SPIRITUAL UNITY

SPIRITUAL UNITY

In John 6 I get the Person of Christ satisfying the whole soul of man; therefore we abide in Him and ^[p. 131] He in us. In chapter 7 the Spirit; chapter 8, light in the conscience; chapter 9, light in the understanding; but as to chapter 17 my thoughts are these that the prayer was answered; and is being answered after a fashion. It was an earthly expression, the unity contemplated there. Was it, or was it not? If earthly, there must be a part of the earth as the theatre of it, and so there was. Jerusalem for one short moment was the scene of this visible unity, but earth being lost, the sort of unity here contemplated as visible ceases, and necessarily so; for to be visible it must be material and not spiritual. When the unity became only spiritual, it was not less unity, but morally greater, inasmuch as spirit always exceeds matter, and here the Spirit was the Holy Spirit. No doubt that for a moment He was demonstrating this unity by men’s acts; but the scene of it - Jerusalem - being lost, the moral unity is not lost, it could not be lost, but it is no longer visible on earth. I believe it is from not seeing this that such confusion has arisen among brethren as to visible unity. Spiritual unity is not visible to man - material unity is. The unity enjoined in this passage could not exist but by the Holy Spirit. But its display in the ‘lighting up before death’ of the earthly dispensation at Jerusalem, like the breaking of a new day upon a dark night, was only a sample of what the world will yet see, namely, the fullest and most perfectly organised material unity of the whole household of faith; but from a new heaven to a new earth. Peace and contentment be with you - the habit is a good one.