Daily Word
A word of encouragement for your day.
THE SECRET OF THE SPIRIT-LIFE
"The one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him."
"Just as the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you; remain in My love."
(John 15:9)
These sentences disclose the greatest secret of the spiritual life: love-spirit-union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paulus uses the same word which describes the sexual union between man and woman, husband and wife in marriage, finalizing the deep mystery of the one-flesh love-union in marriage.
The word means to glue or cement together into an inseparable union of love.
This is the great secret of the life of Jesus: He was inseparably united with His Father in love, and allowed absolutely nothing to come in between Him and His Father. Therefore, He conquered every temptation and won the greatest victory ever won in the history of this world over the devil, sin, death and hell.
If we allow Him to bind and unite us with Himself in the same inseparable love-union, we will also become invincible conquerors like our Lord.
There are four stages in becoming completely united with the Lord into "one spirit" – into total spirit-union:
1/ United with Him through the new birth: the moment we are born of the Spirit, we are united with "the Lord who is Spirit" and immediately "the Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are children of God";
2/ When we have become united with the Lord in death and resurrection through water baptism, we
are baptized by the Spirit into the Vine as a branch, abiding in Him, drawing our life from Him,
learning the secret of abiding in Him through complete dependence on Him;
3/ Praying in the Holy Spirit, our love relationship with Him becomes deeper and stronger (Jude 1:20-21), when we cling to Him as the only Source of our existence;
4/ Slowly but surely we are being glued together with Him into an inseparable love-union.
Now Romans 8:35-39 becomes an experienced daily reality: nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
We have become "one spirit with the Lord": the spirit-union with Him is complete and lasting and wherever we go and whatever we do, we manifest Him: living for us now is Christ and death a gain.