“Abide in me, and I in you.” Jo15.4 ESV
I have read these words a thousand times; yet I am drawn to something I have not noticed before. My first impression has always been that Christ is telling me get out of the way and allow Him to live His life in me. Yet, listening this morning I am impressed that He is equally telling me to live “my life” in Him, even as He desires to live His life in me. It comes to mind that He says something similar to this in just a few verses, “I tell you these things that my joy may be in you and your joy made full. Notice the distinctions: His life, my life, His joy, and my joy. I believe that my life must know a kind of death before He can come and live in me. But once dead, are we not raised to a new life just as a married person is not only dead to being single they are alive to the marriage. I think Christ is asking us to marry Him. To do this we must give up our single life. But we must also embrace married life, and live as the married person lives. No doubt we bring to this relationship something of ourselves but something that could never be complete without our union to Him. He is not asking to destroy our individual personalities but to complete them. Here is a Christian mystery. When two people marry both are changed. And while we should not press this to far when speaking of our marriage to Christ, has he not taken a human nature than we might be given the divine. To live in us does Jesus not live as a human? To live in Him surely we must live as divine. And what is it to be married to the Son of God but to love as He loves, serve as He serves and live as He lives. What I am deriving from all of this is that I spend too much time trying not to live a single person when He wants me to put my energies living as His bride. 6/13/2008 ts
Just me trying to be honest with God.
