Live Together with Him

As St. Paul put it in 1 Thessalonians, we are to “live together with him”. The Scriptures speak of this life in Christ in many ways—live in him, union, members of one body, know him, abide in him, dwell, born of him, vine and branches, communion, eat my body and drink my blood, found in him—but it is all too easy to miss that this is, in fact, the very essence of the life in Christ, of spirituality, of the Christian life. In Jesus Christ’s last hours with his disciples, his prayer turns to this life in him:
That they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you; that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And the glory which you gave me I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one: I in them, and you in me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that you have sent me, and have loved them as you have loved me. — John 17:21-23
That is an absolutely staggering set of verses; by all means, read it again instead of reading my feeble words. The one-ness, the unity, the life in Christ, is obviously a point our Lord wanted to drive home. This is the core of the spiritual life.

And as a bit of a side note concerning our desire to share our faith, for evangelism, he even says that this will be accomplished as a by-product of our one-ness with Christ: that the world may believe that you sent me and that the world may know. The world can hear the facts easily enough, but our one-ness in Christ is what will enable the world to know him. Our attention should be on communion with the Holy Trinity rather than attempting to cut that process short and to take charge of how that faith should be shared.

“I have given them” the glory. He is not speaking of glory as in dying, going to heaven, and being glorified. He is speaking of living in unity with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, of being united to Christ here and now. Christ is the I AM, not the the I WILL BE. The kingdom of God is within us, here and now, not in the future after we die.

Though the New Testament authors are rife with references to this life in Christ through communion and union with him, this passage from John’s Gospel is key because of the timing and because it is from the Lord’s own mouth.

We must pay attention, however, to the beginning of chapter seveteen. There is a link to something that has been mentioned already, in the last post, and which is a key to the spiritual life. For, if in this comparison between Orthodox spirituality and modern Christian spirituality outside of Orthodoxy, we are looking for the most central and driving principle of Orthodox spiritual life, it is this: humility.

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