The Mystery of Union
By: Dan Stone

Paul's teaching to believers focused on a great mystery. To the church in Colossae he wrote of

"...the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Colossians 1:25-27)

Christ in us. That is our only expectation of experiencing and expressing the glory of God. Elsewhere, Paul expressed the mystery in another way:

"But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him." (I Cor. 6:17)

Actually, the words with Him aren't even in the original Greek. The translators added them for clarification. So:

"The one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit."

He or she, a spiritual being, who is joined to the Lord, is one spirit. There are two... they are one. You and He are one.

We are one spirit with God. We function as one. We are not absorbed into the Lord, however. There is an I and there is a He, but we are joined to Him and we function as one. It is a function of cooperation, like a union of gears that mesh together. Our union with God doesn't mean that we are so swallowed up in God that we lose our identity. But neither is there a separation. Rather, the two function as one for the purposes of the greater one, God.

He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. That is a mystery. One plus one equals one. How can that be? The divine and the human are one.

Until we know and live out of our union with Christ, we will never fully manifest the life of God within us. Some of it will inevitably shine through now and then, despite us. But for the most part we will manifest our own merely human life.

Until we know union, we are constantly confronted by the illusion of separation. "God is up there; I am down here. How do I draw close to God? Give me a plan. Give me a program." Plenty of people are ready with the answers. "Read your Bible. Pray. Study. Witness. Tithe. Take communion. Here are the plans. Here are the programs."

But once you know your union with God, there's nothing left for you to do. Oh, you may still do some of the outer things. But you aren't doing them to get close to God. You and God are one. There is no more separation.

When you begin living out of your union with Jesus Christ, you move beyond Christ plus anything, no matter how good it might be. ...We live and move and have our being in God, who is our life. We are saved by His life. He is our life.

Christ lives out His life in us ­ funny old you, funny old me. We have all kinds of different shapes, forms, and fashions, all kinds of interests, all kinds of diversity, all kinds of uniqueness. Praise the Lord. We don't have to look like, act like, talk like, or be like anybody else again. We are free to be ourselves. People see us, but we know it's Jesus living through us.

I really enjoyed reading that.

And, if I can springboard off it for a moment:

In John 17, Jesus prayed to the Father, "15 I ... ask... that you keep them [His disciples] from the evil one. ... 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. ...I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me."

Our union with Christ is not merely personal. It is interpersonal oneness with each other as His body. Christ prayed for it, so it must be. The Father answers this prayer continually across the generations of believers through time. He asked for our oneness in Him.

He also said that there would be a result of that prayed-for oneness -- "the world may believe that you have sent me". He specifically connected this oneness and the result of this oneness to another request -- "sanctify them by your truth; your word is truth." Are we set aside to God by the truth of His Word in our lives? Are we fully yielded, individually and in our groupings or gatherings or assemblies or churches, to the truth of God's Word? Have we so followed Him as those first disciples that increasingly our steps, our lives, our hearts, our ways are like His own because of the truth in us? How responsible am I for the un-walked, un-lived distance between the practical and fractal "oneness" that I'm living with my brothers and sisters and the real oneness that Jesus prayed for in John 17? Lord, how do I/we live, what change in our whole selves must be worked in me/us, so that not only do we live in the union that You asked for us, but so that the world may actually believe that Father sent You? How sorry I am that I have failed to live up to this, and how wrecked I am that I do not know how to move forward to see the actuality of this prayer of Jesus in my life, my family, my assembly with others, my generation and place, so that the world may believe that the Father sent Jesus!

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Tim

"Until we know and live out of our union with Christ, we will never fully manifest the life of God within us. Some of it will inevitably shine through now and then, despite us. But for the most part we will manifest our own merely human life."

I don't know about you but I find that many times I am just manifesting my own human life and fail to live out my union with Christ.

Whatever of His own likeness and glory is shown through us, He may be the only one to see so much of it. Like a mirror cannot see itself, all we can do is reflect His light since we have none of our own. But, but, but.....Jesus specifically prayed for our oneness, not merely individually with Him but jointly with Him, and that this oneness would be so "that the world may believe that" the Father sent the Son. There must be a powerful visibility of this in reality. Where? Lord, how, where?

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Tim

Dolfan and Tuc;

It is so good to see and feel the mind of Christ in you. I am so comforted and feel so much oneness in Christ and in you, that the love of the love of God flows in me and in you and I don't have any discomfort in knowing peace that passes all understanding.

Thank you both and all others that are in the Body of Christ who know that Jesus Christ the Son of God lives and moves and has His being in us.

Colossians 1:26-27 Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:

It is no longer us who live but He that lives in us which is now our lives as one Body of Christ, He in us and us in
Him and by His Spirit and the Holy Spirit of Promise in each other, One Spirit with The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit and each other.

Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Ephesians 3:14-21 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.

In Christ without end, by His power: Phillip

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Phillip