One with Christ

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

ONE WITH CHRIST

Luke 5:27-39

27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. 29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" 31 Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."  33 They said to him, "John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking." 34 Jesus answered, "Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast."  36 He told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine enmust be poured into new wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.'" 

NIV

Now that we have decided to respond to the call of Jesus to follow him, and we have admitted that we were one of those sick people that needed the doctor, a sinner, and we have repented, or changed the way we think, with Jesus in the center of our thoughts and lives. We now want to ponder on this bridegroom and fasting. Of course, that may have been just regarding that particular time because Jesus was physically present and was talking about someday he would not be as he would be going back to heaven. However, the church, or rather the people of faith, are still the bride of Christ. At least that is the application or the example that Paul uses in his letter to the Ephesians, where he speaks of a relationship of a husband to his wife, and then says it is a profound mystery, but he is speaking of Christ and the church. That would mean Jesus is the husband or the Groom, and we are then as the wives, would be the bride of Christ. It is interesting that is we expound on that truth we find that Jesus as the bridegroom, the husband, ought to love his wife, which Jesus does, and give ourselves up for our wives, loving them as we live our own bodies and Paul goes on to make the point that we leave everything behind and we are now with our wife and become one flesh, just as Jesus and the Church. Jesus said that very thing about a husband and a wife become one flesh, both Matthew and Mark record those words of Jesus.  Jesus has said that He and the Father are one,  and has made the point as we, being the submitting wife of our husband, Jesus, we have become one with Him. So we believe that we are one with Christ. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he speaks about us being united with Christ in his death, so we are united with in his resurrection.  We are one with Christ. John, in his gospel records those words of Jesus when he speaks about that we might be one as He and the Father are one. It simply comes down to the fact that we are one with Christ, and as such we should live accordingly.