Oneness

"I am crucified with Christ."    Galatians 2:20

It is a great historical fact that Christ Jesus was ignominiously crucified on a hill outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago. If the Apostle Paul is speaking here of the historical event where Jesus was hung on a cross, as suspended between heaven and earth and in some mystical sense as being there with Him on that cross, crucified, dying – he would have better said:

"I was crucified with Christ."

Translated in the Greek text, the verb is in the present perfect tense. And while the present perfect tense denotes an action that is completed – I have been crucified with Christ – it may also, according to the rules of grammar, indicate action that is continuing unto the present. This is why the King James translators chose the wording: "I am crucified with Christ"

In spite of the awful facts of Calvary's dreadful crucifixion scene, the crucifixion of Christ Jesus is not just the wooden cross on Golgotha's hill. The cross of Jesus was a type of an ongoing obedience to a spiritual operation of the Father in disciplined sons and daughters. The cross of Christ that the apostle Paul preached as being needed, in which he gloried, and by which the world is reconciled to God, is also a powerful work done today within maturing sons practicing union with God in our inner spiritual man.

Crucifixion is something more than being nailed to wooden beams. We must see and understand that it is a spiritual operation that crosses out our fallen life from within and replaces it with God’s resurrected life. It is a circumcision of heart, in our spirit. Our Lord exhorted all His disciples when saying:

"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."   Matthew 16:24

Jesus is not making reference to a cross of wood, but to a SPIRITUAL OPERATION that would bring death to one's own soulish ideas, will, and religious ways. This is how we finally find God manifesting a COMPLETE portion of His life, henceforth guiding our spirit to be sanctified in truth. The operation of the cross upon our heart is in some mysterious and divine way the present gateway to being indwelt by God the Father. 

The wooden Roman cross upon which Jesus was crucified is a type of an ongoing spiritual operation among the called, chosen, and faithful followers of Christ. Beloved, the cross which God operates in us now tests the inner character of each and every one of His sons and daughters until we gain Christ’s reign and receive power of a complete salvation. 

The handwriting of ordinances, including the scriptural laws of Moses, become but head knowledge of good and evil within religious men. That way of knowing God is nailed to His cross too. He made peace for us, so we can be reconciled to higher heavenly places. We are crucified to the many worldly ways of worship that the church world continually practices. No literal parchment of the Old Testament was nailed to the wooden cross at Calvary, yet there is a magical saving power emanating from the cross of Christ that circumcises our hearts. This cross is a process of personal obedience UNTO THE DEATH of our own soulish opinions, judgments, and attitudes.

The truth is that Jesus suffered the weight of the sins of the whole world at Calvary. It was a much greater spiritual sacrifice than the thousands of others who were also nailed to a tree, or thousands of others who died on the rack during the Catholic inquisitions, or thousands of others who were burned at the stake, fed to the lions, or made blazing human torches at the Circus in Rome. The physical suffering was no greater, but the spiritual action of God was unparalleled.

The cross of Christ Jesus now applies to a great spiritual operation that brings us into a working exchange with the divine. God writes on our inner being the deep principles of His character by His Word and Spirit. By taking up our cross, we are led to trust in the one sacrifice of greatest spiritual importance:

"Let this same attitude and purpose and (humble) mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus. Let Him be your example in humility — Who, although being essentially one with God, and in the form of God (possessing the fulness of the attributes which make God God), did not think this equality with God was a thing to be eagerly grasped or retained; But stripped Himself, (of all privileges and rightful dignity) so as to assume the guise of a servant (slave), in that He became like men and was born a human being. And after He had appeared in human form He abased and humbled Himself, (still further) and carried His obedience to the extreme of death, even the death of (the) cross!"   Philippians 2:5-8  amplified

As fierce as His suffering was at Calvary, that fearful hour of agony and blood was but the final act of a crucified life that carried out a stripping of privileges. He was to be born of a woman, under the law like men, then wrongly accused and crucified by men to His death on a wooden cross. Step by step we too are to follow in oneness to fearsome moments when in anguish He cried, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" Yet, truly, as the scripture testifies, Jesus is the Lamb "slain from the foundation of the world."

"And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship the dragon, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."   Revelation 13:8

Though I am sure it is impossible to plumb the shining depths and the inexhaustible riches of all the meanings of the cross of Christ, we will never really take up our cross until we understand some of the mysteries of the cross. The mysteries await revealing until the spirit of wisdom and revelation teaches our spirit to see into the intent of God’s heart. The Father of our Lord is the only true and lasting substance in the universe. He has His own reality, a spiritual existence that can be placed in our hearts.

That spirit reveals His word as seeds of His thoughts grow within us, to bloom in the garden of our hearts. This word causes us to believe in Christ working within us to quicken our spirit, conquering every fleshly opposition hidden within us. That is the cross we are to bear now. God’s Word and Spirit is given to expose what needs to be changed about us. Surely the cross of Christ exists within us to oppose the fleshly ways in which each of us have been deceived. 

God's Word and Spirit are anointed, yet His loving character is absent within fallen man, who has an abundance of hate, jealousy, and fault finding — the opposite of anointed love. God hates evil: Proverbs 6 reveals those main human characteristics that are opposite of His loving character as pride, lying, violence, wicked imaginations, mischief, and things that sow discord among brethren. These are the dark characteristics in men that God hates:

“There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to Him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil, a false witness who declares lies, and one who spreads strife among brothers.” Proverbs 6:16-19 NASB

Christ must bring a crucifiction to every thought that exalts itself above the knowledge God has placed within us. Truth reveals the importance of crucifixion being at the center of our being now, so we too may oppose any and every selfish lie. Christ reveals God’s life and opposes all that works death in us. God's positive characteristics are placed in the fleshly negative, as scripture reveals in the principles that Paul enunciated as the fundamental experience of Christians:

"Consequently, I am finding the law that, at my willing to be doing the ideal, the evil is lying beside me. For I am gratified with the law of God as to the man within, yet I am observing a different law in my members, warring with the law of my mind, and leading me captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. A wretched man am I! What will rescue me out of this body of death? Grace! I thank God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord., then, I myself with the mind, indeed, am slaving for God's law, yet with the flesh for Sin's law."   Romans 7:21-25 concordant 

True unity with God requires an increase of Christ’s REIGN within our own soulish members, in our attitudes and characteristics. A spiritual discipline must be activated within us, so that contrary negative motives will be effectively put off from us.

The light of Christ releases us from our old ways. The old dead ways are dislodged, burnt up so they pass away. This is how we are bearing our cross and following Him TODAY and it changes us TODAY. This has become the way to newness. A new way appears for us every day as we see with all new attitudes and dispositions toward the things we are going through and in which we are involved:

"Behold, I make all things new."   Revelation 21:5

To embrace our cross we must be willing to change. All of us will be changed into His image eventually because that is the Father's plan. Overcoming Christians go beyond the beginning stages now. They are led to ask, seek, and knock for complete oneness with the image and glory of the incorruptible God.

Many principles were set forth in the original and fallen state of the man Adam. Adam had unity with God but fell into the darkness of sin, resulting in separation and death. Adam originally was innocent, not outwardly evil or rebellious, but God created him capable of being subjected to vanity. All men now experience what is vain and contradictory to God.

Having experience in correct understanding of divine processes, a change is needed. The cross is needed for Christians to attain the gateway, an entrance to a city with full portions of His LIFE. The truth of His word is formed, clarified and crystallized within our spiritual understanding, allowing Christ to reign within our earthly members.

Because God is God, He honors the divine character placed in His Son, in Whom every opposition of fleshly expectations is conquered. God is showing forth Jesus Himself who died within Himself to every dark principle that would sow pride, strife, bitterness, trouble, bigotry, hatred, viciousness, pain, sorrow, chaos, disappointment, weakness, limitation, or evil of any kind.

Christ reigning within us raises us from the fallen elements common to man. Christ within us is bearing our cross now, bearing fruit of divine character within our daily life. The operation of the cross draws us to look at the very center of God’s intentions toward us as the Father of our spirit. He has provided an access to godliness, a oneness with all that makes Him God, a oneness with ALL HE ALWAYS IS.

As a Father, God brings the operation of His cross to bear in our lives. He brings discipline to our spirit right now, in today’s reality. As our spirit is subject to the Father of Spirits, we can be living, being made alive in our spirit. Seeing that Jesus practiced a daily dying to all that is not godly, the guidance from our inner spiritual man will show us how to do the same. Our oneness with God’s spirit releases us from internal oppositions of the flesh, loosening us from the workings of death that are deep in hidden thoughts and manners of disposition.

We are released from death’s grip to become the dwelling place of God IN SPIRIT. God is our Father and He brought Jesus Christ through this process long ago. He now brings mature Christians to a spiritual discipline that continually crosses out the false standards of fallen fleshly life. The cross of Christ is not just about what happened to Jesus two thousand years ago. The effective cross of Christ can lead us to a heavenly place right now. In our daily lives , we are CRUCIFIED from within by God’s Christ. See Paul exulting with joy in this truth:

"For I, through law, died to law, that I should be living to God. With Christ have I been crucified, yet I am living; no longer I, but living in me is Christ. Now that which I am now living in flesh, I am living in faith that is of the Son of God, Who loves me, and gives Himself up for me."   Galatians 2:20-21 concordant

NOW the cross of Christ has been working to make a united, lasting order of people in whom CHRIST IS LIVING! Now this is neither history nor a future event. It's an accomplished fact that God has sealed sons in the Christ ongoing to NOW. The cross of Christ frees us from the fallen conditions of man by a work that crosses out the fleshly works in our own hearts.

He is faithful to carry us onward to a perfect Day that will work effectively to awaken us from sleep and draw us out of every dark separation. Christ in us provides an inner resurrection from the death traps that ensnare mankind. God accomplished it in Jesus. Jesus rejected all the false ways that fell short of what God has chosen for Him.

I am crucified too, nevertheless I do live, yet it's not the "I" that lives but Christ who is alive in me. This pattern of sound words is the correct way for mature Christians to think within our hearts. The cross of Christ is putting off the workings and power of fleshly domination in man’s life. The words of the apostle guide us in how Christ rejects the outer sense realm and the carnal, fleshly ways of vanity. We must each be disciplined to “put on Christ”. Christ exposes any remaining iniquity within us, most of all exposing all the good works and religious efforts of doing good in our own strength.

Our spiritual character needs to be developed into oneness with His great power. We learn to be crucified, to find the release of wisdom and knowledge as disciplined sons and daughters who are the dwelling place of God. Self righteousness is removed from disciplined sons in order to become purely inhabited by the holy one. Christ releases us from religious dead works and every religious form of worship.

Paul’s doctrine preached of the cross of Christ as being applied in our hearts as a spiritual operation of our Father. His operation is coming in a spiritual dimension, in many ways like a pruning and refining fire that reaches into our hearts to produce His divine nature of LOVE, PEACE, AND JOY within. Christ is established within our hearts, making us willingly surrender and become practiced at putting on our heavenly garments, of being clothed with truth.

Enjoyment of truth, God’s Life, glorious Light, and overpowering Love, requires us to believe "I AM crucified, and I LIVE." When we practice this discipline, we are being crucified and made alive to a lasting order. Paul spoke of two corresponding and existing parallel principles that are working in our present life. I AM crucified and I AM alive. Those are dual realities, then present and continuing to be our reality today. I am and I am. I AM crucified and I AM living. Who and what is crucified? Not my inward spiritual man, but my outward fleshly mind. The mind of man’s soulish wisdom needs to be crucified, as expressed by Paul:

"Though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day".   II Corinthians 4:16 concordant

Adam fell into the vain conscience of his outer man. The fallen man became serpent’s meat. The soul of man has a mind that is self-centered, carnal, divisive, selfish, swift to shed blood, in fact CONTRARY to God. The carnal mind IS death. That outer part of us needs to be crucified so the inward man, our spiritual man, can be renewed daily and thereby be joined to the Lord as one spirit. Our soulish outer man becomes SILENT when crucified.

Now our spiritual man is free to express the truth of God’s Spirit. We are being made alive from within our spirit, where Christ has been formed. Now He reigns and leads us to the ranks that are being made perfect, complete in mature conformity to oneness. "I am ALIVE" is true in our spirit if one has been enhanced by an added ingredient: His Spirit being joined to our spirit.

We are now awakened to His reign, quickened by heavenly waters that bring understanding from His Spirit of how we must put off the outer man’s influences by an inner operation of the cross of Christ. Our Father is a master surgeon, knowing just how to operate on us so our hearts are circumcised to be counted truly worthy of the salvation found working in the “living creatures about His throne”.

Thank God, our inner spiritual man is alive and is standing up to rule over our earthly problems, our earthly yokes, our kinships and customs. He breaks every yoke of soulish domination within the heart of disciplined sons. This is receiving real communion in daily renewals of bread that feeds our inner spiritual man.

"…wherefore, we faint not, but if also our outward man doth decay, yet the inward is renewed day by day;" 2 Corinthians 4:16 YLT

It was on the cross that Jesus poured out His blood for the life of the world, a divine paradox of both death and life working. I am perishing and I am quickened. Something is taken away because something is added. It is God's divine chemistry lab of producing in us a firstfruit character, something entirely new to CREATION. God is making each of us new creatures who show forth new glories of God unto His praise, now and in the ages to come.

Furthermore, the mystery of union with His Spirit goes beyond the thought of just being a container, a dwelling separate from God. That which fills a container is still separate from that which fills it. Like a bottle with water, there is no mixture, no co-mingling, no union, no oneness between the bottle and the water. The two touch one another, but with no blending to create one substance. The water is still water and the bottle remains the same bottle.

Disciplined sons, however, are not remaining the same. God’s element of Spirit remains the same, but the one element is made to fuse into the other until a unity prevails, therefore bringing us to ONENESS OF SPIRIT. In fusion, things are blended and compounded until each element loses its own identity and someone entirely new comes forth. A new element inherently possessed independently is brought into an awesome manifestation.

This important plan is working within sons and daughters who are being renewed daily in their inner spiritual man to become new, to see through the mystery of the letter and grasp this wonderful truth:

"Therefore," says the apostle,"if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new…"   II Corinthians 5:17

Oh, yes, God is making us to be new creatures, living creatures “full of eyes” spoken of in Revelation. Some people have eyes to understand as His Word is being made flesh again like it was in Jesus. It is God who has birthed sons and daughters to form a celestial people who can dwell together as one with Him. It is the operation of the cross that brings the compounding divine elements within the human spirit wherein Christ is heard, is seen, is formed to influence within the human spirit an expression of ONE SPIRIT coming from God as our Father:

"He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit."   I Corinthians 6:17

What our Father has formed in our inner spiritual man is a part of us that will exist in the unseen dimensions throughout the ages. That is the reality of the unseen. Is the reality of Christ formed in you? Is your spirit’s anointing such a part of you and alive to God?

God DWELLS in the sons He quickens by spirit. This is not merely a mental concept. It has proven to be a real manifestation, operated by God to assimilate and absorb our lack so we can be made fellow citizens with the wisest followers of Jesus. We are being made ONE spirit with Him.