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.

As Pretty as a snow-globe

Snow globes are pretty little ornaments. They contain nice little winter scenes where pines abound and snow-covered alps attend the rear. Center stage Joseph and Mary or Father Christmas collect gently falling ‘snow’ that covers them like flakes of washing powder. All of this inside a plastic bottomed glass globe that we have inverted and shaken to see the snow settle softly on the static inmates inside.

To live in the Spirit is to live without limit, but to live in law is to be constricted, bound, diminished and hemmed in. To live in law while attempting to practice the gifts of the Spirit is to continue to promote a level of spiritual imprisonment that is not the Kingdom of God.

The ornamental inmates of the globe forever transfixed in an idyllic scene represent communities and denominations captured in law under the old covenant. Congealed and static, their advance as ‘sons’ has been limited by a ‘glass ceiling’ that places them near, but outside their place of intimacy in God’s Presence as sons with authority quite different to the proponents of law. We can shake the dome as much as we like but since our hearts and spirits are bound in little compartments of law, we are bound from the inside. In this constriction we are not competent to minister with the authority of the new covenant in the Spirit. We are captured in a globe of prettified religion. We are outside the realm of authority that is the Kingdom of God.

‘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.

Jesus is not a clever way of doing Moses. He is God’s way of birthing sons. The law pointed to Jesus but Jesus does not point to the law.  Hello! Jesus points to nothing other than Himself and the Father. Christ is all or He is not Lord. Jesus is the Way to the Father and He is life in Himself. To remain in Moses is to remain in bondage. To live in God through Jesus is to be authorized, competent and anointed with the authority of the Father to minister the Spirit of Sonship. Sons minister wholeness, holiness, liberty and authority. They minister the Kingdom of God because they are the sons of the free woman.

‘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.

Is Jesus your life?  The Father destroyed the power of the law at the cross. The power of the law is death. But there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The power of an unlimited life was released by the resurrection of Jesus. In Jesus the power of an unlimited life was released to all who will believe; to all who live in Jesus; to all for whom Jesus is their life. The power of the law is darkness. The power of Jesus is light, holiness, restoration and resurrection.

‘It has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel’ 2 Tim 1.10 NIV.

By clinging to the law we empower the lord of darkness and perpetuate iniquity. With Jesus Christ as our life we receive His life, we multiply His life and enlarge the Kingdom of glory. By living in Jesus you are resurrection and life.

The Father is bringing all things together in Christ – broken hearts, fractured, souls, separated families and conflicted nations.  With Jesus in us and multiplying Himself through us we co-labour with Him to place all things under His feet. The new creation is Jesus multiplied in His people. In union with Jesus and with His Spirit in us we spread the new creation and the Kingdom of God. This is the meaning of our prayer, ‘Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’

The Christian captive in his pretty snow globe is the kingdom of man.

Christ as your life is the Kingdom of God. Jesus lived in His Father in the Spirit of life. Death could not hold Him down. Paul, who once bound people, became the apostle of the free Spirit. Prisons could not restrain him because the Spirit of liberty sprang out of him. The illegitimate binding of the Enemy had to submit to the power of the risen Christ in Paul.

‘Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose’ Acts 16.26 NIV.

‘I want them to be encouraged and knit together by strong ties of love. I want them to have complete confidence that they understand God’s mysterious plan, which is Christ himself’ Col 2.2 NLT.

‘And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ–everything in heaven and on earth’ Eph 1.10 NLT.

Keith Allen, April 30, 2011