1 Corinthians 6:17-20, “…he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him….do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
What an awesome reality Paul reminds us of in these verses….the one joined to Christ (by faith) is “one spirit” with Him. This phrase is paralleled to the “one flesh” union that happens between a husband and wife, so at the very least Paul intends to communicate an incredible degree of intimacy between the risen Lord and His blood bought people. But can we get a bit clearer idea of what it means to be “one spirit” with Christ? I think some clarity is given just a few verses later when Paul says that individual Christians (as well as the corporate Chuch according to 1 Cor.3:16) are temples of God because the Holy Spirit dwells in them.
This is significant because I think scripture gives us warrant to understand the Holy Spirit as the bond of union and love between Father and Son. We see this not only in passages about the intratrinitarian relationships of God (John 17:26, Hebrews 9:14, for example), but also in the fact that the Spirit’s work in the Church is to unify her (Eph.4:3-4) around the person of Christ (John 16:15). The ministry of the Spirit seems to be one of binding / unifying around the beauty of God (this concept encompases His work of sanctification and conviction, etc, since all of that boils down to seeing more of God’s glory in the Son and loving Him more completely).
If this is so, then for the Spirit (who is the bond of unity between the Father and the Son), for the Spirit to now dwell in us means that we have been united to the Son in a bond of union that is analogous to (though not identical with) the bond of the Father and the Son within the Trinity. That is an awesome and implication laden reality to consider….
