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The Daily Word of Righteousness
One With God
That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so the world may believe you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity [into a unit] to let the world know you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:21-23—NIV)
God loves us as He loves Christ. God is our Father as He is Christ's Father. This does not mean we are as great as Christ, but it does mean we are brothers of Christ, He and we having the same Father.
If there is a more astounding or significant passage in the Bible than John 17:21-23 I have not found it. Here is the key to all that God is doing with respect to the royal priesthood, the Christian Church.
The supreme end of God's working is to have a company of people who are one with Himself through Jesus Christ. There is nothing higher than this vision, no greater goal. God's motive is love, just pure, Divine love. God is enlarging Himself.
The Lord Jesus Christ is one with God to such an extent it has confused theologians. We are to become part of this perfect Oneness, perhaps confusing theologians still further.
Through eating the flesh of Christ and drinking His blood we become one with Him, and one with God through Him—bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. This process continues until we are living by Him as He lives by the Father.
Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. (John 6:57—NIV)
The supreme mystery of the Gospel is that Christ is in us; that we are to live because of Him in the same manner that Christ lives because of the Father. This means Christ is to be our very life, our thoughts, our words, our actions, our imaginations, our health, our joy, our strength. All that we are and do is to be Christ. All that we are and do that is not Christ is loss for God; loss for Christ; loss for us; and ultimately loss for the world, because we are being made one with God through Christ that the world may believe that God indeed is the One who has sent Christ into the world.
We are being made one in the Oneness that is God. This is a romance, a mystery. All else of the Christian life and activities is scaffolding. The purpose of it all is the dwelling of God in us through Jesus Christ, who is the Firstborn from the dead; the Beginning of the new creation of God.
And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so in everything he might have the supremacy. (Colossians 1:18—NIV)
To be continued.