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John 17:22-23:
22And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
23I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
The soul's nearness unto God and the mystical union with Christ belong together. All the Apostles put emphasis on this; and in their writings the greatest leaders in the life of the Church every time come back to this mystical union with Christ as indispensable to deeper devotion in religion.
The temptation to which, alas, so many succumb, to continue one's stay at the Cross, and on Golgotha to close up their account with Christ, is fatal to the faith.
The way it happens is as follows: The conscience wakes up for a moment; the weight of sin burdens the soul; fear of the coming Judgment strikes terror to the heart. In such a moment, the comforting thought of the Cross arises invitingly in the soul. For if the Atoning Sacrifice is but accepted, one is saved. Nothing needs to be done for it save only to believe. One lets himself be persuaded to do this. And to say it as sharply as the case deserves, one closes the bargain. And now one deems himself saved. Now he accepts the fact that he is assured of eternal life. He finds the Atoning Sacrifice to be glorious. It brings perfect salvation. Thus to such a one, Christ has become the Savior. But of a more intimate, tenderer tie that binds his soul to Christ, nothing is learned from his conversation, nothing suggests it in the utterances of his religious life. He is now saved and that is the end of it.
Yet this is nothing but self-deceit. Nothing stirs in it save spiritual egoism. Escape is sought from eternal punishment. One wants to insure himself for eternal salvation. But nothing in this suggests thirst after the living God; nothing of the child's home-sickness after the Father's house; nothing of holy jealousy for the honor of God's Name.
From this no spiritual power can go out. No religion can operate in it, nor come out from it. And what is more, it can not be true that in this wise Golgotha can bring propitiation for the life of the soul.
So the Gospel does not speak like this. It does not interpret the Atoning Sacrifice in this way. Never in Scripture is the power of redemption attributed to Golgotha, except as the mystical union binds our inner life to the life of Christ.
It must be a being buried with Christ in His death in order to rise with Him unto life. They alone who have become one planting with Christ share in the grace which He has obtained.
They alone who have become sheep of His flock can follow the great Shepherd of souls.
It is not the Cross that saves us, but He Who saves us is the Christ who died on the Cross.
You must be one with Christ, member of His Body, accepted and incorporated under Him as your Head before one single drop of His grace can be sprinkled upon you.
You must have been given in the Father to the Christ in order that His glory may become manifest in you.
The mystical union must have laid the tie of love forever between Christ and your soul.
Yea, it must become Christ in you, in order that, through this middle link, your life near unto your God may become a reality.
For so prayed your Savior Himself in His High Priestly prayer: "Holy Father, I in them, and Thou in Me!" (John 17:23).
Yet, if our mystical union with Christ shall preserve its truly religious character, and not degenerate into sentimental Christolatry, this tie that binds us to Christ must never find its final end in itself.
The Christ is your Mediator, and there can be no Mediator save for the one purpose of causing you to approach God.
To be near to God, with a child's confidence; to feel yourself close by God; here on earth to abide in the nearness of God through faith, and once, after your death, to serve God eternally in the Father-house above—that is and remains the final end; and all that the Scriptures reveal unto us regarding the Mediatorship of Christ must result in this, and can never rest within itself.
Once the Christ Himself shall deliver up the kingdom to God and the Father, that God may be all in all.
He who confines himself to the interests of his own soul, or has no further desire than that he may be numbered with God's people, arrests the spiritual progress in his soul.
The ideal final end at which we aim may and can be nothing less than that, in the ages of eternity, we may enjoy our God, and exist for nothing else than the glorifying of His Name. And just because this is the ideal final end, every religion here on earth remains imperfect which does not even here bring us nearer to God, makes us abide in the nearness of our God, and impels us to spend all our strength and all our talent in His service.
Piety that spends itself in self-soothing emotionalism, and in an inward spiritual enjoying oneself, lacks power and animation. Only when we love God with absolute devotion does energy enter into our piety so that we know no higher enjoyment than to drink the cup of His peace, no higher purpose in life than to dwell near unto Him, and no holier ambition than to fight and to suffer for His holy Name.
And from this, not even your service of Christ may detract anything. Never has your Savior Himself willed or purposed anything else than to bring you to the Father; and whosoever transposes this into a sort of Christ-cult which keeps you standing with the Christ, and loses from sight your pressing forward toward your Father Who is in heaven, honors not Christ, but goes against Him, and does not confirm the mystical union with his Savior, but tears loose the fibers thereof.
For this reason this union is mystical, that is to say, it does not consist in feelings, in receiving impressions, and in meditations, but rests in the essential substance of your soul.
Truly indeed, the feelings which you cherish for the Christ, the impressions which the Person of your Savior and His Grace convey to you, and also the thoughts of Him on which you meditate, on which your Creeds are based, are highly meritorious. They are absolutely necessary. Your entire conscious life must be saturated with Christ.
But without more, you have no setting yet in the mystical union. What in a holy sense is counted mystical lies deeper than your consciousness, and strikes root in your essential self.
Hence the teaching of Scripture regarding regeneration, renewal of life, the new creature, the new man. There is not merely Atonement and forgiveness on the part of God, and on your part confession, believing and singing praises.
No, the Christ has entered into our nature. This was possible because our nature has been created after the Image of God, and for this reason that which shall snatch you away from yourself and from sin, and shall bring you back to God must grip you in your own being, even in your very manner of existence, must bring about the change in your person, in your outward life, and thus be a holy and a Divine work, which takes place not upon your lips, not in your mind, but in the mystical underground of your being.
And this wondrous work is not accomplished by the Father directly, and in every one individually, but it goes through Christ, it is bound to Him as the Mediator of all, and finds in this very Mediator its indestructible guarantee.
For the tie with which Christ binds Himself to you in your own self is of so holy a nature that He Himself compares it to the tie that binds Him in his Divine nature to the Father.
"I in them and thou in me, O holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are" (John 17:11).
Of the "Body of Christ" you should make no external, no mechanical representation. It is true that among ourselves we speak of the body, of the corps, of the corporation, of those who are like-minded, who co-operate for the same end. They who belong to it are then called members of such a body, and the management is the head.
But with the Body of Christ all this has a far deeper meaning and a far more serious significance.
Here you do not become a member of the Body of Christ by application, or by signing your name to your creed. Here you are not incorporated in this Body by a military oath. Here you do not appear as a member, in order presently from choice to resign your membership. No, the Body of Christ lies anchored in the nature of the soul. It is an organism invisible to the eye, but known to God, which forms one indissoluble whole, to which a child can belong as an integral member before it has ever lisped the name of Christ.
You do not fit yourself into this Body, but God Himself takes you up into it, incorporates you with your own nature into it, and appoints you, as a member of Christ, with a fixed place of your own in it, whereby at the same time your calling and your destiny is forever determined.
In this Body you are a fellow-member with other members, not after your choice, or after their choice; but according to the Divine disposal, you with all the others form a union which can never be broken. And with all these you are under Christ as your living, life-quickening and animating Head from Whom alone the glow of love can come to you. And your existence, as a member in this Body and under this Head, has no other aim than to cause you through the Mediator to be near unto God again, to assure you of an eternity in His holy Presence, and so to guarantee the highest end of your existence, an existence throughout the everlasting ages, for the honor of the thrice holy God.
This is the mystical end in behalf of which the mystical union with Christ serves as means, and for this reason Christ interweaves the tie that binds Himself to His own with the tie that binds Himself to the Father: "I in them and Thou in Me!" A union sealed of God Himself.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
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