It’s a mystery of unity
beyond my understanding:
One God, three Persons,
One Essence in deep harmony,
working together as one
to build a home in me
and move in permanently!
You live in us, each one
a piece of your Family,
each one with access to
the heart of the Father,
the love of the Son,
and the intimate reality
of your Spirit as our guide.
And yet it is reciprocal,
this miracle of unity!
I am in you, my Savior!
Attached to you
I drink you in, so
somehow we are “one”,
living life together, forever!
The ties that bind us firmly
the Enemy cannot sever,
a spiritual communion
beyond dreams, a promise
you made to your disciples
who wrote it down for us.
And they knew that it was true.
The disciples were surrounding the table, listening. They did not realize this was their final feast with the Master before he would be arrested and crucified. Jesus was saying words of teaching and encouragement that had to be overwhelmingly difficult to digest:
He had said he was going away. He told them that he was preparing a place for them and that he was actually “the way” to that place. He would be there with his Father—and if they knew him, Jesus, they would have seen and known the Father, God! It had to blow their minds. He explains:
11 Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, but if you do not believe me, believe because of the miraculous deeds themselves. (Jn. 14:11 NET)
And then he promises that he will send them the Spirit, who will actually live in them forever!
16 Then I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever– 17 the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it does not see him or know him. But you know him, because he resides with you and will be in you. 18 “I will not abandon you as orphans, I will come to you. 19 In a little while the world will not see me any longer, but you will see me; because I live, you will live too. 20 You will know at that time that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you. 21 The person who has my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me. (Jn. 14:16-21 NET)
Did you catch that mystery in verse 20, the unity Jesus said would happen that would make community life with the Trinity a reality for the disciple?
20 You will know at that time that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you.
I have been contemplating this for years. Chapters 14 to 17 in John have been one of the most comforting places I’ve found in the Scriptures. After I lost my first pregnancy in the seventh month, I memorized Jesus’ prayer in chapter 17. His desire for union in the Family, his picture of the individual believer living in him and him in them, is so very reassuring of his love in this very hour. He even told his Father:
20 “I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, 21 that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. (Jn. 17:20-23 NET)
So we are included! We read the words that John and other witnesses wrote and we believe in the Way, Jesus, who is in the Father. And the Father is in him. Their Spirit, the Spirit of truth, lives in us! And a crucial aspect of this relationship is that we believers be “in” this Father/Son/Spirit three-in-one God! It is indeed a mystery, even when we are living it. He lives in us and we live in him. What does that mean? I will take us to the words of a biblical scholar who explains it well:
What it means for Christ to dwell in believers is clear enough: with the coming of the Spirit to dwell in believers, Jesus also may be said to dwell in them because of the unity of the Spirit and the Son. However, what it means for believers to dwell in Christ is more difficult to explain. At one level, it appears to be a metaphor for loyalty and obedience to Christ—at least, this is what Jesus stressed about believers abiding in him. The key text is 15:4–10, where, describing the disciples’ relationship to him in terms of branches in the vine, Jesus says that they ‘remain’ in him by allowing his words to ‘remain’ in them (15:7), and implies that this is the same as abiding in his love by obeying his commands (15:10). However, more than loyalty and obedience is involved in their being ‘in’ Jesus, as his prayer in 17:21 indicates: ‘Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us.’ It is perhaps best understood in terms of a union brought about by the coming of the Holy Spirit.[1]
So although we cannot understand it all, when we belong to Jesus, his Spirit lives in us, and because of that, we are “in” Christ too.
What a privilege to be invited into this sacred harmony, this home, to live there every minute, to share it with the Trinity!
Are we living it out? Are we resting there, conversing with them in our home, reflecting God’s glory? That is yet another deep subject to explore.
Let’s revel in this privilege of being unified with God this way! We live in Christ, attached firmly to him (the parable of the Vine in in John 15, is a key part of this teaching). You and I are both part of this Family and this mysterious union. What grace!
And yet it is reciprocal,
this miracle of unity!
I am in you, my Savior!
Attached to you
I drink you in, so
somehow we are “one”,
living life together, forever!
[1] Colin G. Kruse, John: An Introduction and Commentary, ed. Eckhard J. Schnabel, Second edition, vol. 4, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 2017), 355–356.
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