Vol. 1, No. 4

December, 1976

By Norman Grubb

The perspective of life which has made the real difference to me (to which Bill Volkman gave the title UNION LIFE) is the perspective of totality of spirit-God only, God all in all.

In my younger days as a missionary in Africa, I had the inner confirmation that Galatians 2:20 was the ultimate fact in me-that is, that it really was Christ living in me, not just He living kind of side by side with me (which many read into the phrase, "Christ liveth in me"). Yes, in actual fact He had replaced me as the Real Me. I had the basis for this radical belief in Paul's words, "I live, Yet not I, but Christ lives in me".

Just knowing this was wonderful enough, but then I began to live on the inner consciousness that I living, thinking, willing, and acting was really He, not I. This was replacement, not just relationship between the two of us. I have lived in that inner consciousness all the years since. I must again repeat that this recognition began to mean not an inner consciousness of the two of

PUBLISHED BY MARANATHA CENTER

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us, He and I, but the One-just He.

Yet that awareness was only the stepping stone to the more radical revelation of God as the "all in all" in the universe. Only that recognition has brought me to a sense of being completely "at home". Now I was truly "in the Father's house", and had come to the final joy-note of David's 23rd Psalm, "dwelling in -the house of the Lord forever".

These discoveries really began to focus for me when that simple, allembracing phrase was lit up to me, "God is love". It immediately struck me that if God is love, then all the love in the universe (and I was to see later that the whole universe is love-in-action) is That One Person. And if "Christ is the power of God" (1 Cor. 1:24), then all power is that One Person, THE SON who is God in His Self-manifestation. That revelation began to be enlarged as I saw such phrases as "God is my exceeding joy"-not the joy of God, but God is joy; and "God is my peace"-not the peace of God, but God is peace; and so on.

Now I was being stretched from seeing the triune God as being the Only One in me and really being me, to Him being all there is! All that appears to be separate expressions of Him or manifestations of Him is really HE ONLY. It was imperative that I see that. I remained disturbed as long as there could possibly be any form of anything which was not He (whether in temporarily distorted form through the misuse of freedom, or whether in its redeemed, reconciled, restored form). And at last, several years later, the total realization of Truth became as bright as the midday sun to me. The linking up of the statements, "in the beginning God," "God is spirit," and "God is all in all", brought me to the final recognition. Now all is Spirit, for all is God, and there is nothing else. Nothing but God exists! All outward forms of what we call creation are only shadows of the true Spirit-patterns which Moses saw on the mount (Heb. 8:5)-only temporary (2 Cor. 4:18), only appearances (Jn. 7:24).

That in turn brought me to the emphasis of basic oneness in Jesus' final prayer in John 17. One, One, One! I

noticed the oneness of Paul's "unity of the Spirit" in Ephesians 4:3-6. It seemed that the heart-search and heart-cry of every living being is for oneness, even to the stumbling human attempt at the United Nations!

And from that I began to practice a change in my inner seeings which, of course, are always expressed in our outer beings. I began to be a See-thruer instead of a See-at-er. I began to see why there is only one sin (Jn. 16:9)-that of unbelief, that of seeing (believing) anything in the universe but HIM. It is important to understand that unbelief is not having no belief, but rather it is having negative belief, that is, believing in something as not being He (though even that is a distorted form of Him). I began to see that my only basic activity in life is to replace the seeing of things or people in their outer appearances, by the inner seeing of HIM ONLY in all. This replacement is immediate inner light to me, for HE is light, and I am light as His and my seeing are one.

So life is basically very simple. That is why Jesus said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. The sufferings which stream in on us in every human form, whether physical, material, economic, social, national, or international, are God's purposed groundwork. Scripture reiterates this many times: "tribulation worketh patience, experience, hope and sure confidence" (Rom. 5:3-5); "our light affliction for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. 4:17); and ''count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations, knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience" (Ja. 1:2,3). These sufferings give us the only means by which our inner seeing (our faith) can become established to see Him Only, everywhere in everything, (for a thing is only established by the conquest of the opposite). The sufferings become present inner glory, though the outer condition may remain or worsen. We are those who are living the life of faith-in-action, using our sonship authority as "gods" (Jn. 10:34,35), being rooted down in the eternal present in our destined sonship life, in which we shall ultimately take our full

inheritance and manage the universe. So all this life is adventure, thrill, daily newness, faith-achievements and faithendurances, though our outer man may be perishing or suffering.

The foregoing is the broad scope of what God has burned into me to share ceaselessly, which accounts for why I've had to be a compulsive repeater of the same teachings ten thousand times over. But now I know why, as I see God bringing UNION LIFE into being, and as I see many others taken with these same glory-revelations. Among and from us certain seemingly radical emphases have developed (all with proper Biblical foundations). They might be summed up by the following seven headings: Not God first, but God only; The Union experience; Liberating living; Satan as God's agent: Replacing negative with positive believings; Using our Sonship authority; and The meaning of intercession. Our intention is to share each of these in detail in future issues of UNION LIFE. (Editor: Mr. Grubb's recent book, WHO AM I, covers all of these areas.)

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Norman Grubb is best known as an author. Many of his more than twenty books were written since his retirement from the post of international secretary of Worldwide Evangelism Crusade.

His latest book, Who Am I, was published recently near the time of his 80th birthday. At a time when others retire, Norman Grubb continues to share the liberating insights of union-life across this land and abroad.

His wife, Pauline, youngest daughter of the late C. T. Studd, has stood with Mr. Grubb through all the years. They have lived for the past twenty years in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, at the general headquarters of WEC and Christian Literature Crusade.

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By Norman Grubb

Temptation touches us where we need to be touched, for its origin is our own stimulated desire (James 1:14). Temptation, therefore, establishes us in sanctification; it presses us into Christ. It exercises us in conscious abiding; it compels us, by trial and error, to find our helplessness with no hope outside of Christ living in us. We shall continue to be tempted where we are most vulnerable; that is God's right way with us, until at last it dawns on us that appetites do not change, human responses do not change, and temptations do not change. There will never be a hope of relief or release, not after forty years any more than after one year, except in the Absolute Other within, who is the Positive that negates the negative, the Light that swallows the darkness. That fact only will stabilize us in the only way of deliverance, the daily walk of faith.

Trials are for another purpose. They come from outside and for outside objectives. They are the normal pressures of life upon us. Right from the time of our new birth, we are told to glory in "tribulations," which in the original means pressures. All of life is surely pressure. The question is why? The answer is redemptive opportunity. Temptations are for our redemption; trials are for the redemption of others. Every negative situation-this need, this frustration, this catastrophe, these difficult people, this church, family, business tie-up is the very place where light will shine out of (not into) darkness. They are the negative which has as its polar opposite the positive, as south has its north. It is a dialectical relationship, where the two are related to each other, belong to each other and fulfill each other by being the opposites of each other. Need linked to supply, weakness to strength, problems to their solution, and the rest.

This is what turns life into adventure; but it is the adventure of faith-not of sight. Disasters, disappointments, shortages don't look like adventure; but it is the same old story. This life is repetition, the repetition of faith. The world which lives on the surface of

things must always have novelty, for repetition is sameness and sameness to them is boredom. Children of the kingdom within never have boredom, for the same daily activities are always new; for they are God appearing in new guise for new ventures of faith. The sensational novelist always makes a lot of courtship and marriage; it is something new. A serious writer will examine how forty years of married life work out, for he knows that real life is repetition. Can every day have the freshness of the honeymoon? Yes, every day with Jesus is new, and therefore new with one another.

How can this be? By handling our circumstances in the same way as we handle ourselves or our temptations. We move back from appearances to reality, from the external to the internal. Who puts us in this situation? Man? Devil? Our own foolishness? Our own disobedience? No, that is not taking it far enough. The Bible makes it plain that God as purposively sends the unpleasant as the pleasant. No reader of the Old Testament, or of the comments made on God's foreordination in the New, can call that in question. God's will and its outworking in our lives is not permissive, but determined. That makes a decisive difference to our outlook. When even Satan is only God's agent, and evil men only fulfill His foreordained plan (Acts 4:27,28), we can start off by praising God for adversity, and by counting it (not feeling it) "all joy when ye fall into divers trials." That means we have transferred our attention from the situation and our natural dislike of it, to its underlying source, and we only do that by the act of faith. So we are back again to our familiar friend-faith in the absurd. That adversity it prosperity in disguise. Those assaults of Satan, or "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," or the contradiction of sinners, when our eyes are opened, are Christ walking to us on the waters.

Paul calls that "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus," and being "always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake." That

means that we are accepting unpleasant situations or daily pressures rather than resisting them, even as Jesus accepted Calvary, indeed, that it is He Himself in us continuing His death-process-"the dying of the Lord Jesus"-in our daily lives. This has nothing to do with the death relationship we have with Him in His once-forall death to sin, which is never to be repeated in Him or us. That death was for our deliverance. These daily deaths are for the deliverance of others through us. That was the death of the old man. These are the daily deaths of the new man. It is not wrong that we dislike difficult situations; it is merely human. But these are deaths to our human reactions. We deliberately accept these things as ways in which God, not Satan or man, is coming to us, and therefore all we can do is to give thanks. "I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong."

Consider this and come to your own conclusion on Bible evidence. It is important externally, just as it is important internally. We are only free within, if we are unified, Christ and I without inner rival, though there are plenty of attempts at invasion. And we are only free without, if also we are unified: that is to say, if what comes to us comes from one source only, with one purpose. I cannot think it is sufficient, nor indeed Scriptural, to keep calling unpleasant situations "the permissive will of God." God does more than permit. That is not the kind of God the Bible portrays to us. There we have a God of an eternal purpose. He does not stand by and allow a thing to happen. He ordains it. If He passively permits things, may He not be equally passive about removing them? But if he sends things, then I can at once rise up in spirit and say, Here is a purpose of God. What is it? And I can assuredly start praising, for, "as for God, His way is perfect."

Life is unified. First we see Christ only in ourselves through grace. Then we see Christ only in all men, either

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shutting men up in their unbelief that He may have mercy on them (Romans 11:32), or being formed in those who have obtained mercy. Finally we see Him only in all things, working them all after the counsel of His own will (Eph. 1:11).

If we have this settled in our minds, and appropriate it by faith in each given situation, then we are ready to ask another question. For what reason does God come to us in adverse circumstances or in contradictory people? The answer is that it is not only for our personal benefit, for our testing or further sanctification or something. We are so used to relating everything to ourselves in the spiritual life as much as in the material, that we tend to interpret everything in that light-what is God doing or saying to me through this? Not at all. God, who is pure outgoing love, has other ends in view. We are now His body, and a person has a body, not for feeding or clothing or coddling, but for using. So Christ in His body. He lives over again in us in all sorts of circumstances to reach others by us. Now that turns adverse situations into adventure. They are not for the dreary purpose of some more self-improvement (an impossibility anyhow!) they are the outflowing of the rivers to others. It is pitiful to hear so often even elderly saints still regarding their trials, physical or material, as some further lessons from which they are to learn, instead of the freshness of the outlook: here is God, even in old age, opening further doors for our sharing Him with others.

God is wholly outgoing through all eternity. We have begun that life for eternity, for He lives in us. What a vista! And God specializes in giving Himself for those who are most unpleasant to

Him, sinners and enemies; and now He specializes in doing it through us. That puts meaning and content into every possible situation a human can be in. Love is unstoppable. There is always opportunity to love. This is "the life also of Jesus manifest in our body," which Paul says (2 Cor. 4:10-12) always replaces the death. In that death we accept conditions we would naturally reject, and in doing so, we "die" to our reactions. This now makes possible seeing things as He sees them and thinking about them as He thinks; and His thoughts are always redemptive and reconciling. This is the risen and ascended Person living in us. It affects us physically and mentally. Just as the fire of God in the burning bush refuelled the bush, so He in us quickens us, body and spirit. A quality of life is manifest in us, though we may not know it. Faith and love in a person cannot be hidden. The medical profession today tells us plenty of the effects of mental attitudes on the physical; then how much more when it is the Spirit of God in us producing the laugh of faith, peace and poise, a relaxed outlook, and a freedom to bear other people's burdens.

But that is only incidental. Christ's risen life is manifested in our bodies. His ascended life flows out of us to others. So Paul continues, "So death worketh in us, but life in others." We do not make that up. Flowing is effortless.

Once we have taken the place of death in daily situations, accepting them as

sent of God, there arises in us spontaneously the realization of Him in His outgoing love. He has a purpose for others in this. What? He will doubtless show us. It will certainly bring faith to birth in us, for the next verse (13) speaks of having "the spirit of faith"

(not, therefore, our faith, but the believing Spirit within); and it will be faith that the God who has put us in a place of need already has the supply on the way. We think there is the need first, and that we must now seek the supply. God has the positive supply first, and sends the need to be the receptacle for the supply.

So every situation is a situation for faith and love. It may not all be a matter of a great crisis. It may just be daily living. But as we said, daily living is repetition. Faith is always a necessity, for all life is only a series of appearances. Things and people seem to be what our outward eye sees them to be - and that is ordinary, the same, maybe the wearisome, the tiresome, the boring, the irritating, the carnal. But faith sees differently. Faith sees Jesus resolving problems or providing needs that are beyond man. And love means that God has put me just there to love through me, not to pester, not to judge, not to drive, but freely to give myself - patience, meekness, service, sometimes faithfulness; and in the secret of my spirit always "calling the things that be not as though they were"

Adapted from Chapter 14 of God Unlimited, by Norman Grubb, Christian Literature Crusade. Used by permission of the author.

Norman Grubb, known throughout Christendom as a missionary statesman and penetrating author, is a graduate of Cambridge University. He served with his wife in the Congo and in more recent years was International Secretary of Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.

HIMSELF

Once it was the blessing, Now it is the Lord; Once it was the feeling, Now it is His Word; Once His gifts I wanted, Now the Giver own; Once I sought for healing, Now Himself alone.

Once 'twas what I wanted, Now what Jesus says: Once 'twas constant asking, Now 'tis ceaseless praise.

by Dr. A. B. Simpson

Once it was my working, His it hence shall be; Once I tried to use Him, Now He uses me; Once the power I wanted, Now the Mighty One; Once for self I labored, Now for Him alone.

Once 'twas painful trying, Now 'tis perfect trust; Once a half salvation, Now the uttermost; Once 'twas ceaseless holding, Now He holds me

fast;

Once 'twas constant drifting, Now my anchor's cast.

Once I hoped in Jesus, Now I know lie's mine, Once my lamps were dying, Now they brightly

shine;

Once for death I waited, Now His coming hail, And my hopes are anchored, Safe within the

veil.

Once 'twas busy planning, Now 'tis trustful prayer;

Once 'twas anxious caring, Now He has the care;

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"Let me ask, do you believe in the Incarnation? And if you do, let me ask further, was Jesus ever less divine than God? I answer for you, Never. God is man, and infinitely more. Our Lord became flesh, but did not become man. He took on Him the form of man; He was man already. "   (George MacDonald)

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"The form of a servant" Phil. 2:7
"A body thou hast prepared me" Heb. 10:5

God is Spirit. Though Spirit is essence, it manifests itself in form. It is depicted in Scripture in symbols such as fire, water, and wind. God delights in form, in bewildering and overwhelming variety. But what of His masterpiece called the INCARNATION?

God enters this scene "for us men, and for our salvation" (to quote the English Prayer Book), in the familiar form of man. The nature was not unfamiliar to Him, but the form was new. One can almost sense the divine anticipation as the destined moment arrived for heaven to disclose itself in this loved form, for Scripture says, "his delights were with the sons of men" (Prov.8:31).

This was not a mere demonstration of God's nature in order to confront man with his lostness. This was to be a marriage that in the heart of God had always been a reality, and was now declared to be the purpose of the eternal existence. Man must recognize that he loves God, for only in that loving can man truly love himself.

The vibrations of the holy excitement shook the world then, and shakes it now in a myriad of historic nuances and personal human reactions. It is felt either as a strange uneasiness of mind or conscience, or as an inner harmony and joy, depending on the "eye of the beholder", and his perspective of the God-man.

No, the Incarnation is not primarily a demonstration of what God is like, but a gentle and inexorable wooing of the "many sons" that He is to bring to glory. It is a declaration of the profound and all-consuming purpose of an allconquering love that must at all costs free man from the false concepts of power and glory. How was this to be done?

"The form of a servant" is the answer in part. For the first time in history, there merges a new and absolute direction for life. It is Love's way of pain and glory. What is God really like? Who cares, except those who long to know His purpose? Who cares, except those who are looking for meaning (rather than a miracle), for purpose and for a transfiguration of life? Only these will behold in wonder and awe. They will find nothing static, or final, or even conclusive in the incarnation. To them it is more than an event, It is a profound movement in the universe that impinges on all lives, with a greater or lesser intensity of awareness. But it moves all on, carrying all to an unguessed, an unimagined end. The end can only be a new beginning, for we are all the sons of the uncreated God.

Christmas and Easter on our calendars testifies to the strange and unshakeable effect that His timely appearance has made, though few will admit it the extent of the resultant impact on humanity. Again, one feels right in saying "who cares?" But love is moving undauntedly to its goal. Even those who are careless of life's meaning are not untouched by the hand of the God-man. In the drastic dealings of life (life being, as someone has said, "the greatest evangeliser"); in the making and breaking of for

tunes; in the futilities and the frustrations; the breath of the "hound of heaven" is upon the necks of all, without exception. It is a painful wooing, but all must be brought to Love by Love in order that they might love. Yes, God is "on the job" with all the sons of men (as well as all of creation)

So Love is the disclosure, the new direction in which the universe is moving to its ultimate fulfillment. "The form of a servant'-this is the final lesson that must be learned by us all, however long it takes. God, a servant! Man's illusory outlook gives him severe problems with this whole idea. Let me state, tongue-in-cheek, as it were, what troubles man about the Incarnation. "God is so unmanageable, so inconsiderate of the normal standards of procedure and operation for the handling of such universal problems as He and we are faced with. He becomes a babe, when He should be an archangel heralding a God-like program. He becomes a lamb, when it is obvious that only a lion will give true performance. He becomes a malefactor dying helplessly upon a cross, when He should be sweeping our enemies and His into oblivion by a majestic show of power that would convince men of His divine origin.

"Then when resurrection is claimed for Him, He only shows Himself to a comparative handful of people, suddenly disappears completely, and has never been heard from since. This is not a very impressive God. He obviously does not understand the meaning of power, as man sees it and hungers for its use. In fact, one of His chief apostles admits that He is foolish and weak, adding something rather mysterious about God's foolishness being 'wiser than men' and God's weakness being 'stronger than men'-but who can understand all that double talk?"

Yes, we admit the appearance of confusion here. Bethlehem looks like weakness, and Calvary looks like foolishness, for One who claims to be-all-powerful, all-wise and all-knowing. But something new is afoot in this powerriddled world, for this God-man says that to win all, he must become the servant of all. This is the matchless message of the Incarnation. God comes not as a king upon His throne, but as a servant upon His knees, washing His friend's feet. On the throne is a "lamb as it had been slain" (Rev. 5:6). The manifestation of power is found to be quite different than we would have imagined.

He now takes us up into His incarnation in what might be called "the extension of incarnation"-'I in them and Thou in me", as His prayer says it in John 17. And upon the whole world is a new light shed-the light of love. In secular circles, loving caring, and acceptancing are elements recognized as an absolute necessity for harmonious living and working. In such circles, these elements may only be a by-product of that eternal love which came into the world, but they should be seen as something that is preparing the way for "the manifestation of the sons of God" (Rom. 8:19). The incarnation is a continuing movement, as well as en event, and the whole universe is touched by it.

Yes, the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea, as Isaiah said it. And the glory of God? What is that? It's not a mystical luminosity, but a l world full of God-men, who, like Berdyaev in his book on Dostoievsky, have discarded the man-God for THE GOD-MAN. And "of the increase of His kingdom there shall be no end". What a "kingdom"--a kingdom of servants and sons for love of Him who "took the form of a servant".

vant".

Q What is meant by the commonly-used expression ' "One Nation under God"? Since Pentecost there has only been one nation on

A. earth. Peter called it "the holy nation" (1 Pet. 2:9)-the Spirit-nation-though its members dwell temporarily in flesh bodies. Its head is the risen, glorified Lord Jesus Christ, and its membership is composed of those from out of every earthly nation who have been born again of the Spirit. According to Galatians 3:28 all human, national and racial distinctions are dissolved into a Spirit-oneness in Christ.

Its character is best outlined in the Sermon on the Mount, or described in one short phrase-universal love, with no earthly enemies. Its members maintain no hold on earthly possessions, for they are "strangers and pilgrims" with their citizenship in heaven. These heavenly citizens are "one nation under God". They have only one absorbing interest-to bring all men into their privileged sonship and eternal inheritance in Christ, who by His blood has reconciled the world unto its lost Father-God.

But in these centuries before Jesus Christ returns to set up His kingdom in its final glorious form, the existence of earthly nations has been a temporary provision of God (Acts 17:26), for the growth and protective development of His human family (Acts 17:28). By this means we have been able to discover and express something of the enormous potential of our humanity made in His image.

But because we are a fallen race, enslaved by Satan In self-centeredness and self-interest, our national pride, competitiveness, fears, and jealousies will end in self-destruction. God has written on our hearts, and in outer forms such as the Ten Commandments, the differences between good and evil behaviour. He has always promised blessing on those who seek to conform to His Laws and to order their national life upon them. Such ordering of a nation's ways according to God's laws can, however, never be more than a stumbling approximation, for we plainly recognize that in the end disintegration awaits every nation, such as we have seen in all the empires of history.

So by God's mercy and long patience, there is the intervening period for each nation and the world, in which a nation can conform itself to God's laws and, insofar as it does, receive His blessing. This is the point at which a nation can claim to be a "nation under God". Such a nation will continually call its people to a humbling of themselves for failure, to thankfulness for His goodness, and to prayer for His continued good hand on its people. Above all, we should be a giving nation which shares its benefits with others and has a world concern for brotherhood and the well-being of the whole human family.

This is also the point at which on every level of government there is a definite need of lawmakers who are born-again and have the inner line to God for

guidance and faith. Only such lawmakers can properly influence governmental decisions, as well as be the light which points all to Christ by their personal witness and public life. So we are thankful for all such men and women in our governments.

Yet it is essential that none of us deceive ourselves into mistaking our nationhood for the kingdom of God. There is an element, call it the offence of the cross, in which every born-again member of God's "holy nation" must experience contempt and persecution; for Jesus said, "If the world hates Me, it will hate you", and "the disciple is not above his Master". Self-interested self can only be the enemy of redeemed Christ-centered self. So we must always be among those who are knowingly with Christ "without the camp bearing His reproach"; and this must be particularly true for faithful ones in earthly high places. Perhaps one of the chief evidences of their faithfulness is when, as occasion arises, they will not only use the name of God, which is used by practically all outside the atheistic nations, but they will boldly confess that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Saviour.

Q. What is Paul trying to say in Romans 7?

We are not meant to live in Romans 7-get out of A• it! Romans 7 is for you only if you still think you can do something. Left to yourself you can only be selfloving. But the real you is the Spirit of Christ in you, as portrayed in Romans 8. Visit Romans 7 as little as you can!

Q What does it mean in Romans 8:10 when it says

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A MISSIONARY

WRITES TO HIS

PASTOR-BROTHER

(On a recent trip in England, John Whittle spoke at a church where his brother, Rev. Ray Whittle, is the minister. The following letter was written by John to his brother after returning to the U.S. It is a clear statement of the transition of one man ,from the usual evangelical posture to the further reaches and implications of union-life.)

I was very happy to have the opportunity of sharing some thoughts with your people on that Sunday morning in your pulpit. The response of one of your members that what he had heard constituted for him "a new dimension of Christianity" was especially gratifying. Many accept such ministry at face value as being what they have always heard and read through the years. But here and there, there are those, like your friend, who suddenly see the implications of the spirit dimension, and begin to enter the expanding realm and perspective into which it can bring us.

Ray, from the time I was a young man I could not be satisfied with just the historical concept of Christianity. I knew there was something of an inward union of the Spirit which existed and which alone could satisfy man and God. Yet I also learned early to distrust the tendency of many to rely unduly on subjective experiences with God. The element I sought had its roots in a living relationship which lay behind and beyond mere experiences. For me it had to be part of the revelation of God in Scripture, otherwise I was unable to build upon it or teach it to others.

To be more explicit, I was increasingly troubled that our evangelical preaching, teaching, praying, as well as our hymnology, centered solely around justification, and failed to deal effectively with the fact of union. I had personally begun to see union through the indwelling Christ as the real goal of the gospel for the individual. But in the main, we were left with a limited concept of man-cleansed, forgiven, reconciled, justified, and readied for service (as aided by the Spirit), but still having a fundamental sense of separation instead of union.