Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts based on the longer essay, One Life Divine. Unlike the original essay, these individual installments are illustrated. They are as follows:
- Escape To Reality
- Reality is One
- Reality is Intelligent
- The Manifold Appearance of Reality
- A Body You Have Prepared For Me
- Hidden In Plain Sight
- Jesus Is Calling…
- Reconciled To God
Reality Appears Manifold. Reality– which is One Creative Intelligence —does not create something outside and apart from itself. It is not extrinsic to (and merely reflected in) creation. Rather, there is a sense in which Reality actually projects itself, by means of its own creative intelligence, into an apparent world of time, space, and matter. The resulting creation is simultaneously a Divine incarnation and revelation which ultimately comes to light as the dwelling place of God among human beings: One Body — Many Members — Bound Together in the Unity of the Spirit:
Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many (I Corinthians 12:12-14).
We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another (Romans 12:5).
So then . . . you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God (Ephesians 2:19-21).
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:4-6).
Moreover, the incarnation of God into this manifold unity, referred to as the body of Christ, ultimately extends to the whole of creation… [More]
–> A Body You Have Prepared For Me
Getting to Know Jesus in the 21st Century 