I am trying to think through some of the issues that relate to what the future will look like or more specifically what are we becoming. I am convinced that the general debate about modernity and post modernity is irrelevant and that it is a passing phase of thinking. Something so much more powerful is at work which is hard to either define or categorise.
In short, I sense that there is going to be a greater synthesis between technology and consciousness. I can not at this point reach into a cogent form of expression to define it but it seems as if it is inevitable.
The implications for the Christian are enormous because we are morphing away from being Human touched by the divine but rather human that is seeking to utilise technology to become divine.
It is the same old stuff but in a new packaging.
I am not sure what to do in terms of response. One side of me wants to leave social theory all behind and move on with the Bayash project to see the people and the culture transformed by the Gospel. Another part of me knows that I have this grasp of understanding about social theory that should not be ignored. It is a dilemna.
It is hard to develop a tightly balanced and coherent worldview or philosophy of life in the age that we live in. Actually age is probably not the best description of our time rather it is a generational-parenthesis more than anything else. Almost before one has finished writing a description of the now then something else comes forward to make what one has written obsolete.
We have to develop in our thinking a theological-philosophy of life that is a template into which the changes that occur can be placed.
Relevancy is really a curse because that which we seek to be relevant to is both constantly changing and increasingly defined by its vapor.
No my sense is that we have to work through some of these issues at a wider or broader level.
My sense is increasingly leaning towards the idea that pluralization is the most effective means of destabilizing reference points. I would like to research, but who has the time, the relationship between pluralization and liberal theology in the 19th century.
In short, due to the process of pluralization during the colonial era in both Britain and Germany as an onlooker the interrelational aspects of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism with Christianity forced a rethinking of the absolute nature of the truth claims of all the religions. The outcome of course being a liberalization of belief in the absolute truth claims of Christianity. The eastern religions could not stand up to any intense criticism and so Christianity was forced by violence to be viewed in a similar way.
I have been experimenting recently on some different forms of spirituality. I usually pray out loud and usually I walk when I pray. I am not sure if it is disposition or habit but my life has been most fruitful when I walk and pray.
Recently I have been working on something completely new.
I am trying to move to a more meditative approach. How I do this is to take a theme and reduce it to a clear proposition or statement. For about ten days I have been thinking of the truth that God is the Potter and I am the clay.
I remind myself of this truth as often as I can by simply thinking upon it. When my mind wanders I bring it back by saying the words "You are the Potter and I am the clay" in my mind.
It has been astonishing in terms of keeping my heart focused on the Lord. When my mind wanders I force it back with the proposition, which of course means something personal and precious.
I have then moved on to creating a secondary rhyme which goes with the first proposition. So I would say in my mind, You are the Potter and I am the clay, you are the Master I am the slave. The rhyme helps the concentration and the theme is upheld in the two statements.
But this is not a mantra and so now after ten days I am asking the Lord to reveal another theme or proposition to me to help me keep on track in my mind.
What is interesting is that I have been anxious about money a lot recently and it immediately causes a break in the communion with God. The good that comes from this is that I am forced to wrestle with the issues of anxiety because what is at stake is my walk with God in this lovely and precious way.
I have been looking at Brother Lawrence and also dear faithful Frank Laubach and tonight I was looking at Thomas A Kempis. All of these ones knew this place of inward reflection and quietness that creates communion.
Yesterday I was driving through Belgrade in Serbia. The challenge of the city is enormous. The energy in the city as a whole reminds me more of Istanbul than it does a Slavic city.
I dream of starting a Church in a city like this but I must put such thoguhts out of my mind as there are hardly years left to do what we have been called to which is to influence the Bayash culture with the Gospel.
In Belgrade there is a Gypsy village under the main autoput bridge accross the Sava. It is dreadful beyond words. I have a gps reading and will go baqck sometime to see what we can do.
I am working on editing the tex for the Bayash childrens Bible. It is amazing what the translators have had to do to come up with words that do not exist in Bayash. For example when Moses was given the ten commandments the only word they could come up with for rules was Zapovijedurljeâščeâ. No wonder Bayash society is lawless no one can say the word so it is best to ignore the concept all together. There has to be a better way of translating this.
Romans 2 19 and 20 are such wonderful verses and are full and rich in their implications not to allow ourselves to go back to the law, any law believing that it can justify us in some measure or in some way with and before God.
What is interesting is that in the UBS Greek manuscript set verses 19 and 20 are clustered differently than most translations in English are presented. The ISV lays it out in accordance with the Greek text cluster which actually nuances the message without actually changing it in any way.
It reads, v19 For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ. It does in some sense, render the text in such a way as if it were saying the same thing but in two different ways. I am intensely interested in this as there are implications, albeit minor in terms of doctrine, for a deeper understanding of what the original intent was of the Apostle when he writes.
My sense is he is saying something like the following.
1. The law cannot do anything to save me but it is good in that it leads me to Christ.
2. It leads me to Christ in a state of desperation because I cannot find any way of working my way into God's favour.
3. So the law digs its own grave as far as what it can do for me to save me. It simply cannot.
4. After the law leads me to Christ I realise God is not trying to get me to obey the law to save myself.
5. He, God that is, has saved me by Christ who did keep the law being a substitute, legally and accapetable before God. He kept the law for me.
6. Also, with that same idea of substitute in mind, He paid my penalty which is death, he took death on the cross instead of my dying and facing judgement.
7. In that sense the law is no dead to me and I am dead to the law.
8. In other words, when Christ was crucified I was there being crucified with him as far as God was concerned.
My sense is that there are some very real problems with analysing and interpreting the narrative to use a Lyotard'ism in terms of ideas. We have to look far beyond ideas to understand the age we live in. I am not saying ideas are redundant just that they are not the total solution in seeking to understand the world we live in. We have to explore the processes, sociological processes, to understand at least some of the issues facing us today. The we have to look at another force or factor and that is the power of the Holy Spirit to move in a way that seems random to man yet fits into the sovereignty of God. Ideas and processes are used by God, permitted by God and in some senses, article three let him who has ears hear, ordained by God. Let me put it another way. There are three clearly explicit forces at work that both shape and define the world we live in. Ideas that can be understood and related to, processes that are hidden and amoral in their scope and yet profound in the way that they shape cultures and then the wind of the Spirit who comes and goes as He pleases shaking up both the ideas and the processes by the presence of His own self.
I am preparing for our study group this morning and going over Grudems condensed Systematic Theology. One of the areas that I am thinking through is the relationship between Clarity and Sufficiency. If, which I believe it is, the Bible has God inspired clarity at the same time that it has God inspired sufficiency then the end result is that if a category is not clear it does not have priorty in the mind of God as something that He desires to communicate.
This is especially relevant to me at the moment in the realm of eschatological thought. In short, clarity and sufficiency work together not as a dialectic because it would have an oxymoronic outcome. Ostensibly, what may be at stake here is the very concept of categories which are increasingly elevated to a position of an axiom.
It is probably true to say that in the early church there were no categories of thought rather streams or lines thinking. Therefore the concept of the eschaton would not have demanded tightly defined schems but rather a more Midrashic general principle form.
For most of my life I have struggled with identity. The central focus of that identity has been the fact that I am not formerly educated in any field or discipline.
I was thrown out of school when I was 15 with not really finishing the 9th grade. In my twenties I studied a few courses at London University, Indiana University, Kansas University and The London School of Theology. But I still have formerly an incomplete 9th grade education.
So academically I can appeal to no credential to authenticate my vocation.
A similar story is true in the area of Churchmanship. I am not an ordained clergyman. Despite holding pastoral offices I cannot say I am a minister in any sense of the word.
So what am I?
I tell stories. I am a communicator of Biblical truth in the format of the narrative:
I have written several books
I have written many tracts and articles
I communicate stories verbally by means of preaching
Also by means of dramatic narrative
I motivate and recruit people to various tasks by telling them stories
Above all else.....I am a story teller.
I went down to the Varazdin Jewish cemetery today and looked through the railings as the gates were closed. Just for a moment I imagined a Jewish family standing there in the 1930's before the killing came to the country. Nearly all the Jews in this city were murdered between 1941 -1945 . Now there are just a few monuments and these grave stones that speak of the fact once in these streets were those from the lost tribe of Israel. It moves me deeply to think of a people being eradicated for no other reason than they are a people. My sense is that Europe is going back in that direction again. The shift to the right is almost unusually even all across the continent at about 14%. With numbers like these it will take just a burst of economic depression to push those numbers up to 30% then wait for the smell of smoke.
For years I have had a desire to put together a study group that would look at two areas of study, one, Reformed theology and two, Social Theory. The basic premise is that as an academic exercise certain studies often fall in between the cracks of the various disciplines and as a result the freedom to pursue conclusions is often limited. I have wanted to work on a Jewish Yeshiva model of learning which has an interactive style using questions and answers. This week we launched our first programme with a three hour study on the inspiration of the scriptures. It was both rewarding and nourishing as we wrestled through this foundational topic.
Life in this kind of ministry is filled with so much negative information. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the evil that rules peoples lives. To be able to get away for a few hours and take pictures of wild flowers takes me to another world. A place of beauty and gentleness where no one can infringe or defile. It is here on My Emmaus Road that I can talk with God about the burdens of life and seek wisdom for the way ahead. Wild Flowers are becoming my friends or companions in the walk of life.
Interestingly, over most of my life I have always seemed to have multiple options that have faced me. The strength is that whatever one is doing the realisaton that there are other options in the event of things not working out has acted as a safety net. The weakness is that one is always working with one suitcase packed and ready to leave, by defaut it dilutes the intensity of ones passion.
Over the last 15 years I have seen a decided reverse in this trend. Less options seem to be there year on year. The result being that there is more passion but a corresponding sense of human insecurity. Admittedly, this causes one to cast oneself on God not because of a more mature spirituality but rather as there is nowhere else to cast oneself.
Twenty years ago I owned a house, two cars, albeit bad ones, had a plan for retirement and routine offers to take on a variety of ministry positions. I used to have a friend run my diary as I was booked up to speak a year in advance. Today, we own nothing, no house, almost no furniture not even our car. There is no retirement fund, our retirement "plan" is simple, "Don't". I preach to a hand full of Croats who generally do not come in droves and Gypsies whose history as a ministry focused people group does not have the best of pedigrees.
But the truth is in all honesty I have never been so happy. We wake up in the morning and pass each other the ibruprofen yet we would not be young again for anything. We realise that our mortality is not just a theological truth but an existential reality as the monthly list of loved ones who now grace heavens shores rather than this troubled planet, increases exponentially. If Nancy were to die now, I would not have to face the dilemna of a younger man on whether to remarry or not. I would just increase my workload and let the ticking time-bomb in the center of my chest do the rest. What is interesting though is that the more fragile our physical humanity becomes the more solid our sense of the reality of the spiritual realm.
"It's a Beautiful Life?" no, that would not take into account the suffering and mystery of failure and sin. " The Passion" is probably a better title. A passion to see a people who have walked in darkness see a great light and wrestle, in the name of Jesus, the Bayash Gypsies out of the kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of God's dear Son. Something to live for yes, something to die for, absolutely.
Just going over the blog for the last several postings I can see this age old problem of moving on too quickly beyond spiritual truths that have nourished us. It is so hard today to get into a frame of mind where the truth that God reveals is meditated upon and then nurtures maturity in our spiritual lives. A thought comes that is deeply impressive upon our spiritual lives then it is lost in the maelstrom of competing and alternative views and ideas. Maybe one aspect of the exaltation to do all things decently and in order calls for a more reflective approach to our spiritual lives.
I have been thinking much about life in America compared to life here in Europe. It is obvious that there has to be a lot of relativity and perspective involved here. America always seems to bring the worst out of me. I eat to much, I end up believing all the superlative language Americans use to describe me, I am so brave, so committed and so spiritual. I come back to Europe and I sigh in relief. I eat less and I run into the reality of who I am.
I was reading the biography of Watchman Nee this morning. There is a moving passage about the death of his mentor Margaret Barbour. She died with almost no money and no property and left her Bible toWatchman in her Will. What was moving was that she was spoken of as someone who simply loved her Lord and gave all for Him. I began to meditate on what it meant to love the Lord. Why do I love Him what has He saved me from. As I pondered I realised how much the Lord has saved me from myself. In my teenage years I had begun to show signs of terrible destructiveness in other peoples lives. So much selfishness that un
arrested would have led to disaster. I am today a new person because I have been saved from myself. This is very important and precious to me. In some ways it is a seal upon my life. I know what I was and what I would have become. Oh God how great is your Grace.
There is a sense that to capture what Christ in you means we need to think through a series of steps in our understanding:
1. We are enlightened to the truth of the Gospel.
2. We respond to that Gospel with an affirmative, "God have mercy on me a sinner"
3. This is responded to by The Holy Spirit bringing the presence of the life of Christ into our minds.
4. This produces within us a sensitivity to the Word which did not have before.
5. We are then forced into making decisions based upon the Word and our enlightened conscience.
6. We are now able to discern between the flesh and the Spirit.
7. Options are opened between choosing what is revealed to us or continuing to operate in the flesh.
I was thinking today how I have not read any real commentaries on Colossians over the years.
Also, how there are certain books that have been promoted at different times in history. As I have been going over Colossians just recently I realise how close this book is to my heart and how I find myself being personally attached to it. I wonder if God has special times for different sections fo scripture. As if they are always important and yet there are times when a very key eara conforms to a piece of scripture in a unique way. I think Colossians and Ecclesiastes strike me in this way. Yes they are for all time but Oh how so relevant for now.
I just preached to our Fellowship here in Varazdin. I realise how much at home I am here and the meetings enhance the sense of being at peace and in the right place. I ahve beenthinking much today about my own natural strengths and the way that this gets in the way of what God is wanting to do with my true life before him. I was sharing with Nancy this morning how I have been greatly influenced over the years by three streams of spiritual though, traditional Reformed theology but not ecclesiology, The revival emphasis of Sparks, Hession and co and then the Ian Thomas message on the life of Christ within. I feel so safe spiritually within this context. I desire more and more to create a hybrid of teaching on these great streams of thought.
I am going to teach on Gideon at the Fellowship tomorrow. It is interesting how God purposely limited the resources of Gideon sothat they would not be able to boast in the victory over the enemy. My sense it is the same today. It is too easy to see the issues of the battle being that of resources, ie. people and money. In real terms, real victory comes from supernatural intervention. What is also interesting and I got the idea from from Bill Macdonald is when Gideon's men broke the clay vessles the light shone through and the vicotry was taken. So it is with us. When the clay vessle of our lives which holds the treasure of the Glory of God are broken then the Glory is seen. The glory of God is in the face of Jesus Christ. When we are broken of all our human strength and power then the Glory of Jesus is seen. May it be so Lord.
This has been quite a week. We have been in Hungary for most of it working on language study. That has been hard but joyful. In other areas things have been very difficult as the Trnovec Fellowship has really come under pressure this week with outside persecution and lies. They are all discouraged and it may mean we have to stop meeting there. These are difficult days in the Bayash world. We have yet other repeats of allegations against someone we love and yet the allegations are so consisitent and widespread we will have to do something. It is not easy. Usually I work on the basis that a decision has to be made and then we live with the consequences. In tis case coming up with the right decision is very very tough.
One of the real problems of holding to a Pre Mil position yet at the same time being focused upon justice and social action is that it all seems to be futile in light of the fact that thew world could be coming to an end soon. A helpful way to look at this is through the eyes of personal sanctification. I am as Holy as it is possible to be through the Blood of the Cross and yet I still strive day by day to walk with God resist sin and seek God's face. One could say well what is the point because one day we will be like Him and the struggle will be over this would of course be nonsense and the passivity that it would produce is obvious. So it is with the world in general. Yes it will all be restiored one day and yet we are clearly seeking to fight evil and elevate goodness wherever we can.
I have been thinking through the differences between "Offices" and "Gifts". Offices defintely have a human to human dimension whereas gifts are more Divine to Human in application. Example, the office of Elder, Pastor, Priest, Deacon, Bishop etc depending on which denomination or type of Church in question, are all ultimately terms that are used for the primary Biblical offices of Apostle, Elder, Prophet and Deacon. They are though offices which involve the recognition by men and women of other men and women to play a certain role in the life and ministry of the Church. For obvious reasons these offices can be revoked and often are revoked by men and women for a multitude of reasons both just and unjust,or good or bad.
It is different with Gifts.
Gifts come from God by the Spirit into the stewardship of people. They are simply knowledge, wisdom, skill and ability which have been granted by God to His children. The issue of whether they are used or utilized has little to do with other men and women but rather on whether the indivdiual will submit to God place all at the dispsoal to the true owner of that resource, ie. God Himself.
When failure comes, which it always does in varying degress of seriousness, it may be both prudent and correct to remove someone from an office. It may be also prudent to restore a person to an office. It is though always mandatory to understand that men and women can never seek to hinder or disuade an indivdual from exercising their God given gifts, for the simple reason the gifts are from God in the first place. In that sense the Gifts of God are irrevocable.
Nancy and I were talking this evening about the teaching on the exchanged life. It is all good stuff and certainly those who present this are gracious and generally pure in their thinking. The problem I have with this though is its tendency to present some kind of neo Platonism in terms of our "being", being an empty shell that the Lord dwells within in. In real terms it seems to me that the life of Christ is more viral in its constitution than it is a replacement of our own consciousness. The viral aspect is that His life and my life intertwine into some kind of new personality hybrid. I am commanded to do certain things which in my own strength I cannot and yet as a result when I submit to God something takes place within me that causes the "me" to be made new. It is not some kind of effect where I am still present but Jesus is overruling my inward consciousness. I am still "me" yet the "me" is actually is modified by His being within me.
1. Matthew 26 v 7 The woman poured the broken alabaster jar of perfume over the head of the Lord Jesus.
a. The unused perfume would have not have any use.
b. The Alabaster Jar is designed to keep the perfume inside.
c. The Jar had to be broken to release the perfume.
2. Matthew 26 v 8 & 9 The Disciples thought there was a better use of the perfume.
3. Matthew 26 v 10 to 13
Jesus saw it differently:
a. There was a direct relationship between the perfume and His body.
b. He would have this perfume for the rest of His days on earth, through Gethsemane and the Cross.
Application
1. Our lives, strengths and natural abilities are like Alabaster Jars. As long as we are in control the inward life of Jesus cannot come forth. Our natural strengths and abilities have no value or use in themselves.
2. Suffering and the mysteries of life cause our outward selves to be broken. This is good not bad. When our natural self is broken then the life of Christ can flow through us.
3. We think of brokenness as a waste. Our talents could be used for the sake of the Gospel to get the job done.
4. The perfume of the life of Christ within us has value to the bod of Christ, not His physical body but rather His Body, The Church.
5. When we allow ourselves to be broken it becomes a token of ongoing love and devotion to the Lord Jesus. We honour the Wounds of the Lamb by the way we live.
1. God makes the promise, our role is to receive what He has promised.
a. The Promise to Abraham to give the Land to Israel
Gen 13:14 The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, "Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward,
Gen 13:15 for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.
b. The promise confirmed to Moses
Exodus 6:8 I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD.'"
c. The Promise re confirmed to Joshua
Jos 1:6 Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.
d. The Land was not yet fully taken
Jos 13:1 Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the LORD said to him, "You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to possess.
2. In Christ He has promised us certain things.
a. We have to say that this is what God is truly like.
Exo 34:6 The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
Exo 34:7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation."
b. In real terms the God of Ex. 34 is the picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Col 1:19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
Col 2:9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,
c. The Lord Jesus dwells in our hearts by faith.
Col 1:27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Thus the attributes of God that are in Christ are within us in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This truth has an added dimension
d. Our old man has been crucified.
Rom 6:6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
Rom 6:7 For one who has died has been set free from sin.
Rom 6:8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
Rom 6:9 We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.
Rom 6:10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.
Rom 6:11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
It is when our old man is not allowed to be what it is, dead, that we find that the fullness of God is unseen in our lives.
Taking The Promised Land of Our Life In Christ is Something that God Does For Us Through The Mystery of Breaking
e. That is why our human will, strength and power needs to be broken in reality and made dead to the reality of our daily lives.
(i) The things that break our human strengths come from the hands of a God who loves us.
Rev 3:19 I rebuke and discipline as many as I love; be zealous therefore and repent.
(ii) It is not anger or hatred that motivates God but own best eternal interest.
2Co 12:10 Wherefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in insults, in necessities, in persecutions, in straits, for Christ: for when I am weak, then I am powerful.
(iii) Our greatest strength humanly is our greatest weakness spiritually.
1Co 1:27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world, that he may put to shame the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world, that he may put to shame the strong things;
(iv) Our greatest weakness humanly is our greatest strength spiritually.
2Co 12:9 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Exodus 34
a. He listened - Humility
b. He Cut the stones - Discipline
c. He cleared the mountainside – Understood Holiness
d. He climbed the mountain – He sought God
e. Presented himself to the Lord – He positioned himself before God
f. Bowed down before the Lord and worshipped – He worshipped
g. Cried to God for companionship – He declared his need
The Seven Actions of The Lord
a. He set the conditions for His meeting with Moses – The sign of His contract
b. He descended – The sign of His Grace
c. He passed before Moses - The sign of the Covenant
d. He stood with Moses – The sign of His identification
e. He spoke His own name – The sign of His authority
f. He shared His attributes – The Sign of His intention
(i) Merciful
(ii) Gracious
(iii) Slow to anger
(iv) Abounding in steadfast love
(v) Abounding in steadfast faithfulness
(vi) Keeping steadfast love for thousands
(vii) Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin
g. He gave a warning – The sign of His unchanging nature
He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation."
I have to be careful not to be reactionary just for the sake of it, but I do see that the pervading agenda of need that exists in the world today is a product of the perception of what is even a need of the same world today. Clearly, HIV, Female slavery, The environment and poverty are all issues that are real and yet they exist as priorities because they are Homogenised issues which the media can report in a way that are pan-belief. In other words they do not cut across the grain of the specific convictions of the majority.
I am thinking through issues that I sense are the key issues of need for the Church to address, three come to mind immediately :
Literacy - This certainly is a Homogenised issue yet it does not seem to have caught imagination of the media in the same way that the other issues have. This in itself makes me suspicious. It may be that literacy involves the ultimate discipline being in the hands of the recipient rather than in the one applying the programme.
Freedom from Entertainment - My sense is that entertainment has become one of the idols of contemporary man. There is probably hardly a more destructive force in the world today than the "The right to entertainment". Young people in almost all the countries of the world are now living in cultures where the demand to be entertained has recreated social structures and redefined social environments.
Disposability - I would propose that disposability is more than a concept of manufacturing technique or even software version enhancement. I would suggest that it has now become a social condition or context.
I have been thinking things through recently about the whole idea of suffering and also the role of suffering has in a proactive sense in our lives to conform us to the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
My thinking is still developing but my sense is that a Biblical cosmology could look like the following:
1. Exodus 34 reveals the attributes of God in some ways in the most succinct and powerful way. We have to say that this is what God is like, whether we are comfortable with this is not the issue. Rather God has clearly spoken of himself in a categorical manner.
2. The Lord Jesus is the image of the invisible God, Colossians 1 v 19 and Colossians 2 v 9 and He is the fullness of the Godhead. In real terms the God of Ex. 34 is the picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. The Lord Jesus dwells in our hearts by faith, Colossians 1 v 27 Christ in you the hope of Glory.
4. Thus the attributes of God that are in Christ are within us in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
5. Our old man has been crucified i.e. Rom 6:6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
6. It is when our old man is not allowed to be what it is, dead, that we find that the fullness of God is unseen in our lives.
7. Thus God allows suffering as a means of revealing to the unseen world of the spirit the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, Eph 3 v 10, Job 1.
8. It is when we finally die that our body of sin is completely done away with not in de facto but in ipso facto. At that point we will be free to be what we are intended to be here and that is Jesus clothed in our humanity.
