I am, and I am becoming

I am one with God.

Yes, it's true, but sometimes I find this hard to believe.

Jesus came to earth and took the penalty for the sins of man kind, not so that we could live forever in mansions connected by streets of gold, but so that we could have a relationship with God. Not just any relationship, but a covenant relationship. When God made a covenant with Abram He change Abrams name, adding part of His own. When God became Immanuel and lived among men, He took on our identity. He was called the Son of Man. He took our sin as His own, and gave us His righteousness and position before God as our own. The book of John is full of such references. Jesus states "I and my Father are one." And then says "that they may be one, even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they may be in Us… I in them, and You in me, that they may be perfected in unity."

Scripture says that I stand in the righteousness of Christ, that in Him I have been made complete, that I am joint heir with Christ in the inheritance of the kingdom, that I am indwelled with the very Spirit of God, that I am currently sitting in heavenly places with Christ.

I believe all these things to be true. You see, God is not bound by time. He created it, and exists outside of it. All of eternity is "now" to Him, in a sense. He sees me, in what is "now" for me, as I simply "am" in His eyes – eternally perfect.

God's opinion is the only one that really matters, right? Well He says I'm perfect. He says I'm complete. He says I'm one with Him. He says I cannot ever lose His love.

This presents a dilemma. You see, I do not always live as if I am perfect. I do not live as if I am one with a holy God.

As I see it, I could respond to this dilemma in three different ways. I could say that it doesn't matter how I live because I am positionaly sanctified before God already, I could throw up my hands in resignation and say that no one is perfect so all I can do is my best, or I could believe that what I am in God's eyes is what I some day will be, and is something I can become this side of death. I choose the third response. I believe it is possible to attain at least some level of perfection even while I am tied to a carnal body. Why? Because perfection is not defined as a certain way of living, a certain set of beliefs or actions, a list of dos and don'ts. Becoming perfect is becoming the same as God, which is accomplished by knowing and abiding in Christ. It is walking in the Spirit. It is conforming to His image. This is something I can do right now. And the more I know Him, the more I will be like Him, and as a result, less sinful and like the world and it's ruler. To put it bluntly, I believe that as I know God better I will stop sinning.

I am one with God, yet I am also becoming one with Him.

There are times when I feel like I just might be getting there. There are times when I feel the unity of my self and my God to such a degree that mt every action and every word seems sacred. I can feel the very Spirit of God flowing out of me. I think His thoughts, I respond to His promptings. I love days like that.

Then there are other days. Days when I seem to come out of a stupor and am shocked by the selfish, sinful choices I have made… only to turn around and make them again. On these days I beg God for His strength to get out of the muck I feel stuck in, yet He is strangely silent. Mutely declaring that I already have the answer I am looking for.

I think I'm starting to understand. Sometimes, when I feel that I am quite in tune with the voice of God and am getting quite close to that state of perfection I am desiring, a little voice whispers in my ear, "Don't you know that you are one with God? Don't you know that your thoughts are His thoughts and your desires His desires? That means you can do whatever you want and it will be right." And sometimes I believe that little voice. Sometimes I start making little, selfish choices, and the next thing I know I'm having "one of those days" when I cannot seem to shake myself from the clutches of my own selfishness.

Here is why it is so easy for me to believe that little voice. Scripture says that if we walk in the Spirit we are not under the law. It says that Christ abolished the law and has given us freedom. Conservative churches have shied away from passages like these because of the very results I have found in my own life, but truth misapplied is no less truth. Truth must be approached through the eyes of it's Author. Galatians 5 says, "For you were called to freedom, brethren. Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another… But this I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh."

So this lesson, like most of the others God has taught me in the last 3 years, comes back to abiding. If I am walking continuously in the Spirit, filled with the truth of God, in constant communion with Christ, and consistently wary of the voice of the enemy of my soul - or that of my own flesh - speaking things that sound like truth, if I live in God I will not sin, because I will become like Him.

So I am learning that I exist in two states at the same time. I am, and I am also becoming. And someday, when my eternal spirit is set free from my time bound body the two states of being will finally unite and I will simply be, before my God and also in Him.