Jesus is Our Reality: Accessing Christ’s Divine Nature

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By: Jim Valekis

What if you could play basketball like LeBron James?

Not because you had his natural talent, but because through some magical “digital” process, he downloaded to you his skills—and gave you moves you never had before.

What if I told you the special skills of Christ are yours for the taking, too?

Let me explain.

The Solidarity of All Creation (Even the Marketplace) With Jesus Christ

Smiling Icon shares the Theological Grounding of Reality Ministries espouses about the solidarity of all of the cosmos and humanity with the life of Christ, the second Person of the Godhead. We quote it in part below, used by permission. The full statement can be found at Theological Grounding | Reality Ministries.

We believe in:

A Christ-Centered View of Reality

  • The Creator and God/human Jesus Christ is the central truth of the cosmos (Col 1:16-17).

A Christ-Centered Unconditional Love

  • God loves us more than he loves himself (1 John 3:16).
  • God’s good creatures fall into sinful self-destruction
  • But in his life, death and resurrection, Jesus Christ has embraced all persons at their worst to rescue and redeem them for a renewed relationship with the triune God (Rom 5:5-10, Col 1:13-14).

A Christ-Centered Inclusion

  • The exclusive claim of Jesus Christ (Jn 14:6) excludes no one.
  • Jesus Christ is the most inclusive person there is (Jn 12:32)!
  • We are all implicated in the Second Adam even more than in the first (Rom 5:18).

A Christ-Centered Belonging

  • We belong to God by grace alone.
  • We belong to Christ not by what we have done, but because of who Christ is and what he has done (Rom 3:23-24).
  • Repentance and belief occur inside of belonging (Rom 2:4).
  • Jesus Christ is the Savior of all people (1 Tim 4:10) and the Lord of all people (Phil 2:10).

A Christ-Centered Grasp of Community

  • Humans are made for community.
  • Through the Son of God, we are by grace adopted children of God, created to share the relational love eternally going on between Trinitarian Persons (Eph 1:3-10).
  • We are therefore called to communion with God, and to kinship and mutuality with one another, all in the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:17).

A Christ-Centered Human Response to God

  • Unless we were united with Christ, we could not know God or respond to God (Mt 11:27, Jn 15:5).
  • As God, Jesus Christ shares his true knowledge of God with us, and as a human being, his true response to God for us.
  • Within his response for us, we discover our most particularized and personalized response! (Col 3:4, Mt 16:25)

A Christ-Centered Approach to Hospitality

  • We welcome each other unconditionally because of the way Christ has welcomed every one of us (Rom 15:7).
  • Because Christ has forgiven us before we ask, we desire to do the same (Eph 4:32, Lk 23:34, Mt 18:22).
  • Hospitality also involves providing a safe place where people can thrive in unity and peace (Col 3:15, Rom 14:19).

A Christ-Centered Reading of Scripture

  • The written word of God is not to be conflated with, or separated from, the Living Word of God.
  • The highest view of the Bible is one which submits to the Word (Jn 1:1).

A Christ-Centered Transformation

  • We have been given a right relationship with God!
  • Living into the truth of who we are and whose we are, we are reoriented by God’s transformational grace in Christ (Rom 12:1-2).
  • To reject our relationship with the Lord and Savior to whom we belong is inherently self-destructive and ripples with myriad consequences (2 Peter 2:1-2).

A Christ-Centered Reality of Reconciliation

  • We Share A Christ-Centered Reality of Reconciliation
  • In light of the truth of Jesus Christ for all human beings, we refuse to be satisfied with a world-view that separates humanity from God or human beings from one another.
  • In Christ our true humanity resides, and there is no “us and them.”
  • We belong to each other.
  • That is the REALITY of reconciliation in which we may participate (2 Cor 5:19).

So consider that. We can “participate” in that Reality. Notice this Scripture.

Peter 1:4 Christian Standard Bible
4 . . . he has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire.

Let these phrases sink in.

1. You may share in the Divine Nature (access it)

2. You can escape your own spiritual limitations.

It’s all because we can share in not just “a” reality, but “the” Reality that is Jesus Christ. We’re going to unpack each of these doctrinal statements in subsequent blogs.

Prepare to start sinking more hoops in the game of life in the Marketplace.

 

Lebron James Photo By Erik Drost – https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrost88/51959977144/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=131408908

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