One of my wife’s favorite movies is The Cutting Edge. It’s about figure skating, sure, but the guy in it is a former hockey player, so I can still get away with watching it without totally surrendering my man card. It’s a “romantic comedy” and the comedy bits come as the two primary characters are forced to become a figure skating team instead of two highly-skilled individuals. This happens mostly against their will, but in order to win, it has to happen. In figure skating – and in any dance or choreographed performance – success depends on more than just technical skill. They have to perform each element in such unity that it’s almost like they were inseparably connected.
“Perichoresis” is a Greek term that describes something like this, and you’ll probably notice the root word in there from which we get “choreography.” The term describes the intimate unity among the persons of the Trinity – especially between God the Father and God the Son. They are separate persons, but they are inseparable. You get the idea in Jesus’ prayer the night before He died, as He prayed for you and me and for the Church as a whole in John 17:21-23.
…that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
As He finished His earthly ministry, what did Jesus ask God to give His followers? Unity. And not just any kind of unity: He wants the same kind of intimate unity among us that characterizes the perfect community that exists among the members of the Trinity – the way God the Father interacts with His Son and with the Holy Spirit. He prays “that they may be one even as we are one.”
In this last verse of Ephesians 1, Paul alludes to this unity (and will cover it a lot more in chapter 4).
And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
(Ephesians 1:23)
It works like this: The fullness of God is filling Christ, just as Christ is filling the church. The fullness of God’s power and attributes are given to the Church by Christ, who in turn is being filled with them completely. Paul’s prayer is built on the fact that God has enriched believers with every spiritual benefit for their spiritual well-being. He prays that believers will deepen their relationship with God and experience in a deeper way the spiritual benefits with which they have been enriched.
This is key for these Ephesian believers. Instead of working to appease Artemis so that she would favor your business over that of your rival, the Christian model appeals to unity – between God and Christ, Christ and us, and we as individuals with the rest of the Church. The Christian life that we’ve been adopted into is one in which our lives should so closely mirror God’s will that we appear inseparably linked. Because Christ is in us (John 17:23), we have supernatural resources to perform this divine choreography. We can forgive when we’ve been deeply hurt. We can see needs in others where before we only saw inconvenience. In fact, we can see others as more important than ourselves (Phil 2:3-4) because we are inseparably linked with them and empowered – filled – by Christ’s power. Christ has the power to create this kind of perfect unity and community among us.
Paul uses the present tense when he describes this “filling,” indicating that God’s filling of Christ is not static but constant. In the same way, Christ’s filling of the Church is alive and fresh. His power is new for every challenge and opportunity, for every hardship and triumph of believers, individually and collectively. That divine power is available to you and me and to all those God has brought together in Christ.
This is both encouraging and convicting to me. It’s encouraging, because it means – unlike the Ephesians who insisted on believing that Artemis actually had power – I have the power of the one true God to overcome the spiritual challenges I’ll face today. But it’s convicting, because even though I have these divine resources, I see that my selfishness and sin works against the unity that Jesus Himself has prayed for and so I miss out on the perfect community that Jesus and His Father and the Spirit have enjoyed for eternity.
Can we pray as Christ prayed? Pray that God would work among us – beginning with Pin Oaks and extending to all believers – that God would make us one, even as He and His Son are one. That the world would see us moving and living in such a way that Christ’s Church would appear inseparable from Christ our head. That we would daily appeal to His power to forgive when our own resources are not enough, and that we would see past our own interests and agendas so that together, we can accomplish His perfect plan.
Can you imagine what a sight that would be for this lost and hurting world?
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