Status Updates From Living in Union with Christ...

@katiekasserman just found our next book

Well-written. “Imputation is, if you like, a corollary of implantation. What this means for the righteousness that is manifest in the transformation of our Christian lives is that it proceeds not from an infusion of new spiritual energy but from our new identities constituted in union with Jesus Christ.”

“Paul shows that the death [and resurrection] of Christ is not just representative as he bears the sinner's guilt and takes the sinner's place, but it is incorporative…the same Christ with whom he died now lives in him as a new reality that inhabits his flesh. His own flesh, then, no longer defines the limits of his existence or constitutes the true outline of his self; he is in Christ and Christ is in him.”

Echoes of good ol’ Cavin:

“Idolatry is defined by its subjects as much as it is by its objects; we are constitutionally idolatrous, and that is why we turn things into idols.”

Macaskill says John 15:5 is a clear paradigm for sanctification, but because of sinful individualism, we don’t rely on Christ’s Spirt to change us.
“If sin is … a turning inward into ourselves, then it is entirely opposed to the act of opening ourselves to the indwelling presence of another, particularly THIS other, who has such power to transform us. Sin seeks to dig in, to hold on to what it occupies.”

“The Spirit…who is so important to Paul's account of the moral life, is represented not as helping us to fulfill our frustrated potential but as realizing within us the identity of the Son, and he does this because he himself is the Spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6)”

After saying union with Christ is the sine qua non of the “Christian moral life”:
“The goal of our salvation is not that we become morally better versions of ourselves, but that we come to inhabit and manifest more of [Jesus’s] moral identity.”

Talking about the Gospel and Christian ethics. We don't become morally superior versions of ourselves, rather, it is truly Christ acting in us. Tha's Macaskill's argument more or less.

That chapter on the Lord's Supper, Memory, Identity, and Time was transformative and definitely something I return to and think about in the future! Great, great stuff!

Absolutely brilliant so far!

Great pastoral preface! Holiday read while I'm away home in Brazil with the family. Gifted by my dear pastor Ian.