Perception

Jeremiah 1:11 NIV

 The word of the Lord came to me: "What do you see, Jeremiah?"

"I see the branch of an almond tree," I replied.

Are You Certain of What You See?

The very first time Mary Jo and I went out together, I borrowed a friend’s car and took her to the Robert E. Lee Theater.   This was a two story movie theater and it was the fanciest in New Orleans.  The movie we saw was quite memorable…it was the four hour “Reds”…and yes, it felt more like eight hours.  I more than made up for the terrible movie choice by getting Mary Jo nachos.  She had never before had nachos and so I felt like I had brought her to the Eiffel Tower or taken her on a camel ride through Morocco.  The nachos even had jalapeño slices on it.  Now for a year and a half we did these same sorts of things…I took her places, paid for the meal or the movie…just the two of us and we had fun together.  She didn’t go with any other guys to movies or restaurants or festivals during this time and I didn’t go with any other girls.  Imagine my surprise after a year and a half of this exclusive attention we gave to each other my discovery that Mary Jo did not think we were dating.  I kind of wondered what she thought we had been doing all this time…going on field trips…creating a review of restaurants…baby-sitting each other?  I thought, and call me “crazy”, that we had been dating the past year.  So here we were, two sane adults, experiencing the very same events and engaging in conversations together over a very long period of time, having completely different views of what we had been doing this whole time.

What is fascinating about perception is that it is a function of reality that is really real.  A wind really does blow a pine cone off a tree.  A bank really does charge you a fee for bouncing a check.  Your wife really does say, “I love you” and your boss really does warn you of potential lay-offs.  The car in front of you actually stopped and you did hit it and your mom told you that if you did not clean up your room, she would take your IPad away from you.  Really real things happen all around us but sometimes it is more important for us and for others our perception of those real things rather than the real things themselves.  One man commits suicide when his girlfriend breaks up with him but another man whose girlfriend breaks up with him finds someone else to date.  One child cries when a bully punches him but another child swings back and laughs about it afterward.  A mother frets anxiously about her son coming home late from a party; another falls asleep peacefully before he gets back.  Perception is not always reality but the two go hand in hand in determining the reality of many outcomes in life.

There is in the ancient writings of the prophet Habakkuk a case study on perception.  As the Babylonian armies began their approach toward Jerusalem it became clear to all Judea that the invasion could not be stopped.  Judah’s armies had no answer for the Babylonian juggernaut.  Destruction of Jerusalem seemed inevitable; slavery, rape and even death a real possibility for anyone still alive when the Babylonians finally overran the city.  Habakkuk faced the hard cold reality of invasion with not a hint of fluffy optimism.  His prayer to God was simple and direct.  Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet… (Habakkuk 3:17-18 NIV)  As Habakkuk writes, nothing is settled.  The invasion hasn’t begun.  The walls of Jerusalem are still intact.  The farms and ranches continue to provide food for everyone.  Yet…Habakkuk added in the space between what seemed to be coming and what was there before him.  This was where reality met perception for Habakkuk and we face it too.  How we respond to “yet” is critical to the reality that we have as it was for Habakkuk.  The “yet” for Habakkuk was, “I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” (Habakkuk 3:18 NIV)  This was the way Habakkuk saw things.  If everything falls apart and it goes from bad to worse, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.  Perception was unbending in the circumstance…crops failed or not, sheep in the pen or taken, grapes sweet and luscious or shriveled and hard, Habakkuk would see it all as “God is my Savior…I will love Him.”

In the book of Daniel is a second case study of perception.  A few years later, after Babylon had conquered Jerusalem and brought a number of the Jews back to Babylon with them, some of the captives because of their special abilities were given significant government jobs.  Three of them, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego faced a terrible dilemma just as they really got started in their careers.  The king enacted a law that whenever a traveling band came to your town and began to play, if anyone refused to worship the ninety foot gold portable idol they brought with them, those people would be thrown into a blazing furnace.  The reality was that this idol was before the three Jewish young men, the music was playing and the furnace was stoked and available for anyone refusing to worship the golden idol.  Perception of the reality was voiced by the three men who faced squarely their fate even as they refused to bow in worship to the idol. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.  If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.  But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." (Daniel 3:16-18 NIV)  The adjustment in thinking the three men made to the reality of the furnace and the king’s fury and the idol was simple.  Our hope is in God regardless of how things turn and we will not worship idols.  That was the perception they all had of the situation they faced.  This was how they looked at the idol and the furnace and the angry king.

The third case study we shall examine took place in a secret place where Jesus was with his disciples.  He told them exactly what to expect soon.  And he said, "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life." (Luke 9: 22 NIV)  Now we must take these two parts of the reality separately.  The first is that Jesus was telling the disciples that the religious leaders were going to reject him outright and because of this, He would have to be killed.  This had to be terribly disconcerting to them, perhaps even depressing.  And of course that is what happened.  Jesus was crucified and the disciples had to face it.  Reality was the end of dreams, broken plans and the loss of a beloved friend.  All of this Jesus told them to expect and they had it.  The death of Jesus came and it was real dying.  So what were they to do?  What perception of this were they to form of Jesus being dead?  How were they to view Christ crucified; which was very different than Christ healing and Christ teaching and Christ eating with them and potentially taking over the nation of Israel as her king?

Jesus told the Disciples two things.  He would die and He would be raised from the dead.  Those two were interconnected at every point.  The Disciples would have taken these two parts as completely different matters, at least during the three days when Jesus was dead but not raised from the dead.  Since then though, the two are never separated from one another.  The crucified Christ is reality and the raised Christ is reality and both determine perception in every single circumstance.  When the Disciples saw a bright future filled with success and happiness, Jesus saw Himself crucified.  When the Disciples saw all hope dashed and their lives crushed, Jesus saw Himself raised from the dead.  We can either perceive things as the Disciples did or see all we face as Jesus saw things.  What do I mean by that?

When Christ died, He took the Sin of mankind into His body and it was crucified with Him when He died.  The Apostle Paul tells us in his second letter to the Corinthians that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV)  In Hebrews we find a similar statement.  But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9:26 NIV)  The death of Christ did away with Sin because Sin died with Him when He died.  When this happened we became free to see things from God’s point of view.  Before, Sin corrupted our thinking and made us Satan’s fool, but, after the Cross when we are made right with God through the cross of Christ Sin is worked out of us and we can think with God’s mind and understand things.  Sin does not direct our thinking!  The Cross meant victory!  The Disciples thought it was defeat.  We with Sin see trials and troubles and hardship and unfair circumstances.  With Christ and our Sin taken from us, we see God working everything out for our good, we see our lives being put together in a perfect way.  We see strength of character building and holiness developing and love growing pure and true.  With Sin out of the way, we can reinterpret everything so we see things as they are and not as they seem.

With the Cross came resurrection.  Peter says this of the resurrection’s effect on us.  Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, (1 Peter 1:3-4 NIV)  The Resurrection is the most astounding event in the history of mankind because it was the power of God revealed in Jesus Christ.  If there is one enemy of us all, if there is any unifying force that we cannot break, it is death and with the Resurrection, death is broken and the operating system of every one of us is hope.  Hope rises above every problem we face.  If death is a shattered enemy, then what is unemployment in God’s hands…what is disease…what is divorce…what is infertility…what is injury or insult or persecution…what is failure…what is disappointment…what is rejection when it is in God’s hands?  Resurrection is the creator of hope at every point in life…hope is the bright dawn and it casts no shadows because it is built by the Resurrection of Christ and that is reality.  When Jesus Christ rose from the dead and He really did rise…over five hundred different people in many different places saw Him alive…He made hope the reality for every single situation we face.  Hope is not in resurrection, it rises from the Resurrection and we can hope and have real hope because hope is not a dream of something that could happen.  It really is what is happening because the resurrection of Christ really occurred in history and the resurrection is working through every circumstance we encounter wherever we go and whatever we face.

Unseen and Unnoticed

Have you considered what spiritual forces are all about you?  It seems so proper and sophisticated to disregard them and pretend spiritual forces don't exist.   Even good Bible teachers try to turn the clear descriptions of angels and demons in Scripture into metaphors for something or other.  The trap has been laid for us;  don't acknowledge what the Word acknowledges and then they are free to run amok in our circles.  More importantly we miss the joy God wants us to possess through His messengers of good.  Was the Bible lying when it describes explicitly thousands upon thousand of angels at Jesus' birth and the eye popping experience Elisha's servant had when he was given power to see what had been around them all along?  And Elisha prayed, "O Lord, open his eyes so he may see." Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. (2 Kings 6:17 NIV)  The same is true of the bad angels.  We may not see them or think of them but Christ revealed them to His disciples and the crowds nearby.  Just in one poor soul there were thousands of these bad angels camped within.  When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. (Mark 5:15 NIV)  What is our first check-down when something terrifying happens in Paris or Washington D.C.?  Do we begin to consider the angels involved, both good and bad?  Are we ready at a moment's notice to drop what we are doing and pray that Satan's realm is thwarted and God's rule established?  Or do we wring our hands and argue over who was at fault and what sorts of precautions should be taken to prevent future catastrophic events without giving a thought to the battle that is unseen?

 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  Therefore put on the full armor of God… Ephesians 6:12-13 NIV

Fear of God

Proverbs 9:10 NIV

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Do You Know Someone Afraid of God?

Before I knew anything about the “fear of the Lord” I found out about the fear of my dad.  When he spanked me, I knew I had been spanked.  I have a friend who had a fear of his mom.  When he disobeyed her, his mom had him stretch out his arms and hold them there until they began to burn like fire.  Several years ago I was passing out invitations to our church in the neighborhood and as I was walking away from one house, a man in his twenties stepped out, looked at my flyer and told me that if he ever found me stepping up on his porch again, he would kill me.  There are plenty of reasons why we become afraid.  Some of us are afraid we won’t be able to pay our bills.  Others are afraid of getting sick.  Many are afraid of getting fired or going into certain neighborhoods.  I am afraid of skiing.  Perhaps you are afraid of going to the dentist.  Certainly all of us have been afraid and sometimes for good reason, other times without cause.

Many are afraid of God.  They are afraid of making Him mad because they have done something wrong or they might have done something wrong.  There are world religions built around the concern that God is angry about something and needs to be appeased.  For those like the Hindus, this is even worse because there are so many gods to worry about.  The Bible talks several times about the “fear of the Lord” or the “fear of God” and it is important that we understand what it means by that.  Is it good for people to be afraid of God?  Should we be fearful of Him?  How do we act toward God if we are afraid of Him?  Aren’t we to have God as our friend?  How can we be friends if we are afraid of Him?  What is the psychological effect of the fear of the Lord upon us and how does it look behaviorally?

The Apostle Paul in his masterpiece letter to the Christians in Rome quoted from Psalm 36, contending that regardless of background universally among all people, "There is no fear of God before their eyes." (Romans 3:18 NIV)  Before that, he states, "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. (Romans 3:10-11 NIV)  These two verses appear to be in parallel, describing the same character trait.  Fear of God seems to be equivalent to being righteous, possessing “understanding” and seeking God.  The Psalm that the Apostle Paul quotes, which was written about eight hundred years before by David, the second king of Israel, gives this description of what it looks like if you don’t fear God.  There is no fear of God before his eyes.  For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin.  The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful; he has ceased to be wise and to do good.  Even on his bed he plots evil; he commits himself to a sinful course and does not reject what is wrong. (Psalm 36:1b-4 NIV)

There are four clear characteristics here of the one who does not fear God.   This person is too proud to realize that there is real sin in him and even if he knew he was sinful, he wouldn’t care or give it much thought.  The things this person says are half-truths and intentionally or unintentionally deceitful.  He no longer grasps what is wise and intelligent because he doesn’t avail himself to true wisdom that comes from God; consequently his thinking is too shallow to grasp what is good and right and so he lives in rebellion against God.  This rebellion is planned and thought through by him so that he does what he does knowing full well it is wrong.  There is in the one without fear of God a casual approach to evil deeds, his moral compass is broken and he does what he decides is right for him without regard for what is actually “right”.  This passage has a clear summary of how the one who does not fear God lives but it is not so easy to see from David’s Psalm what it looks like when you do fear God.

Surprisingly, rather than listing all the characteristics of the one who fears God, David creates a picture of what God is like.  Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.  Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep.  O Lord, you preserve both man and beast.  How priceless is your unfailing love!  (Psalm 36:5-6 NIV)  Now this is interesting because you would expect that if someone was interested in finding out how it looks to fear God and not just what characterizes the one not fearing God, you would think this passage would tell you.  It certainly provides a clear examination of the personal qualities of non-God fearing people.  Yet rather that stating the opposite side of the coin, what a God-fearing person looks like, it talks about God Himself.  However, when you think about it, this description of God does say something quite clearly about fearing God even if it is a bit unexpected and unusual in its presentation.  The one who fears God has a very decided view of Him.  He sees God as loving, faithful, righteous and just.  This is not a dry theological comment.  It drips with affection and happiness.  No one could have this sort of feeling toward another and be called non-committal about the relationship.  A person who fears the Lord is in awe of the goodness and rightness and love of God and does not cower in dread of God but is excited about being with Him.  Verse 7 of Psalm 36 provides a clear sense of what someone who fears God thinks of Him.  How priceless is your unfailing love!  Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings.  (Psalm 36:7 NIV)

This is of course a far cry from what we normally think of what fearing God entails.  Most studies on the fear of God focus on the Hebrew definition of fear…that it speaks either of cowering, abject quivering in ones boots over the might and power and sternness of God or that it is watered down a bit from that…describing respect.  So either our relationship with the Lord is to be like one we would have with an absolute despot who can on a whim have us struck dead or give us great honor and power or it is like that of a student with a law professor who is really smart and cool but kind of like us…just better and more successful.  However, that is not how fear of God seems when we read Psalm 36.  The person who fears God does not pay attention to His power or to His competency but rather to His love and goodness, His rightness and fairness. We must remember that fear means one thing when we are talking about sinful beings who are self-centered and egotistical and full of sin but something all-together different when talking about God.

An example from the Old Testament might help us see this more clearly.  In Genesis, our earliest documented history of the world there is in chapter 22 a most intriguing perspective on the fear of God.  It is the famous account of Abraham hearing God tell him to bring his son Isaac up on a mountain to offer him as a sacrifice there.  Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"  "Here I am," he replied.  Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." (Genesis 22:1-2 NIV)  Immediately Abraham made preparations and the very next morning he brought his son along with the wood and fire up Mount Moriah where he then at the top lashed his son to an altar and prepared to strike his son dead with a dagger.  Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.  But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"  "Here I am," he replied.  "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." (Genesis 22:10-12 NIV)

Let us consider this carefully.  God said that Abraham feared God and how He proved this was by Abraham’s behavior, he did not withhold his son.  By “withhold”, The Bible meant that Abraham was about to kill Isaac out of loyalty to God.  When we say “fear”, we generally mean that we are afraid of some outcome…there is something we don’t want to happen because if it did, it would be terrible.  The thought of it is dreadful to us.  Now what was it that was dreadful to Abraham?  Could there have been anything more horrid that having his son dead…or perhaps being the one who killed that son?  At one hundred-ten years of age or so, Abraham knew he would die eventually.  He could not have been afraid of his own dying.  Would he have been afraid of becoming poor?  Probably not at one-hundred ten years of age…not anymore anyway…Was he afraid of his wife leaving him for another man or of her dying of old age?  What would have made Abraham afraid of God?  Most likely, and it cannot be much of a stretch to say this, his greatest fear when it came to God was that the Lord might take his son from him!  If he had a fear of God, that would have topped his list and yet by his own volition, he was about to kill his son because he had fear of God.  That sounds crazy but of course it wasn’t.  Fear of God had nothing to do with being afraid of the worst thing that He could do to him because the worst thing that God could have done to Abraham was take his son and Abraham was doing that himself.  Fear of God was just what Abraham revealed; it was following God regardless of the cost.  More than that, it was absolute trust that God would do what was right and good no matter how things appeared.

Hebrews 11: 9 tells us that Abraham believed God could and would raise Isaac from the dead even if he did kill his son on the mountain.  Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. (NIV)  Of course God did not raise Isaac from the dead because He told Abraham to not kill his son.  But before that Abraham confidently raised his knife to kill Isaac because he had faith God would not let Isaac stay dead.  And here we see what it means to “fear God’ because this is what it was for Abraham.  To “fear God” means to trust Him explicitly with your life and with the lives of all those you love and to trust God so much that you will do whatever He tells you to do.  “Fear God” is unbending belief that God is good and can be trusted with everything and everyone you hold dear.  The test for you is when He tells you to hand to Him what matters most to you and let the Lord do with it as He pleases.  So few Christians ever get to this place of absolute trust in God and because they don’t, their lives are shallow and fearful and demanding and short-tempered and even greedy.  They may have their salvation but no real relationship with God that changes the quality of their lives.  You cannot and will not move forward with Christ unless all you treasure is His and you can walk away from any of it if He tells you to do so and still be devoted to God.  Your test will come, perhaps today, maybe tomorrow and you will have to decide if you really do love and trust God.  If you do and you show you do, nothing will be more certain to you in the crisis or the painful time than God’s love and care for you and you will be peacefully calm and secure in it.

Ends and Means

Have we caught the vision God has for us?  Are we prepared to be wholly His?  When Israel by neglect and indifference failed to capture all the land God had for her, she tragically left herself open to all the curses that come to those who sin.  The nation, rather than doing away with the idolatry and immorality of the region, embraced it and welcomed it.  Bethlehem felt the wrath of Israel's new heritage as a religious half-breed when Herod, rather than welcoming the Christ child tried to stamp him out by killing all the other babies of the village.  The Pharisees and Sadducees thought their religious ways had blotted out the corruption of their hearts but instead the religion they coddled betrayed the God they claimed as theirs when with one voice they cried, "Crucify him!"  Was it just David who suffered when he slept with Bathsheba or did all the generations that followed him fall under the shadow that sin cast?  It is a narrow way, this pursuit of God's grace in normal activities, letting the life of Christ work through our lusts, jealousies and frustrations.  You have a conscience, not so you will be hang-dog guilty but so you will act in the crucified life of Christ at the dinner table and the office.  A redeemed Christian has at his or her disposal all the power of the resurrection to get right the little things that make a life big and eternally good for every generation that encounters it.  Holiness is the heritage you leave behind you and later the heritage you take with you when you "share in your Master's happiness".

 "His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!'   Matthew 25:23 NIV

A Great New Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_77Uinye1rc&feature=em-subs_digest-g

Community in Christ

The Christian Community is much too quick to snip at one another and go after the jugular of faults.  Do we think it was toward the Pharisees only that Jesus aimed his barbed arrow in the Sermon on the Mount?  It pricks us too and more truly stabs us all the way in the heart.  How can we ever hope to progress in joy if we are captivated by the splinters in the eyes of our fellow servants?  Evangelism is simply pious platitudes if we are not loving one another unconditionally.   It is laughable to hope that we can build the Kingdom if internally we are squabbling and mocking one another, critiquing and evaluating each other's works and motives.  The crisis in the Church has never been without but for two millennia within.    Much more damage has come to us at the hands of our fellow believers than any non-Christian has ever caused.  Love does not begin with some lavish pronouncement but with a single determination to overlook an offence or keep to ourselves our criticism.  We can do this with Christ living through us but without Him, we are hopelessly entangled by our grievances and dissatisfactions.  As we look to Christ in the heat of our acrimony, the Lord will grant us His love and kindness to come out of us at the very moment we need it.   Our Lord has a great deal of grace for those who "love too much" or "overlook too much" it seems and if we should err, it would be best to err on the side of mercy and compassion rather than take up with the older brother in his complaints.  Job's friends look all too familiar to us  and we must be careful we don't sit in their camp when Job comes our way.  We might find ourselves begging the Job God has given us for mercy when the Lord "catches up with us."

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."   Matthew 7:1-2 NIV

Branch Life

Can we step back a moment and take inventory of our condition?  Are we bearing much fruit?  Are we connected to the vine?  Are we availing ourselves to the gardener and giving Him freedom to prune us as He wishes or have we begun to argue with Him and bend away from His shears?  The branch that bears little fruit is usually the most comfortable of the branches until it begins to look about and see just how impoverished it is.  Satan does not tear at us in a mighty rush of hardship and anguish, he merely rocks us to sleep and before we know it, we have become useless but settled.  You can tell when you have given up on truly following Christ if you argue about what fruit-bearing means...Is it external to us or internal...Is fruit bearing what we do with the Gospel or what the Gospel does with us?  When the sleep gets knocked out of us by some great crisis or upheaval, we find that we are free once again to face ourselves honestly.  If we can get past the "Why is God doing this to me", there is the possibility that we might once again bear fruit and become available to God to transform both in us and through us.  Fruit that "will last" is obvious and not theologically determined but spiritually discovered by obedience and faith.  If we would just do what God tells us to do, whether a big thing or small, it will manifest itself in fruit bearing.  Much depression, discouragement, frustration and disharmony within the Christian community would be tossed aside if we would simply begin bearing fruit as Christ works His way in us and through us.

This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.    John 15:8 NIV

Individuality Vs. Personality Part 2

Individuality Vs Personality

Part 2

John 17:11b NIV

Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name — the name you gave me — so that they may be one as we are one.

Are You Personal Or An Individual?

We fight a constant battle between individuality and personality.  Our individuality wants to elbow others away from us and our personality stretches out to connect.  Personality in its purest and rawest form is presented to us in Genesis 2 when God created the woman as part of the man and declared what physically was true and that is that they were “one flesh”.  The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,'for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (Genesis 2:23-24 NIV)  Jesus indicated that this oneness of husband and wife is more than just the same physical source of being found in Adam and Eve…it reaches a far deeper level of union which when broken is disastrous.  'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,  and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Mark 10:7-9 NIV)  The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians said that the union of husband and wife is like the union of Christ and the Church and he called it all a mystery.  "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."  This is a profound mystery — but I am talking about Christ and the church.  (Ephesians 5:31-32 NIV)

What we see is that in marriage God brings the husband and wife together and supernaturally joins them into a union…there is a bridging brought about by God of two personalities.  Every marriage starts out this way…God linking the two together physically and psychologically.  It is our sinful press for individuality that elbows husbands and wives apart.  Our troubles in marriage spring from this urge to be individuals rather than personalities put together by God.  The more we hold on to our outdated view of who we are, that we are “on our own”, the more damage we inflict upon ourselves because in marriage, we are not on our own.  We are joined and if we don’t elbow each other apart we find we become bigger and better personalities in the union.  Husbands and wives grow as people when they are married and become more than they would have been unmarried because that is the sense of being joined by God.  If I add you to me, I become more than I was before there was both of us.

Jesus in His prayer before He was crucified set in place the ultimate goal of Christian people being formed into the Church.  He called upon a miraculous union, "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 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 that the world may believe that 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 to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23 NIV)  This is actually a stupendous assertion of Jesus.  The union of Christian people is to be as complete as what exists between Christ and the Father.  If we consider the insistence of Jesus that if you see Him, you see the Father and that He and the Father are one, this is an amazing prayer. (Consider John 14: 9; 10:30 NIV)  Can we in any way fathom the depth and height of their oneness….oneness in knowing each other’s thoughts, oneness in purpose, oneness in loves and desires and values?  If the infinite God can know our thoughts and live within our mind, cannot Jesus and the Father do the same?  Would not their intimacy be at that level?

What sort of form will our oneness take when we are together in Christ?  Consider the assessment of Paul in Galatians regarding the relationship Christians have.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  (Galatians 3:28 NIV)  The assumption most make is that all this is saying is that in heaven there will no longer be ethnic, cultural or sexual categories of people and although that may be true, there is a hint of something much more.  The statement that we are all one in Christ Jesus implies a unity that is supernaturally derived from being redeemed from sin by Jesus Christ.  What He did in us, taking away the Sin that separates us from God, He also does between us.  That same Sin will stop being a barrier separating us.  It is so much more than just us getting along with each other that Jesus Christ accomplished by taking our Sin from us on the Cross.  He is in it bringing us together so that we will have the same kind of intimacy and affection with each other that the Father and Son have.  Just as the Father and Son share their thoughts, loves and will in a complete union of personalities, so we too are to have that same union with each other.

Let us look at the one more aspect of our oneness in Christ.  The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians spoke of something that many Christians have not at all fully thought through.  The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free — and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.  Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.  And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?  But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. (1 Corinthians 12:12-20 NIV)

Even though the Apostle Paul was using the concern in the church that some Christian abilities were more valued than others to teach this matter of the Church as a body, the teaching goes beyond just whose duties and abilities are most important.  We have here the very outcome of being a personality and able to connect with others in Christ.  We are a body…many parts but one body.  As Christ fills us more and more, this will become a reality that we are a body and each of us parts of the body.  The direction we are heading, and this is the direction…we are not there yet,is that there is developing a greater combining of our lives with an increasing importance to the part each of us play in how everyone else lives in Christ.  Our sinful individualism tries its best to elbow the rest of the body away.  This Sin leads us to think we are not just an eye but we also are a foot and the eye wants to be the kidney and the kidney thinks it should be and is the ear.  But that is the myth.  I am something to the body and you are something to the body but you are not two or three somethings and I am not two or three somethings.  I am what God has made me and you are what God made you and without each other, we are wrecked.  It is absurd to think I don’t need you.  I must have you and you must have me and it goes on and on like that.  The hands and arms and nose and eyes all live through one another in a body and it is that way as we become more and more in Christ.  All individualism gets knocked to smithereens.  The personality of you is joined to the personality of me and the personality of a third and it goes on and on because Christ has put us together.  The Christian who because of anger or fear or pride or self-righteousness tries to disconnect from another Christian is simply hating himself and shredding his life apart.  The love of Christ demands that we stay together…not just stay together but love each other and make each other better by being together.  We are a wreck when we separate; it is a great loss to us when we separate…but when we join with each other, and stay joined with each other, in Christ, our lives become bigger and greater and fuller than we could ever have imagined. The goal of this day is to make a go of building your life with someone else who God has brought your way.