Dec 13 2005
God in Us and Us in Him and We Are All Together
The Gospel of John and his letters have always comforted yet challenged me because the author has a way of making the Christian life understandable in context of my life. Pretty quickly I could see those areas in which my actions didn’t match all my Christian talk. One concept John uses repeatedly is the idea that we are to abide in Christ and He in us. What the heck does that mean? When I first thought about it, the image I had was of a Star Trek tranporter accident where one person was fused into another. Not a comforting image. In John 15:5 he says,
“I am the vine and you are the branches; he that abides in Me and I in him will bear much fruit”.
And 1 John 2 says,
“Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us–eternal life.I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything–and is true and is no lie, just as it has taught you–abide in him.
So what is this abiding stuff and how are we supposed to do it in Christ and Him in us? The more I thought and read and prayed on it, the more it became clear to me that it was about replacing my will with His and acting in accordance with that. If that’s what it means, then I’m good with being a transporter accident.
Yet even though it makes sense to me, a life transformed in Christ is still a disturbing and repugnant thing to a world that glorifies nothing but the self. The good thing is that I don’t have to justify myself to Polly Toynbee or the ACLU or anyone else, just to Christ.
