THE MYSTICAL UNION
The penetration of our inmost being by Christ, spoken of in the passages in the last
issue, is known to theologians as the mystical union. That is, to receive the benefits of
Christ’s redemptive work, one must become identified with Him at the deepest level of
one’s personhood.
At first sight, this is a genuinely frightening concept. Ever since the fall in the
Garden, there is nothing we are so determined to keep to ourselves as our personhood. We
fear with a deadly dread the exposure of that inner citadel of our personality. That we
wear clothing to protect our physical nudity is a reflection of our deep distaste for
being made visible and so vulnerable. We do not want anyone to be able to see us as we
really are, for we fear - and rightly so - that if we are thus exposed, people will not
like us. Our fear of being exposed to human censure is a reflection of our deeper, and
even less willingly acknowledged, fear that God does not like the way we really are at
heart. The false independence which rebellion against God promised us holds in a bondage
that we have no way of escaping. It reveals itself in our deep-seated fear that if Christ
makes his home in our hearts we will lose our most priceless possession, ourselves.
So, before going further, we need to look for a moment at why we are so frightened at the
prospect of Christ’s coming into the innermost recesses of our personality. Why does
this possibility threaten us with the loss of control, of freedom and independence? There
are two reasons: we do not understand ourselves, and we do not understand Christ.
We do not understand ourselves because we think that life is a private possession. We
suppose that it belongs to us, that it is within our grasp. We are prepared to defend it
to the end. Actually, this is a delusion. The Bible tells us that it is in God that we
live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). We were created by God through the power of
his Word (John 1:3). It is He who breathed into our nostrils the breath of life and we
became living souls (Genesis 2:7). We are held in being instant by instant only by the
Word of the Lord (Colossians 1:17). And we were given new life, if we have received Christ
as Savior and Lord, by that same Word (James 1:18, 1 Peter 1:23). Life is not ours in any
final sense at all. Life is in Christ. "In Him was life; and the life was the light
of men." (John 1:4)
Furthermore, we do not understand Christ. He is the Word of God who created us to bear the
image of God. We are His reflections, His image bearers. Real life, of which our
independent sense of private possession is a terribly distorted illusion, lies in the
knowledge, the friendship of God Himself (John 17:3). We have never even begun to suspect
the richness, the delight, the freedom and the power of real life until we have our first
taste of communion with the Lord Jesus. All the fullness of God dwells in Him as the
God-man. God invented life; we didn’t. God knows how to make it full to the brim; we
don’t. Christ dwelling in our hearts in full control is the only key there is to the
enjoyment of true life. We do not need to fear; we need to welcome Him. That is what the
Revelation 3:17-20 passage was saying. To have Christ dwelling in our hearts is to have
true life begin. The door is thus opened to an enjoyment of true life that goes beyond our
wildest imaginations. This is why Calvin said that the two most important kinds of
knowledge in the world are the knowledge of ourselves and the knowledge of God.
With this introduction, we can perhaps enter with more understanding and more enjoyment
into the varied figures the New Testament uses to picture the mystical union with Christ
which is the way we enter into possession of the blessings of his redemption.
One figure is the vine and the branches in John 15. Christ says that he is the true vine
and his Father is the vinedresser. We are the branches if we have received Christ.
Originally we were the branches in the wild vine of Adam’s race. The Father cuts us
out of that vine, makes a slit in the true Vine, and inserts us into Him. He puts some
heavenly on the graft, ties it with the twine of his love, and waits for the juice of the
vine to flow through it. It is not, surely, an illegitimate interpretation to see in that
juice the Holy Spirit himself. If the graft takes, the branch produces leaves, blossoms,
and fruit. That is what the whole process was about. The relation is an intimate one,
indeed, and it is the way in which we enter into Christ’s salvation and into real
life.
Another figure is the bride and the bridegroom, introduced in Ephesians 6. Christ is the
bridegroom; his people together make up the bride. He gives his life for their cleansing
and to clothe them for the heavenly marriage. Again, the intimacy of the personal
relationship is evident. There is no closer union in human experience than the marriage
union and the family relations that grow out of it. God thus takes the dearest human
relation we know and lifts it inconceivably high to picture the relation between Christ
and his church. In marriage there is an intermingling of two personalities, physically,
mentally and spiritually, which is closer than in almost any other relation. So the Bible
strains to suggest to us how close we are to Christ in the mystical union.
It is probably well to remember at this point that childbearing is the divinely intended
consequence of marriage and that, for the bride, it is not an easy development. The
delights of the marriage ceremony and of the wedding night are followed by a long period
of painful gestation that culminates in the fierce strains and deep pains of childbirth.
Here the figure is still faithful to an earthly pattern, for to have Christ formed in us
is not an easy business. We have a lot of dying to do if His life is to be revealed in us.
But Christ in us is indeed the hope of glory.
A third figure is, if possible, even more intimate. Christ is the head, and we are the
body. We are the members of the body (1 Corinthians 12); his living representatives in the
world which he has left for the glory of his Father’s right hand. As the body is the
means whereby the plans and purposes of the head are worked out in the world, so we are
the agency through which Christ does his business in the world. The connection between us
is just as strong as blood and muscle, nerve and bone structures that unite the human
body. Here, again, to benefit from Christ’s redemption means to be in the closest
personal touch with Him.
There are many other figures and hints in the New Testament, many of them. The cornerstone
and the building, the sheep and the shepherd, the brothers and sisters in one family. The
Bible seems to outdo itself in the effort to impress upon us the reality of the mystical
union. In the Gospels, Christ is called "the Beloved". In the Epistles, we are
called the beloved. The name that belongs most deeply to him as the Father’s Son
comes to be ours as well because we are united to him.
THE BONDS THAT UNITE US
If we have some idea of the mystical union as the way in which we benefit from
Christ’s love and his work for us, the next question is: how does the mystical union
take place. There are two answers to this question, one from our side and one from
God’s.
As far as our experience goes, we become united with Christ by repentance and faith. When,
in the mysterious providence of God, we become aware of how dreadfully wrong we have been
to imagine that we can do something better with ourselves and our lives than God can, and
begin to feel the heavy weight of our guilt in having thus despised the love and concern
of God for us, the process of repentance has begun. To repent means, in the etymology of
the word, to change one’s mind. It can be triggered in a variety of ways. It can
begin with hearing the Word of God preached in an evangelistic message or a sermon,
through reading the Bible, or through the witness and encouragement of a Christian friend.
It can even come by way of God’s self-revelation in the creation. One friend of mine,
working for a farmer shortly after graduating from high school, found himself driving a
team of horses on a beautiful Indian summer day. When the equipment the horses were
pulling became stuck in the mud, he said he made the air blue with his curses. Then,
although he didn’t actually hear a voice, he might as well have. What seemed like a
voice said to him, "What are you doing? This is my day, my earth, and these are my
horses. What are you talking that way for?" This result was that he went to church,
heard the gospel, and became a Christian. So the first step is repentance.
Although repentance is the first step, repentance is not complete when we first do it.
Repentance is a life-long experience. The more the light of Christ penetrates into the
darkness of our minds and hearts, the more we shall find to repent of. Romans 12: 1-2 is
not speaking of the inception of the Christian life when it says, "I beseech you
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. And be not fashioned according
to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind (=repentance, ed.), that
ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God." So repentance
is an ongoing as well as an initial means of the mystical union.
The other means, from our side, is faith. The New Testament repeatedly calls on us to
repent and believe in the Gospel. To believe means to take the risk of accepting the
forgiveness of God even though we know we do not deserve to be forgiven. In our natural
state of independence from God, we cannot imagine any way of coming to God except by some
sort of bargain. I will be good, or go to church, or whatever, if you will forgive me God.
But he will not hear of that sort of deal. He knows that the heart of our problem is
independence, and the effort to buy our way into his favor completely misses the point.
What is needed is the death of our independence. We must come, not in our strength, but in
our weakness. That is as impossible for us by ourselves as it is for an addict to break
his addiction alone. He thinks he is in control, but he isn’t. His only hope lies in
the grace of God, which cannot be compelled, bargained for, or manipulated. But it can be
received, and it must be received with the awareness that it is undeserved. To believe is
to come in that way. Like Lazarus, we hear Christ’s voice of command and we come,
still wrapped in our grave clothes, out into the light of life in Him.
As it is with repentance, so it is with faith. We do not exercise faith once and for all,
but we begin a lifelong course of repentance and faith. This is not to say that we lose
our salvation and have to become saved over and over again, but that faith is the means of
spiritual growth as it is the key to the new birth in the first place (Colossians 2:5-7).
And faith always means coming to God, not in our strength but in our weakness. A godly
older person, many years on the pilgrimage of faith, still finds his or her only comfort
and solid hope in the words of the old hymn, "Just as I am without one plea, but that
thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bids’t me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I
come, I come."
From God’s standpoint, the means by which we are united to Christ is the gift and
indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Trinity. When Christ wanted to
console his disciples, in view of his departure from them and his ascension to heaven, he
promised them the gift of the Holy Spirit. The presence of the Spirit in their hearts and
in their community would be, he said, equivalent to his own being with them. The
fulfillment of that promise is the means by which every new member of the body of Christ
is united with Christ and with other Christians.
This is a mysterious, and almost unbelievable, gift from God. The Holy Spirit comes, not
only as the Third Person of the Trinity, but as the Spirit of the glorified God-man, Jesus
Christ (John 7:39). He comes to enable us to repent and believe. He comes to unite us to
Christ and to reproduce in us the same kind of life that Jesus lived when he was here
among us. He comes to enable us to respond to the two-fold law of love to God and to our
neighbor. This is what Jesus did when he was here, and his human life is to be reproduced
in us by the Holy Spirit in the mystical union.
AND AS A RESULT. . .
The result is that we become new creatures in Jesus Christ. We were created as
original-IMAGES of God. In our declaration of independence we became imagined ULTIMATE
ORIGINALS. Now, through the grace of Christ, we become restored original-IMAGES in Him.
The New Testament speaks directly of the restored image in two places. Colossians 3:10
says, " . . . and have put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after
the image of him that created him . . ." We must recall here how very different the
Biblical concept of knowledge is from what goes for knowledge in the modern world. In the
Bible, knowledge always involves action. We do not know of the truth unless we do it (1
John 1:6). So the reception of the Gospel will mean a difference in the ways in which we
live.
The other passage is Ephesians 4:23-24, " . . . and that ye be renewed in the spirit
of your mind, and put on the new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness
and holiness of truth . . ." The result of our being restored to the image of God in
Jesus Christ will be the fulfillment in our lives of the royal law of love to God and
neighbor.
Not that we will be instantly completed saints. The wreckage that sin has worked in our
hearts will not be completely renovated in a day. But we will be on a new path. In
repentance and faith, enabled by the Holy Spirit of Jesus, we will keep plugging along on
the way to heaven. This is what it means to enter into and enjoy the benefits of what
Christ has done for us. We will become experiencers of and witnesses to the lordship of
Christ that is as wide as the cosmos. Thus we will seek first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness.
Editor: Al Greene
Alta Vista College
