Corporate Union with Christ

This is a hard topic to talk about because the great majority of Christians aren’t aware of the depths that one can enter into in relationship to the presence of God. So if you aren’t aware of it individually, it is even harder to talk about the corporate nature of it. Yet we’ll give it a try.  

First of all, when I talk about corporate I am not referring to sitting in those buildings people go to once a week. That is about as far away from corporate as you can get.  

No, I am talking about being one together in the pursuit of the presence of God in our lives on a continual basis, while living in close proximity to one another to facilitate it.

Of course the first step is to desire and pursue a deep, intimate relationship with Christ individually, as it is impossible to enter in corporately without the hunger and desire individually first. Again, one cannot exist without the other!  

Yet the purpose of entering into the presence of God individually is never an end in and of itself; being together in it - that’s the end that God has in mind.  

This reminds me of a movie I saw one time where the main character was seeking spiritual enlightenment. He eventually goes by himself up onto a mountaintop and reads spiritual books and contemplates. One day he gets some insight and starts to laugh to himself. He then takes the book he is reading and starts tearing the pages out and putting them in a fire.

When he comes down from the mountain and talks to his mentor, the mentor asks him what he learned when he was up there. His response was that it was easy to be a holy man on a mountain.

In other words, seeking God by yourself only, is nothing in comparison to doing it individually, and than together with others. That is the part that is harder than the other and more in tune with God’s ultimate purpose.

Seeking God by yourself is not enough. We must first seek Him and then together seek and enter into His presence.

This is what truly being the church is all about. Together we pursue his awesome presence and daily dwell in Him and He in us. That’s what God’s desire was from before the foundation of the world. What we must be careful of, as I have mentioned in another article, is to not make this our great disconnect!  

God’s heart and purpose has always been to have a corporate counterpart; a many-membered body, a woman.  

In other words, this is something to be lived out in reality in our lives. It is not something that you read about and intellectually agree with and then go about doing things the same way as always. This is what it means to be a Christian. That’s why the believers at Antioch were originally mocked, because they so much pursued Him in this way that they were deridingly called “Christians,” which means that they were Christ centered.  

Like I said, this is what it really means to take the word Christian upon yourself individually and corporately. It means that our lives are lived in His presence moment by moment; continuously on. That’s the great corporate endeavor we are called to participate in. That’s the heart cry of God.