I've been listening to Richard Rohr's Universal Christ and am deeply resonating with his thoughts about Christ. He makes Bible based, transformative assertions about what God has done in and through Jesus, the Christ. I will be sharing them over the next few newsletters.
Today I want to talk about "Christ" not being Jesus' last name but the title that deserves our full attention. Rohr says it's a name for everything. I know, sounds new agey and heretical but stay with me and give the Biblical references mindful consideration.
In Acts 2:36, Peter said that God had made Jesus both Lord and Christ. Why the distinction? We hear plenty about Jesus being Lord but perhaps not so much about what it means that He is the Christ, the Anointed One. Christ is a translation from the Hebrew word "Mashiach", the Jews' concept of the redeemer and savior of all creation. The One who would make all things right.
John in his gospel, John 1:1 wrote that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and was God. This Word became a human being in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
So what happens when the Word of God becomes a member of His creation as the Anointed One? The pattern of His life reveals the essential way, truth, and life of the universe. This is the Creator's signature on all things. Incarnation, healing, death, resurrection. Order, disorder, reorder. When we live according to this pattern, we experience blessing and wholeness. When we go against it, we experience disintegration.
To receive Christ is to accept and commit to this divine pattern, to unite with God, becoming an adopted child into the beloved family of the universe.
What's with this universal application?
Check out Ephesians 1:3-10
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
Yeah, that is one seriously packed thought. Make sure you meditate and reflect on that last line, "...to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ." That is the purpose and mission of the Anointed One, becoming one with everything through the pattern lived out by Jesus: order, disorder, reorder. Human development from childhood to adolescence to adulthood reflects this. And so do many other things, as science is discovering more and more.
As you contemplate the mystery of Easter, what are your limits of who Christ is and what He's achieved through the incarnation, death and resurrection (order, disorder, reorder)? To what extent are you living according to the universal pattern? To do so is to live in the Anointed One.
It starts with believing in Love beyond what you can control. This faith leads us to die daily to our false ideas about God, life, others and even ourselves. This will be a season of disorder. As we let go of inferior beliefs, attitudes, and values, our mind and heart are reordered, raised to a new way of being, living, and loving.
Don't get stuck on the Gospel being simply a transactional event. It is much more a transformative pattern that unites us with God who is love (1 John 4:8), the very destination of all things. Resurrection is the logical end of reordering to becoming one with the ever and always present Lover of our souls.
Message me to talk about this pattern for abundant, spiritual life in Christ.