The pattern of all reality is the relationship in the Trinity: “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us.” (Genesis 1:26). God is permanently shared life, life in relationship. That is where and how we all started and that is where and how we will forever be.
God’s way of communicating is the journey and bonding process that God initiates in community: in marriages, families, tribes, nations, events, and churches who are seeking to participate in God’s love.
The body of Christ is our Christian metaphor for this bonding. It is both the medium and the message. It is both the beginning and the goal: “May they all be one, as you and I are one… and may they be in us” (John 17:21).
There is no other form for the Christian life except a common one. Until and unless Christ is experienced as a living relationship between people, the Gospel remains largely a daydream. It is not words, sermons, or ideas that Christ is passed on and experienced, but through personal faithfulness and forgiveness, through concrete bonds of relationship and union.
John 17:21-23 “I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.”
