CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 18
Divine Union
All the dealings of God with the soul of the believer are in order to bring them into oneness with Himself. “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.”
This divine union was the glorious purpose in the heart of God for His people before the foundation of the world. It was accomplished in the death of Christ. God has not hidden it or made it hard, but the eyes of many are too dim, and their hearts too unbelieving for them to grasp it. It is therefore for the purpose of bringing His people into the personal and actual realization of this that the Lord calls upon them so earnestly and so repeatedly to abandon themselves to Him.
The usual course of Christian experience is pictured in the history of the disciples. First they were awakened to see their condition and their need, and they came to Christ and gave their allegiance to Him. Then they followed Him, worked for Him, believed in Him; and yet how unlike Him they were! Seeking to be set up one above the other running away from the cross, misunderstanding His mission and His words, forsaking their Lord in time of danger, they were still sent out to preach, recognized by Him as His disciples, and they possessed power to work for Him. They knew Christ only “after the flesh,” as outside of them, their Lord and Master, but not yet their life.
Then came Pentecost, and these same disciples came to know Him as He revealed Himself inwardly. From then on He was to them Christ within, working in them to will and to do of His good pleasure, delivering them, by the law of the Spirit of His life, from the bondage to the law of sin and death under which they had been held. No longer was it, between themselves and Him, a war of wills and a clashing of interests. One will alone animated them, and that was His will. One interest alone was dear to them, and that was His. They were made one with Him.
Perhaps as yet the final stage of it has not been fully reached. You may have left much to follow Christ. You may have believed on Him, worked for Him, and loved Him, yet may not be like Him. Allegiance you know and confidence you know, but not yet union. There are two wills, two interests, two lives. You have not yet lost your own life that you may live only in His. Once it was “I and not Christ.” Next it was “I and Christ.” Perhaps now it is even “Christ and I.” But has it come yet to be Christ only and not I at all?
All you need, therefore, is to understand what the scriptures teach about this marvelous union, that you may be sure it is really intended for you.
If you read such passages as 1 Corinthians 3:16, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” and then look at the opening of the chapter, you will see that this soul-union of which I speak, this unspeakably glorious mystery of an indwelling of God, is the possession of even the weakest and most failing believer in Christ. Every believer in the “body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.”
But although this is true, it is also equally true that unless the believer knows it and lives in the power of it, it is to him as though it were not. This union with Christ is not a matter of emotions, but of character. It is not something we are to feel, but something we are to be. We may feel it very blessedly, and probably shall, but the vital thing is not the feeling, but the reality.
No one can be one with Christ who is not Christlike. This is entirely contrary to the scripture declaration that “he that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” There is no escape from this, for it is not only a divine declaration but is in the very nature of things as well.
Oneness with Christ means being made a “partaker of his nature,” as well as of His life; for nature and life are, of course, one.
If we are really one with Christ, therefore, it will not be contrary to our nature to be Christlike and to walk as He walked, but it will be in accordance with our nature. Sweetness, gentleness, meekness, patience, long-suffering, charity, and kindness will all be natural to the Christian who is a partaker of the nature of Christ. It could not be otherwise.
But people who live in their emotions do not always see this. They feel so at one with Christ that they look no further than this feeling, and they often delude themselves with thinking they have come into the divine union, when all the while their nature and dispositions are still under the sway of self-love.
We all know that our emotions are most untrustworthy and are largely the result of our physical condition or our natural temperaments. It is a fatal mistake, therefore, to make them the test of our oneness with Christ. This mistake works both ways. If I have very joyous emotions, I may be deluded by thinking I have entered into the divine union when I have not; and if I have no emotions, I may grieve over my failure to enter when I really have entered.
Character is the only real test. God is holy, and those who are one with Him will be holy also. Our Lord Himself expressed His oneness with the Father in such words as these: “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.” The test Christ gave, then, by which the reality of His oneness with the Father was known, was the fact that He did the works of the Father. And I know no other test for us now.
It is forever true in the nature of things that a tree is known by its fruit. If we have entered into the divine union, we shall bear the divine fruit of a Christlike life and conversation. Pay no regard to your feelings, therefore, in this matter of oneness with Christ, but see to it that you have the really vital fruits of a oneness in character and walk and mind. Undeveloped Christians often have very powerful emotional experiences. I knew one who was kept awake often by the “waves of salvation,” but who yet did not tell the truth in her interaction with others and was very far from honest in her business dealings. No one could possibly believe that she knew anything about a real divine union, in spite of all her fervent emotions in regard to it.
Your joy in the Lord is a far deeper thing than a mere emotion. It is the joy of knowledge, of perception, of actual existence. It is as though Christ were living in a house, shut up in a far-off closet, unknown and unnoticed by the dwellers in the house, longing to make Himself known to them and to be one with them in all their daily lives and share in all their interests, but unwilling to force Himself upon their notice, because nothing but a voluntary companionship could meet or satisfy the needs of His love. The days pass by over that favored household, and they remain in ignorance of their marvelous privilege. They come and go about all their daily affairs with no thought of their wonderful guest. Their plans are laid without reference to Him. His wisdom to guide and His strength to protect are all lost to them. Lonely days and weeks are spent in sadness, which might have been full of the sweetness of His presence.
Suddenly the announcement is made, “The Lord is in the house!” How will its owner receive the intelligence? Will he call out an eager thanksgiving and throw wide open every door for the entrance of his glorious guest? Or will he shrink and hesitate, afraid of His presence, and seek to reserve some private corner for a refuge from his all-seeing eye?
It is far more glorious to be brought into such a real and actual union with Him as to be one with Him—one will, one purpose, one interest, one life—than it would be to have Christ a dweller in the house or in the heart. And yet it ought to be expressed, and our souls ought to be made so unutterably hungry to realize it that day or night we shall not be able to rest without it. It seems too wonderful to be true that such poor, weak, foolish beings as we are should be created for such an end as this; and yet it is a blessed reality. We are even commanded to enter into it. We are exhorted to lay down our own lives that His life may be lived in us; we are asked to have no interests but His interests, to share His riches, to enter into His joys, to partake of His sorrows, to manifest His likeness, to have the same mind as He had, to think and feel and act and walk as He did.
Shall we consent to all this? The Lord will not force it on us, for He wants us as His companions and His friends, and a forced union would be incompatible with this. It must be voluntary on our part. The bride must say a willing yes to the bridegroom, or the joy of their union is wanting. It is a very simple transaction and yet very real. The steps are but three: first, be convinced that the scriptures teach this glorious indwelling of God; then surrender our whole selves to Him to be possessed by Him; and finally, we must believe that He has taken possession and is dwelling in us. We must begin to reckon ourselves dead and to reckon Christ as our only life. It will help us to say, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,” over and over, day and night, until it becomes the habitual breathing of our souls. We must put off our self-life by faith continually and put on the life of Christ; and we must do this, not only by faith, but practically as well. We must continually put self to death in all the details of daily life and must let Christ instead live and work in us. I mean, we must never do the selfish thing, but always the Christlike thing. We must let this become, by its constant repetition, the attitude of our whole being. As surely as we do, we shall come at last to understand something of what it means to be made one with Christ as He and the Father are one. Christ left all to be joined to us; shall we not also leave all to be joined to Him?