John 17:21-23—“that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one”—all believers are one in Christ, to whom they are severally and collectively united, as Christ himself is one with God.
(f) The believer is made partaker of the divine nature.
2 Pet. 1:4—“that through these [promises] ye may become partakers of the divine nature”—not by having the essence of your humanity changed into the essence of divinity, but by having Christ the divine Savior continually dwelling within, and indissolubly joined to, your human souls.
(g) The believer is made one spirit with the Lord.
1 Cor. 6:17—“he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit”—human nature is so interpenetrated and energized by the divine, that the two move and act as one; cf. 19—“know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God?” Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”—the Spirit is so near to us, and so one with us, that our prayer is called his, or rather, his prayer becomes ours. Weiss, in his Life of Jesus, says that, in the view of Scripture, human greatness does not consist in a man's producing everything in a natural way out of himself, but in possessing perfect receptivity for God's greatest gift. Therefore God's Son receives the Spirit without measure; and we may add that the believer in like manner receives Christ.
2. Nature of this Union.
We have here to do not only with a fact of life, but with a unique relation between the finite and the infinite. Our descriptions must therefore be inadequate. Yet in many respects we know what this union is not; in certain respects we can positively characterize it.
It should not surprise us if we find it far more difficult to give a scientific definition of this union, than to determine the fact of its existence. It is a fact of life with which we have to deal; and the secret of life, even in its lowest forms, no philosopher has ever yet discovered. The tiniest flower witnesses to two facts: first, that of its own relative independence, as an individual organism; and secondly, that of its ultimate dependence upon a life and power not its own. So every human soul has its proper powers of intellect, affection, and will; yet it lives, moves, and has its being in God (Acts 17:28).
Starting out from the truth of God's omnipresence, it might seem as if God's indwelling in the granite boulder was the last limit of his union with the finite. But we see the divine intelligence and goodness drawing nearer to us, by successive stages, in vegetable life, in the animal creation, and in the moral nature of man. And yet there are two stages beyond all these: first, in Christ's union with the believer; and secondly, in God's union with Christ. If this union of God with the believer be only one of several approximations of God to his finite creation, the fact that it is, equally with the others, not wholly comprehensible to reason, should not blind us either to its truth or to its importance.