On the separation of persons
Oct 6, 2016 5:31:53 GMT
Post by Colossians on Oct 6, 2016 5:31:53 GMT
This material is for the teaching of the Body of Christ, however the author reserves copyright over it.
Forward
We have chosen our words very carefully in this document, for we are introducing some very deep concepts and do not wish to be misconstrued.
The reader is therefore requested to study it very carefully.
_______________________________
ON THE SEPARATION OF PERSONS
We are (by default) existentially separate to God, and therefore (by default) also sinners, for anyone who is outside of God’s person is by definition a sinner.1
1 Existentially sinners in that it is an offence before God for anyone but God to exist. Operationally sinners in that anyone who is external to God’s (inner) person will by default of connectivity with God naturally act in accord with his own interests rather than God’s.
And so we might at the first blame our sin on God; after all, if God had not brought us into being, we would not have existed as separate beings to Him and therefore would not have been rendered sinners.
But those who cut off the tree branch they are sitting on, tend to end up with very sore backsides: if we wish to blame God for our sin, we had better make sure we do so without existing.
It is tough at the bottom.
___
Given that God knew that bringing us into existence would render us sinners by default and so require His suffering at the hands of the law in order to join us to Him as one spirit (thus negating our separation from Him and thus negating our sin), we see that His bringing us into being was coextensive with His consignment to such suffering: God would be no pleasure-seeking fornicator, but a true husband indeed.
It is tougher at the top.
As Shakespeare would rather have had it
Christ died for us not merely as a reaction (to our sin), but because He was bound to us in marriage, and this in turn because our being brought into being was by way of our being taken out of Him. That is, and what is not understood in the church at large, Christ was actually obliged to die for us once we had been brought into being.2
2 We are of course here speaking only of them who had been taken out of Him and therefore only of the elect. Therefore for the more comprehensive picture, see our work: “Introduction to Statal Calvinism”.
And we in turn were obliged3 to accept such sacrifice, because without the up-front commitment to such on the part of Him, the Father would not have dared take us out of Him in the first place, which means we would not have existed at all: we owe our very existence to the blood of Jesus Christ,4 and it is therefore in our existence that Christ’s love and Christ’s creating - and therefore God’s love and God’s creating – come together.
3 And such obligation was fulfilled in the behalf of us by the Holy Spirit – in particular by His entering in to us. For we are not under law, but grace.
4 It is this fact which precludes any and all boasting. That is, in order to boast, we have first of all to exist, but in order for us to exist, Christ had first of all to commit to the Cross.
___
And so our sin is both His and our fault. It is His fault because He brought us into being. It is our fault because inherent in the being of anyone, is the necessarily-autonomous will to (continue to) be, and autonomy in the face of God is sin.
___
Romeo and Juliet must therefore die together:
“Buried with Him in baptism” Col 2:12.
___
Contrary then to what is commonly taught from the pulpit, our Husband is in fact no more intrinsically righteous than we, for as we have shown, our sin is (equally) both His and our ‘fault’.5
5 This then is where we more fully understand what it means to be not under the law. Specifically, if the law represents the (initial) qualitative gap between us and Him to whom we were espoused, then given that we would not have been brought into being unless He had committed to closing such gap by way of being joined to us, we see that in hindsight we were never under the law in the first place, but were always and rather “the beloved” (see Deut 33:12). And so although we are told that Christ died for us “while we were yet sinners” (Rom 5:8), we will understand such to be reminder of the fact that there is no boasting in Christ, rather than that which might in His eyes imply sin on our part at the fundamental level and thus at the very minimum initial resentment on His part toward us. For such (statement) is in fact prefaced only 2 verses earlier with the declaration that Christ died for us “when we were yet without strength”. That is, the (our) lack of connectivity with our Head was not the result of our sin, but the cause of it, and thus we understand that all sin committed by the elect is declared to be committed in ignorance. For knowledge is not the property of one’s body, but one’s head. (See also 1 Ti 1:13.)
Accordingly, it is not only the wife who is ‘saved’ by bringing forth progeny, but the husband too: the wife is justified in taking her husband’s name (and thereby ‘saved’) by bearing children (specifically a man child) to him, and such children (specifically a man child) then ‘preserve’ the husband in the carrying forward of his name into future generations, thereby ‘saving’ him.
And so it is written of Him who is our Husband:
“who shall declare His generation?” Is 53:8,
and of us who are the wife:
“And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron” Rev 12:5.
That is, the husband saves the wife, and the wife the husband. And thus it is written that a husband and wife are “heirs together of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7).
___
And so we see that the grace which saved us is also the grace that saved Christ6, and from this we derive that it was the Father who raised both Christ and us from the dead.
This is a hard thing to teach, but we pray the Lord open your understanding.
6 The many who conclude that 2 Sam 7:14 cannot possibly be in reference to Christ by virtue of the referent’s possible “iniquity”, are wrong: if we who are the woman were (by default of any connectivity with Him who is the Head) iniquitous from the beginning, then He who touched the woman of necessity became iniquitous too. And such is in fact what Paul was referring to when he said that Christ had been made sin for us: he was not declaring that Christ was our penal substitute, but that Christ had been joined to us in our death. (Cf. Hos 1:2, Lev 21:7.) (See also Lev 20:18 and our work: “Justification and sanctification as contrasted in the figures”.)
In closing …
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” Eph 1:3-5.
“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband” Eph 5:22-33.
“he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” 1 Cor 6:17.
Amen.
Forward
We have chosen our words very carefully in this document, for we are introducing some very deep concepts and do not wish to be misconstrued.
The reader is therefore requested to study it very carefully.
_______________________________
ON THE SEPARATION OF PERSONS
We are (by default) existentially separate to God, and therefore (by default) also sinners, for anyone who is outside of God’s person is by definition a sinner.1
1 Existentially sinners in that it is an offence before God for anyone but God to exist. Operationally sinners in that anyone who is external to God’s (inner) person will by default of connectivity with God naturally act in accord with his own interests rather than God’s.
And so we might at the first blame our sin on God; after all, if God had not brought us into being, we would not have existed as separate beings to Him and therefore would not have been rendered sinners.
But those who cut off the tree branch they are sitting on, tend to end up with very sore backsides: if we wish to blame God for our sin, we had better make sure we do so without existing.
It is tough at the bottom.
___
Given that God knew that bringing us into existence would render us sinners by default and so require His suffering at the hands of the law in order to join us to Him as one spirit (thus negating our separation from Him and thus negating our sin), we see that His bringing us into being was coextensive with His consignment to such suffering: God would be no pleasure-seeking fornicator, but a true husband indeed.
It is tougher at the top.
As Shakespeare would rather have had it
Christ died for us not merely as a reaction (to our sin), but because He was bound to us in marriage, and this in turn because our being brought into being was by way of our being taken out of Him. That is, and what is not understood in the church at large, Christ was actually obliged to die for us once we had been brought into being.2
2 We are of course here speaking only of them who had been taken out of Him and therefore only of the elect. Therefore for the more comprehensive picture, see our work: “Introduction to Statal Calvinism”.
And we in turn were obliged3 to accept such sacrifice, because without the up-front commitment to such on the part of Him, the Father would not have dared take us out of Him in the first place, which means we would not have existed at all: we owe our very existence to the blood of Jesus Christ,4 and it is therefore in our existence that Christ’s love and Christ’s creating - and therefore God’s love and God’s creating – come together.
3 And such obligation was fulfilled in the behalf of us by the Holy Spirit – in particular by His entering in to us. For we are not under law, but grace.
4 It is this fact which precludes any and all boasting. That is, in order to boast, we have first of all to exist, but in order for us to exist, Christ had first of all to commit to the Cross.
___
And so our sin is both His and our fault. It is His fault because He brought us into being. It is our fault because inherent in the being of anyone, is the necessarily-autonomous will to (continue to) be, and autonomy in the face of God is sin.
___
Romeo and Juliet must therefore die together:
“Buried with Him in baptism” Col 2:12.
___
Contrary then to what is commonly taught from the pulpit, our Husband is in fact no more intrinsically righteous than we, for as we have shown, our sin is (equally) both His and our ‘fault’.5
5 This then is where we more fully understand what it means to be not under the law. Specifically, if the law represents the (initial) qualitative gap between us and Him to whom we were espoused, then given that we would not have been brought into being unless He had committed to closing such gap by way of being joined to us, we see that in hindsight we were never under the law in the first place, but were always and rather “the beloved” (see Deut 33:12). And so although we are told that Christ died for us “while we were yet sinners” (Rom 5:8), we will understand such to be reminder of the fact that there is no boasting in Christ, rather than that which might in His eyes imply sin on our part at the fundamental level and thus at the very minimum initial resentment on His part toward us. For such (statement) is in fact prefaced only 2 verses earlier with the declaration that Christ died for us “when we were yet without strength”. That is, the (our) lack of connectivity with our Head was not the result of our sin, but the cause of it, and thus we understand that all sin committed by the elect is declared to be committed in ignorance. For knowledge is not the property of one’s body, but one’s head. (See also 1 Ti 1:13.)
Accordingly, it is not only the wife who is ‘saved’ by bringing forth progeny, but the husband too: the wife is justified in taking her husband’s name (and thereby ‘saved’) by bearing children (specifically a man child) to him, and such children (specifically a man child) then ‘preserve’ the husband in the carrying forward of his name into future generations, thereby ‘saving’ him.
And so it is written of Him who is our Husband:
“who shall declare His generation?” Is 53:8,
and of us who are the wife:
“And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron” Rev 12:5.
That is, the husband saves the wife, and the wife the husband. And thus it is written that a husband and wife are “heirs together of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7).
___
And so we see that the grace which saved us is also the grace that saved Christ6, and from this we derive that it was the Father who raised both Christ and us from the dead.
This is a hard thing to teach, but we pray the Lord open your understanding.
6 The many who conclude that 2 Sam 7:14 cannot possibly be in reference to Christ by virtue of the referent’s possible “iniquity”, are wrong: if we who are the woman were (by default of any connectivity with Him who is the Head) iniquitous from the beginning, then He who touched the woman of necessity became iniquitous too. And such is in fact what Paul was referring to when he said that Christ had been made sin for us: he was not declaring that Christ was our penal substitute, but that Christ had been joined to us in our death. (Cf. Hos 1:2, Lev 21:7.) (See also Lev 20:18 and our work: “Justification and sanctification as contrasted in the figures”.)
In closing …
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” Eph 1:3-5.
“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband” Eph 5:22-33.
“he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” 1 Cor 6:17.
Amen.