with Christ the emphasis is that Christ is our life and He is united and mingled with us!

The four crucial elements of the Bible are Christ, the Spirit, life, and the church. Without Christ there is nothing – Christ is the reality of all the positive things in the universe.

If there’s no Christ, there’s no Spirit! But this One, Christ, is the center and reality of God, man, and everything positive in the universe! Christ is the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), the Spirit is life, and life produces the church.

These are the four crucial elements of the Bible – the first of which is Christ! When we come to Christ, there’s an emphasis. With each one of these items there’s an emphasis. With Christ the emphasis is that Christ is the believers’ life and is united and mingled with the believers (see Col. 3:4; John 15:4-5; 1 Cor. 6:17).

In the Bible Christ is so rich, so all-inclusive – He is the centrality and universality of God’s economy. In book after book, chapter after chapter, and even verse after verse, we can see how much Christ is to us.

But the emphasis in the Bible when it comes to Christ is NOT only how rich and all-inclusive He is, but even more – that He is our life and that He is united and mingled with us!

We need to know Christ not only as our Redeemer and Savior – which are the aspects we enjoy and know mostly initially; we need to know Him in a deeper way, especially that He is our life and our everything!

In John 15:4-5 we see that we need to abide in Him – just as a branch abides in the vine, so we need to abide in the Lord. We need to know the Lord to a deeper degree – we need to know that He is our life, that He is in us, and that He wants to mingle Himself with us!

This is a mystery – how can we abide in Christ? It is only because of and in the Spirit that this can take place. Christ today is the Spirit, and we can abide in Christ by being in our mingled spirit!

Because the Lord today is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17), we can abide in the Lord and the Lord can abide in us! This abiding and mingling results in our being joined to the Lord as one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17).

Just as the Father and the Son coinhere by dwelling and living in one another, so we and Christ are joined, mingled, and we coinhere – by us being in Christ and Christ being in us! Eventually, Christ becomes us and we become Christ – He and we are one!

He is the Head of the Body and we are the Body of the Head – we are the many members of the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12-13). Christ is our life (Col. 3:4) and our person, and He is continually mingling Himself with us.

He is also working in us to transform us until we become Christ and He becomes us (2 Cor. 3:18). Praise the Lord, we are now in the process of being transformed into the same image as Christ!

This is Christ being our life to be united with us and mingled with us that we may become Him! [sharing inspired from the Four Crucial Elements of the Bible – Christ, the Spirit, Life, and the Church; as quoted in the HWMR on The Crucial Elements of the Bible]

O, what a miracle, my Lord – that I’m in Thee and Thou in me! That Thou and I are really one! O, what a wondrous mystery! (hymns #233) Praise You Lord for becoming so subjective and available to us! Save us from having only an objective Christ – we want to enjoy You and be joined to You as one! Mingle Yourself more with us. Transform us more into Your image. Make us the same as You are, since You made Yourself as we are!