“Anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.”
1 Corinthians 6:17
Do you marvel at the believer’s oneness with God? The oneness Jesus talks about: “I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15:5). This is a oneness so complete that it is impossible to tell where the vine ends and the branches begin. They are one!
I was especially struck recently by the believer’s oneness with God as I began to pray the New Testament prayer, “Abba! Father!” As I prayed those two bold words, I realized that my words were actually God the Holy Spirit first praying within me. As the apostle Paul writes in Galatians 5:6, “And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” Then I compare that with what Paul writes in Romans 8:15-16, “You have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
The wondrous and mysterious interplay of these two verses illustrate the believer’s oneness with God through the Holy Spirit. When we pray, “Abba! Father!” it is both a prayer initiated within us by the Holy Spirit “crying ‘Abba! Father!’” and our response, “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!” It is the Holy Spirit who graciously originates the prayer that we then answer! Like the crash of thunder follows the flash of lightning, so our prayer follows the prayer of the Holy Spirit within.
Thomas Merton writes of the believer’s oneness with God in his book, New Life in Christ: “A supernatural union of our souls within His indwelling Divine Union gives us participation in Christ’s divine sonship and nature. A ‘new being’ is brought into existence. I become a ‘new man’ and this new man, spiritually and mystically one identity, is at once Christ and myself.”
The apostle Paul sets forth this spiritual and mystical oneness in Galatians 2:19-20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” This happens in the believer’s “new birth” by the Holy Spirit (John 3:7; Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 1:23), such that we are made “new creations in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 2:4-5; James 1:18). That means that we literally share in the life of God (2 Peter 1:3-4; Colossians 3:3-4; 1 John 3:1-2). Paul nicely summarizes this miracle of life in today’s scripture, “Anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.”
The Holy Spirit prays within us as we pray!
“You intercede when words fall short,
In every sigh and every thought.
A comforter, a guiding light,
You turn my darkness into sight.
O Spirit, move within my soul,
Renew, restore, and make me whole.
In every prayer, be ever near,
To draw me close and quell my fear.”
(Anonymous)
A fellow traveler,
Tim
