The Gospel in Ten Words (10 page)

But God has brought
you into union with Christ Jesus … (1 Corinthians 1:30, GNB)

Camilla and I got married at four o’clock in the afternoon. Our
wedding banquet kicked off at six o’clock. The two hours between the “I do” and
“Let’s party!” were two of the sweetest, yet most surreal, hours of my life.
During the photo taking and guest-greeting I kept looking at this beautiful
woman next to me in amazement.
This lady is my wife.
I have a wife? I
didn’t have a wife this morning. How did this happen? All I said was ‘I do.’

I now know why they have parties at weddings.
It’s to give the startled bride and groom a chance to process the shock and the
wonder of what just happened.
This is for real. I thought I was dreaming but
look at all these smiling people. They seem pretty convinced we’re married so we
must be married.

 
Jesus once spoke of the joy that
erupts in heaven when a sinner repents and comes to believe in the good news.
We might imagine they have something like a birthday party to celebrate the new
birth, but in reality it’s the rejoicing that accompanies a wedding. It’s a
celebration of a new life wedded in union with Christ.

Many of us are looking forward to the wedding
banquet yet to come, but Jesus is returning for his bride, not his fiancée. You
are already married to him. Your union with Christ is not a future event but a
present reality that began the moment you first said “Yes” to Jesus. You are
now living in the two hours between the “I do” and “Let’s party!” It’s sweet, a
bit surreal, but you are most definitely wed.

Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches,” and from that
most wonderful affirmation of our union, confused preachers have drawn
terrifying lessons about being cut off and thrown into the fire. Whoa. Slow
down. That’s like fretting about divorce in the middle of your honeymoon.
Relax. Jesus doesn’t believe in divorce. In fact he hates it. You’re stuck with
him for good. What God has joined together, let no man separate.
[34]

Look at those words again: “I am the vine,
you are the branches” (John 15:5). Your union with Christ is not a far-off
event but an accomplished fact. You are already in Christ. Since there is no
part of the branch that is not also part of the vine, anyone who touches you
touches Jesus. When you place your hands on the sick, you are placing his hands
on the sick. When you open your mouth to speak the good news, you are speaking
his words with his mouth.

I have been married for some time so I don’t
find this strange at all. I am accustomed to thinking in terms of a one-flesh
team. I remind Camilla about this every time the parent-teacher interviews come
up at school. “But honey, we don’t need to
both
go, for if
you
are there then
we
are there. We’re a one-flesh team.” And she usually
responds by giving me a sideways glance.

I jest to make an important point. Our
one-flesh union is an earthly picture of the spiritual union all believers have
with Jesus:

On that
day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in
you. (John 14:20)

He is in you and you are in him. Wherever you
go, he goes. When you go to the parent-teacher interview, the Lord of the
Universe goes with
you.

“Wait a second, Paul. How can Jesus be
here
with
us if he’s up
there
with the Father?” That’s a good question. How can
Jesus be in two places at once
? How can he be present
within every believer at the same time?

Before Jesus returned to heaven, he said to
the disciples: “It is for your good that I go away” (John 16:7). Jesus said the
Comforter would come after he left and we would be better off with him than we
were with Jesus being physically present. He was saying, “I have been
with
you, and that has been good, but soon I will be
in
you, and that will be
even better.”

The Holy Spirit is the answer to the question,
“How can Jesus leave us and be with us at the same time?” Since the Holy Spirit
is the Spirit of Christ, to be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with
Jesus. And since he who has the Son also has the Father, to be filled with
Jesus is to be filled with the Father as well. He who has the Spirit also has
the Son and the Father. They are an inseparable team.
[35]

Right after promising the Holy Spirit, Jesus
said, “I will not leave you as orphans.” An orphan is a fatherless child. Jesus
was saying you won’t be that person. “My Father and I will come to you and make
our home with you” (see John 14:23). You have not been filled with one-third of
God but all of him; Father, Son, and Spirit.

Some people understand this but only half way. “Sure, God is with
us, but sometimes he isn’t. He comes and he goes.” It’s true that in the Old
Testament the Holy Spirit came upon certain people at certain times, but that
was then and this is now. Jesus said the Holy Spirit abides with us and makes
his home with us (John 14:16–17). By home he means
home
. You are not a
motel room for the Lord. You are a walking, talking, living, breathing temple
of the Holy Spirit. He is not going anywhere.

 “Are you saying that the Holy Spirit is with
me even when I
sin?”
Yes! Christ’s love for you and his union with you is stronger than any sin.

Under the old covenant, sinning was your fast
track to disunion. If you sinned you risked being cut off from the people of
God. Jesus said if your hand or eye causes you to sin, get rid of it (Matthew
5:29
–
30). Why
did Jesus preach self-amputation to those born under the law? Because under
that covenant it made awful sense to talk about removing those parts of the
body that might contaminate the whole. Thank the Lord the old covenant is gone.
We are not under law but grace, and this is good news for the members of the
body of Christ.

When we sin, Jesus does not cut us off; we
remain members of his body. This totally changes the way we look at sin.

Shall I then take the
members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!
(1 Corinthians 6:15b)

Under the old covenant we were restrained
from sin through mortal terror but in the new we are restrained by love. Look
again at Paul’s warning about prostitutes. Behind the warning
—
don’t do
it
—
there is
a surprising and
reassuring
affirmation of
union. Paul is saying it is possible,
though not advisable, to unite the
members of Christ’s body with
prostitutes. Do you see it? Earthly marriages may break and fail, but your
union with Christ is unbreakable. Sin cannot break it. Addiction cannot break
it. The stupidest decisions you might ever make cannot break it.

 This should not be taken as a challenge to see what you
can get away with but as a stunning declaration of Christ’s absolute commitment
to love you and stick with you
no matter what
. This is what changes us—not
the weak influence of the rule (there is no rule; all things are lawful) but
the relentless and determined passion of his love.

The love of God is the greatest force in the universe.
Sin wilts before it. When you encounter the undaunted and unending love of
Christ, it changes you. You no longer want to sin. The passing pleasures of
this world lose their appeal because you have found a love that is truer and
better by far.

Union with Christ is the number one reason why we have it better
than those who lived before the cross. Back then they wrote love songs about
yearning and absence. “I looked for the one my heart loves but I could not find
him.” “I opened to my beloved, but my beloved was gone.” “As the deer pants for
the water, so my soul pants for you, O God.”
[36]
It
breaks
my heart to hear Christians
singing songs of longing
and calling it worship. I imagine it breaks Jesus’ heart too. Where are you
Lord?
I am right here. I am in you and you are in me.
Where did you go
?
I didn’t go anywhere. I promised I would never leave you.

Here’s another timeless classic from the
album,
Love Songs of the Old Covenant
:

One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell
in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. (Psalms 27:4a)

That
you
may
dwell in the house of the Lord? You
are
the house of the
Lord. You can dwell in the house of the Lord as long as you like. In fact, it’s
going to be quite impossible for you to dwell anywhere else.

To see how well you grasp this, ask yourself a simple
question: Where is God? When you think of God being some
place
, where is
that place? Is he up there or over there or who knows where? Well I suppose God
can be anywhere and everywhere, but the good news declares he is in you and you
are in him. Any concept of separating distance is totally demolished by this
revelation. He is not far away and he is not hiding behind a cloud. How can we
be sure? Because Jesus said so. “Surely I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20).

Intimacy is not something we ever need long
for. (He is already with us.) We don’t have to beg God to rend the heavens and
come down. (He already did.) And we never have to fear that he might abandon us
as orphans. (He promised he wouldn’t.) The good news declares that now and
forever more, you are in perfect union with the Lord.

The
Holy Spirit is the key to understanding the mystery of our union. Tragically
, the Holy Spirit has been painted as the sheriff of heaven
when in truth he is the one pouring out the love of God into your heart.

Look back at the movie of your life with
Jesus and you will find the Holy Spirit’s directing influence behind every
scene. Who do you think was the One who first revealed Jesus to you? Who opened
your heart to believe and your mouth to confess that Jesus is Lord? The Holy
Spirit is the reason you are reading this, and he is the one encouraging you to
believe all this good stuff I’m telling you about Jesus. If you have been in
the habit of singing old love songs of longing and loneliness, he will give you
new songs of intimacy and fulfillment. In short, the Holy Spirit is the best
friend you ever had.

Or don’t you know
that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death? (Romans 6:3)

I used to think this was a verse about water
baptism but it’s not. This verse is describing the real baptism of which water
baptism is but a reenactment. You have been baptized into Jesus Christ.

To baptize means to dip in the sense of
dipping cloth into dye. White cloth goes in; purple cloth comes out. Something
like that happened to you when you were dipped into Christ by the Holy Spirit.
You went in looking like Adam; you came out looking like Jesus. Before you were
baptized you were alienated from the life of God; afterwards you were connected
to the life-giving vine. How did this happen? I don’t know. Ask the Holy
Spirit. He’s the one who did it.
[37]
You don’t need to have it all figured out to benefit from it. You
just need to say, “Thank you, Holy Spirit.”

For if we have been planted together in the
likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. (
Romans
6:5,
KJV)

There is a word in this verse that appears nowhere else in the
Bible. It is a word that excites theologians into hand-waving bursts of
hyper-ventilated
hermeneutics.
It is the word
sumphutos
which is here translated
as “planted together.” This is just about the strongest word for union you
could possibly think of. It means being “born together with” or “of joint
origin.” The closest English word is
connate
which means individual
parts that are united to form a single whole.
[38]
The best illustration of connate union is the one Jesus gave us
—
a vine and a branch, two parts that combine to make an
indivisible whole. Vines and branches cannot be understood in isolation. A vine
that has no branches is not much of a vine, and a branch that is not part of a
vine is not a branch. It’s just a stick.

What does this connate union mean for us? It means our lives
cannot be understood in isolation from Jesus. Apart from him we can do nothing.
We can’t bear fruit, we can’t grow, and we can’t live. This has been humanity’s
experience from the Year Dot.

When our first father and mother walked out on God they
automatically cut themselves and their unborn descendants off from the tree of
life. They severed the tie that sustained us and humanity became the broken
branch that withered and died. But through his death and resurrection, Jesus
made a way for us to be raised from the dead to new life. That life flows as
the natural result of being connected in vital union with the Living Vine.