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  The more we hold on to our outdated view of who we are, that we are “on our own”, the more damage we inflict upon ourselves because in marriage, we are not on our own.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.