There is No Christ Apart from Jesus


Faith is a journey far more so than a destination.  It’s the gradual, deliberate unveiling of Truth and Love by Him who finds His very being in those two words.  Because faith is living and organic, old paradigms must be challenged as new, fresh revelation is revealed.  Whether you call this ‘deconstruction’ or prefer a less loaded term such as ‘reassessing’, the process can be both painful and freeing, disconcerting and yet also stabilizing.  (If you know, you know.)  


As I’ve watched others traverse this process, and experienced it myself over the expanse of several years, I’ve observed a pattern emerge.  For some, the sudden liberty that detaches them from legalism and mixture also untethers them from the very foundation of faith Himself.  Like a swinging pendulum, these seekers sway from one extreme to the other, exchanging the bondage of legalism for the yoke of self-centered licentiousness.  They walls may have a different color of paint, but it’s a prison nonetheless.  


When questioning anything there must be something to which we remain connected, something that upon which our eyes can be fixed amidst the vertigo of uncertainty.  


That something is actually a Someone, and His name is Jesus Christ.  Despite the views of some, I contend that there is no Christ apart from Jesus.  He is uniquely the visible, tangible revelation of the Father to mankind.  Through His finished work, humanity was enveloped into both His personage and divinity, seating us in Him, He in us, and collectively with and in the Father, all produced by the active administration of the Holy Spirit.  There is no separation between us and Him…but there is most definitely distinction.  Yes we partake of the divine nature…but the divine nature we partake of isn’t our own…it’s HIS.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sometimes Certainty is the Greatest Sin of All

Image
One of the more offensive beliefs espoused by western evangelicalism (and there are many) is the notion that all expressions of the Christian faith preceding it - Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Reformed, et al - were in such gross and debauched error as to render them outside the familial participation of Jesus Christ and indeed worshippers of ‘another Jesus’ altogether.  They espouse this without really considering the ramifications of what they are saying.  If these traditional veins are indeed disconnected from the one true Vine of the church, that would mean that the assembled family of God was absent from the earth for over a thousand years.  Taking it a step further in logical progression, it would be asserting that all of the voices informing our current understanding of the nature of God and His Church are irrelevant as why would we rely on those worshipping ‘another Jesus’ for guidance of any kind?!  So that would mean… The doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement which evangelica
Read more

Deconstructing Too Far

“Deconstruction”, when done correctly, is a refiner’s fire burning away that which is faulty or harmful, a gardener’s pruning cutting off those elements contributing to pain and death.  It should never consume the whole nor should it attempt to disconnect the branches from the vine.   While much needs removed, much warrants preservation.  Indeed, like pulling weeds from among the flowers, the purpose of subtracting the faulty is to enable the healthy multiplication of the pure.   A deconstruction process that burns the whole edifice to the ground isn’t healthy and it isn’t helpful.  It’s a form of mass suicide that, by inflicting the same fate on the wheat and the chaff alike, results in the same end as would have been obtained had we never deconstructed at all: misery and death.  (Note: I’m aware there are other, far better terms for the healthy form of ‘deconstruction’.  But I am equally aware that this is the word most commonly used and have adopted it above for the sake of clarity.
Read more

The God of the Illuminated Journey

Image
The God of the Illuminated Journey The faith we experience is not our own or somehow under our manipulative control, to expand or shrink based on our effort or will, but originates from the Source: Father, Son, and Spirit.  As that faith grows, changes, and matures, it remains HIS faith at work in-and-through us.  We cannot multiply it or enlarge its borders.  We cannot order its comings and goings as if it were our subject, obliged to obey our command.  We simply discover it a little bit more each day.   We have, through the fear and intimidation of fundamentalist evangelicalism, substituted the journey with a destination.  By centering the argument on the false dichotomies (or, stated more accurately, false dichotomies as evangelicalism understands and articulates them) of heaven vs hell, saved vs unsaved, right vs wrong, the sunrise has been forfeited for a light switch.  Rather than experience Father, Son, and Spirit through a gradual unveiling of wonder wherein His luminance grows
Read more