Romans 12:4-5. For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
Galatians 3:26-28. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
John 17:20-23. “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity….”
When the Scriptures speak about our destiny in Christ, it is as though we have already attained to it. For instance ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God….’ Ephesians 2:8. Compare this with ‘For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God’. 1 Corinthians 1:18. The Lord Jesus is both the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. That which begins in Him will always be completed perfectly in Him, yet there will be a process to be gone through. The process by which we are saved is described in Philippians 2:12-13. ‘So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure’. The Holy Spirit, who enters the believer at the instant of salvation, is Himself ‘God who is at work in you’. Each one who believes must permit Him ‘both to will and to work for His good pleasure’.
The passage in Romans assures all those who have believed unto salvation that ‘we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another’. This follows the Trinitarian pattern of the Godhead. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are members of one another, yet together they are one God. A wonderful expression of this pattern as applying to believers, is found in Revelation 19. Those who during their life experience have allowed the Holy Spirit to complete God’s work in them according to ‘His good pleasure’ will corporately be presented to the Lord Jesus as His wife at the marriage supper of the Lamb. Following the marriage supper the Lamb, sat upon a white horse, will be displayed at the head of ‘the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean….following Him on white horses’. Surely the ones dressed in fine linen will be the individual members who so lately had comprised the wife of the Lamb.
Just as the work of the Holy Spirit will at last bring every saint of God to perfection in Christ so, too, He will bring each one to ‘be perfected in unity’ with the totality of all the many members of the body, so that they together may be displayed as the new Jerusalem, ‘the bride, the wife of the Lamb’ at the commencement of eternity future.
Now, here is the point. Just as we must welcome the Spirit’s work in us to bring us individually to spiritual maturity during our earthly life, so also we must allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into a state of divine unity with others in our gatherings together. In order to do so, we must accept the sole and absolute authority of the Lord Jesus to direct and control every aspect of the meeting in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
The love that knits together the Father with the Son and the Son with the Spirit is the love fully available to knit the members of His body together to be one. It will be this God-given quality of unity that will be His testimony to the world that the Father did indeed send His Son, Jesus, to earth that sinners might be saved and be constituted as saints together into a oneness that cannot be denied.
Every believer I meet on this earth, at whatever stage in their walk, will be forever a part of me and I will also forever be an indissoluble part of that one too. The reality of this heavenly truth must, right now, be realized in all our gatherings together as we rely wholly upon Him. For ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’.
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