23. The Proof of Christ
The great contention, the great story of God, beginning with the accusation against God in that garden, that He lies, that His Word, the Lord Jesus Christ is false, governs the outward form of the present history of all creation.Nothing is more important to God than proving His Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be faithful and true. Yet His Church, the place of His proving, has not herself believed that God speaks the truth and has built an entire theology in agreement with the serpent that God, in fact, lies.
How, then, is Christian Community, life together, the Proof of Christ, that Jesus is faithful and true. You see, if love one another, the full reciprocity of God-Love in all our daily interactions together, is not fulfilled here on this earth, now in this age, then the serpent is "right" and God is "wrong."
We position ourselves entirely on the premise that love one another is our only reality. Yet we see also that the Lie cannot be confronted inside the pattern of a world split by knowing good and evil. The lie is defeated only out from a world, a universe of LIFE.
Lesson 23.1 A Shepherd's Heart gives an entirely different vew of our love for God's Church than we have known before. We see as God sees; we see all who belong to Jesus already filled with Christ.
Lesson 23.2 The True Witness presents Christian Community, loving one another through the interactions of daily life together, as the only PROOF and wtiness of Christ there can be.
Lesson 23.3 The Pattern of the New then traces out how it is that life together in Christian Community will become the seed and the pattern by which the entirety of the New Creation and all the ages to come are formed.