The Last Word: Abide

"Remain in me, and I will remain in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me." — John 15:4 (NET)

Everything this confession contains returns here. The doctrine of God ends in the God who can be known. The doctrine of man ends in the hiding that He came to end. The cross ends in access. Scripture ends in encounter. Theosis ends in the iron placed in the forge. The Church, the warfare, the disciplines, the ethics — all of it is the description of a life that has one root and one requirement: remain.

A confession cannot teach the knowing, any more than a book can teach love. Only God's own love, poured into the heart by the Holy Spirit working from the inside, can do that. This document points. The Spirit teaches. If you have read these pages and been persuaded of every article, and have not gone to Him, the confession has failed in the only way that matters. And if you close this document, set it down, and abide — then it has done everything a document can do.

The last word does not belong to this confession. It belongs to Him who prayed, on the night He was betrayed, that we would know the Father and know the Son — and who is still praying it.

This confession invites the Church to examine itself against this standard.

It asks: Where have we drifted from the relational knowing that is the heart of the gospel?

What have we gained? What have we lost?

And where must we return?

Soli Deo Gloria

The Michlaude Discipleship Project

Glossary of Terms

Several terms used in this confession carry specific technical meaning. This glossary is provided for readers unfamiliar with them.

Coram Deo: Latin, "before the face of God." The posture of the whole Christian life — not a spiritual achievement to be reached, but the native environment of the person who knows she is loved. Every moment, every decision, every conversation lived in the awareness of God's presence.

Theosis: The patristic doctrine of salvation as transformation into the divine likeness through union with Christ. Not apotheosis — the human person does not acquire the divine nature as his own possession or dissolve into it. Rather: participation in God's life by grace. The image used in this confession is iron held in a forge — it takes on the fire's heat and light and glow, yet never becomes fire and never ceases to be iron. Theosis is that participation: real, deep, and transformative, while the distinction between God and His image-bearers remains forever.

Huiothesia: The Greek word for adoption — specifically, the legal conferral of full family membership on one who was not born into the family. This confession uses it in the treatment of baptism: not merely a marking, but a grafting into God's household as His child, with full standing as heir.

Mysterion: The Greek word Paul uses in Ephesians 5:32 for the "mystery" of marriage. Not a secret withheld, but a sacred reality whose outward form contains and discloses something that exceeds the form — the marriage covenant containing and pointing to the love of Christ for His Church.

Participatory/Mystical (theological architecture): A framework that places union with Christ and progressive transformation into His likeness at the center of salvation, rather than legal transaction alone. This is the primary lens of the present confession — which does not minimize justification but situates it within the larger frame of relational union.

Partial Preterism: The interpretive position that much biblical prophecy — including the majority of Matthew 24's Olivet Discourse — was fulfilled in the events surrounding AD 70 and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, while the Second Coming, final resurrection, and last judgment remain future. This confession holds this position explicitly. See On the Future.

Olivet Discourse: Jesus's extended teaching on the destruction of the Temple and related events, delivered on the Mount of Olives and recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21.

Coram Deo (see above).