why not just settle for a Spirit-filled you and a Spirit-filled life? Jesus really is all and in all. When He is lifted up He draws us all into Himself. Why not agree with the Father that Christ in you is not only the hope of glory. This is the current reality.

 

Keith Allen, August 3, 2011

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[1] Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was 2 Cor 3.7 NIV.