Abiding in and knowing Christ….your salvation depends on it.

he past few months it seems I keep coming back to the Gospel of John. I have been meditating and talking to God quite frequently about learning the true meaning of abiding in Christ and Christ abiding in me. At the same time I have been wrestling with knowing what God’s will is. I have unwittingly been keeping the two separate in my mind and I need to stop as the two are completely inseparable. Gods WILL for me is to abide in Him and know him. At the same time, how you know God is by abiding in Him. Also, to know God is to love Him. So I have been asking myself, “How do you abide?” because frankly I am very poor at it. Well I think that rather the than asking “how to” I might be do better to ask “what does it look like”, or even “what does it mean?” and then we might have an idea of “how to.”

I am going to list several things and hopefully tie them all together.

Knowing the will of God

Abiding in Christ

Knowing God

Marriage

God as Emmanuel (God WITH us)

All of these somehow seem to physically separate into individual concepts in our minds. After going through and thinking about what God has been teaching me I have no clue how it does this as it greatly impairs and complicates our walk with God. After going through and thinking about what God has been teaching me I have no clue how this happens. The separation greatly impairs and complicates our walk with God. Notice those last four words “Our walk with God.” That, in a sense, is what an abiding relationship is.

Now at the beginning of this I claim that our salvation depends on us abiding in God, and frankly I believe this with my whole heart. Salvation is not a decision. Its not a prayer. Frankly its more like a quest or a journey. Pardon the pun, but it is like an ongoing journey that takes up all of life.

Now lets start tying all this together. In the Bible Jesus frequently illustrates concepts in different ways. If I say I am going to talk about “abiding in Christ” you probably immediately thought about vines and branches and grapes and pruning shears and dismemberment and pain. What you probably did not think of was marriage. However the two, I think, are used to illustrate the same concept -what needs to happen in order to know Christ.

So I think we, as carnal-minded humans, start reading about abiding, and we start thinking about vines, and and simply get caught up into some sort of spiritual mysticism and naturally we suppose that we could all use some more “isms” in our life. Well this is bad, we start looking at it as some high-falutin spiritual concept when its as practical and down to earth as it gets.

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So lets get practical. If I wanted to know someone as absolutely best as I could before one of us dies, what should I do? Maybe lets start with a scenario. Lets say there is a girl I want to know. Whats the best way to get to know her? Well maybe I should become her friend, however I think that’s still jumping ahead of the game. Maybe I should start with simply talking with her. After awhile I would learn more about her and we would become friends. That’s nice. Now if I want to become best friends with her what should I do? Maybe spend more time with her so I can chat with her more? Now, I hear tell that best friends do things for each other. So maybe in the simple act of talking I will pick up on some things she would like done. Maybe she has a problem she would like fixed, or her car breaks down and she needs a ride. Now say I decide I like this girl a lot, in fact maybe I love her because I have gotten to know her “pretty good.” What should I do in order to know her the absolute best I can? Well, probably marry her. Well what is a marriage? It is a covenanted permanent abiding with someone of the opposite sex. You are simply with them pretty much all the time. However there is an even deeper sort of “abiding” that should happen in marriage. God says that when we abide in him and he in us. We are to become one as he and the Father are one. (Jn 17:11) Well, what does the Bible say is supposed to happen in a marriage? The two are supposed to come together and become “one flesh.” (Matt 19:5) Now what this union represents in the spiritual realm I have no clue, as I have yet to experience it. I also know that this union is too great of a mystery for Solomon and Paul. That is still not going to stop me from learning all I can about it though. So let me trying and sum up some of this.

I think the vine passage is simply there to illustrate the amount of “oneness” that is supposed to be there between us and God. Practically(,) getting to the oneness with God is the same basic and simple steps one would take to get to know a woman enough to marry her. Frankly I think a marriage should be one continuing quest to know your mate as much as absolutely possible(,) just as our walk with God is.

You would be a fool if you married a woman and then said that “if I knew her enough to get married I am good to go.” Marriage should rather simply be a statement of saying “in order to know you the best I can I am going to be around you and serve you 24/7.” We should be doing the same with God.

Now how does all this tie in with knowing the will of God and following His “calling?” Maybe “calling” is a bad word to use for what we are supposed to do. The reason being it denotes and conjures up some picture or form of distance between the caller and the callee. So I think I will stick to the word “will.” Will meaning knowing what God wants you to do, whether it be your long term vocation or a short term task. Well, if you are around someone 24/7 “and your entire life is devoted to knowing them” somehow I doubt very much that you will have to ask them very often if they want you to do something for them and if wherever they go you are gonna go, so wondering where you should go will not be much of a question either.

If you are abiding with Christ, he will be always with you and will only move or move you in a way that will help you know Him more. Back to the whole “calling thing.” For me I just really need to work on realizing that God is WITH me. In other words He is IMMANUEL or God WITH me. So everywhere I go, HE will be there. Or in other words, where I am “there Christ will be and where Christ is” there will I be also.

In order to know Christ you need to be with Him all the time, if you are with Him all the time you will know His will, and His will will always be a direction or move for you to know Him more.

Yeah, I know, its kinda like one big circle.

Now back to the salvation depending on “knowing” God. God says in Matthew 6:25 that He will say to many people who think that they did wonderful things in name of God, “depart from me I never knew you.” If you work on knowing God, He will know who you are. We should probably ask on what level is the “knowing” that God is requiring here. Well, in the Old Testament the word “know” often meant the same as sexual intercourse or the oneness that is supposed to happen in marriage. Turns out according to Vine’s the word in this passage ( γινώσκω or ginōskō ) also holds the same connotation.

So arrange you life in such a way that you can know Christ the best you can. I know I am not on that level as far as knowing God but I am going to try to be.