#DailyDevotion The Promise Of Union With God In Christ
John 1418“I will not leave you orphans; I’m coming back to you. 19Only a little while and the world won’t see Me any more. But you will see Me. Because I live, you too will live. 200n that day you will know I’m in My Father and you in Me and I in you. 21If you have My commandments and obey them, you love Me. And if you love Me, My Father will love you, and I will love you and show Myself to you.”
It’s no wonder the apostles look at Jesus with mouths gaped open when Jesus talks. Even we with hindsight and the Holy Spirit sometimes have to struggle to know when something Jesus is talking about is going to happen. Perhaps it is hindsight that hinders us. What I mean is in verse eighteen Jesus says he is coming back to us. Is this the Last Day? I tend to think it is. Then in verse nineteen he says, “But you will see me” after he says, “Only a little while and world won’t see me anymore.” This little while is when Jesus dies. After that the world does no longer see him. But the apostles must see him to give witness to his resurrection. So it would seem verse eighteen speaks to the Last Day and verse nineteen speaks to Good Friday, Easter and the Ascension.
Jesus says, “Because I live, you too will live.” Well Jesus is life. We know he dies on the cross. We also know Jesus rises from the dead. In chapter 11 of John, Jesus says everyone who believes in him will never die. Indeed everyone who believes in Jesus has passed from death to life. Is Jesus talking about now or the resurrection? Perhaps he is talking about both. We most certainly have been given eternal life now. We most certainly will rise from the dead and live with Christ in his kingdom. Which is it? Perhaps usual answer to such things applies here, yes.
On that day Jesus says; which day is that? Again probably both. We know now by faith Jesus is in the Father and we are in Jesus and Jesus is in us. We may even at times have a certain feeling of the Lord’s indwelling in us at times. Other times we just know by faith. Yet there is coming a time, when the LORD Jesus Christ returns when we will know because we will experience with our own eyes and intimately know the Lord’s dwelling in us and us in Jesus and Jesus in the Father. John writes in his epistle, 1John 32“Dear friends, we are now God’s children, but it hasn’t yet been shown what we’re going to be. We know that when it will be shown, we’ll be like Him because we’ll see Him as He is.” Paul tells us in Ephesians two that even now we are seated with him in the heavenly places. Jesus says in Revelation 3:21 “Be victorious, and I will have you sit with Me on My throne, as I have won the victory and have sat down with My Father on His throne.” We have the Father on his throne, Jesus on the Father’s throne, and we in Jesus on his throne which is the Father’s.
Mind boggling, isn’t it? Yet we confess in the Athanasian Creed concerning Jesus being God and man, “not by conversion of the godhead into flesh but by taking of the manhood into God.” Specifically speaking Jesus’ manhood, yet by being in union with Christ and his union with us, he takes us into the Godhead. We see in Daniel 7 the Ancient of Days being one with the Son of Man and the saints of God exercising the same power, dominion and authority as they. What a promise.
Heavenly Father, continually strengthen us in our faith concerning the promises of Jesus that we may be edified in them to persevere and having persevered receive the fulfillment of them. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.