This revelation is one of the greatest and most recent watershed moments of my life:
Our entire mission and purpose in this life is drawing others into deeper communion with Christ by the lifting up of Christ through our deepening communion with Christ.
Communion is where we began.
Communion is where we will end.
Communion is what always has been.
This insight was the unexpected outcome of going through a book with our marriage ministry group written by our mentors,
“Intimates, Roommates, or Enemy Combatants: 7 Essential Paths To Marital Greatness” by Pearson and Pepper Liddell.
It came to me during the study of the second chapter called Focus 2: 1+1=1, where they pose the question “Why marry?”
Their Foundational Scripture for this focus was Genesis 2:24, “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
But what really struck me was the verse that followed and that they later cite in this chapter of the study, Genesis 2:25, “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”
There was a term that the author used repeatedly as though they were really trying to hammer it home: “transparency”.
Here are couple of relevant examples:
“And it is not just they did not have clothes, but this nakedness is also apparent in the transparency of their relationship in all aspects of their lives. They kept nothing hidden from each other. This is God’s ideal!” ~Page 40
On the same page, they talk about the harmful games during conflict that couples play, such as “The Quiet Game”, “Darts” and “Tug-of-War”. They state, “The truth, however, is that all these games are sin because they lack transparency.”
These and statements like these impressed a phrase from Genesis 2:25 heavier and heavier upon my heart, “They were naked and not ashamed.”
This evoked in me a sense from Isaiah of the perfect and ultimate safety that will be established when the Lord’s kingdom is fully consummated in the world. For example, Isaiah 11:9 “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
“Naked and not ashamed” is such a stark contrast to our current state, to my current state.
I am clothed, veiled, and very much afraid.
We are all hiding behind some fig leaf of our own making.
It is the effect and cause of sin, the plight of the human condition.
So, the statement “naked and not ashamed” led me to ask God, “How were they naked and not ashamed?”
The Holy Spirit through our mentors and the book that they wrote, had already primed my heart for the answer: transparency.
And that led to yet another question. I understand conceptually what transparency is, but to yield such a remarkable phenomenon as “naked and not ashamed,” the transparency spoken of here must be special, right? What does this transparency look like?
The Godhead.
In God, there is only light.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.”
— James 1:17
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit see perfectly, more than that, they share a perfect communion.
They are One, in perfect sync and harmony around a singular purpose: magnifying God’s glory, the limitless expansion of good.
Jesus spoke of Himself and the Father,
“the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.” — John 5:19
And of Him, the Father and the Holy Spirit He said,
“when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said He will take of Mine and declare it to you.” — John 16:13-15
This is an image of perfect agreement and communion.
This brought to rememberance a previous lesson from the Lord that everything God gives us teaches us something about Him. This law is even how we can discern whether something is from Him. And, God gives us marriage.
The Godhead says with one voice, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion…” — Genesis 1:26
Then, in Genesis 2:18, God gives marriage, “And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”
God gives us marriage to do what He already declared, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…”
To reflect the trinitarian nature of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, there is now marriage: God, the Husband and the Wife.
Like the Trinity, members of marriage do not just exist aimlessly.
God said, “I will make him a helper…” (Genesis 2:18)
They work as one, in perfect sync and harmony around a singular purpose: magnifying God’s glory, the limitless expansion of good.
Magnifying God’s glory is the “what”, but “how?”
This was the watershed moment.
What we see in the Godhead is perfect communion.
This definition of communion was impressed upon me,
“Communion is the pursuit of oneness, where willing participants are bound by a common unifier. They intentionally share themselves and what promotes their union, while also seeking to remove what may hinder it, including obstructions within themselves.”
Then it was shown to me that in everything God does, communion is at play. Once we see it, it cannot be unseen.
In the Genesis, God says, “Let us”—communion.
God establishes marriage—communion.
The Passover meal—communion.
The Lord’s Supper—communion.
The early Church Fellowship (Acts 2:46)—communion.
The Marriage Supper of the Lamb—communion.
We are created in the image of God to reflect Him. That’s the what.
We do that together through communion. That’s the how.
So, how were Adam and Eve “naked and not ashamed”? They had communion with God. They dwelled with “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.”
Earlier I cited a passage from Isaiah about a perfect and ultimate safety, Isaiah 11:9 that says “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain…”
The “transparency” that secures our safety was not by our seeing into each other, but seeing God. Isaiah 11:9 concludes, “For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
The authors of this marriage ministry book, posed a question, “Why marry?”
The answer is communion because it is a reflection of God’s character.
The purpose of my marriage is to provide an earthly representation of a heavenly reality, like Jesus, to do what we see God do and do nothing of ourselves, to make the Father known that He may be glorified.
It’s the reason to do anything.
Communion also gives us some insight into why God does what He does, what is permissible or is not permissible in the life of a believer, and what is pleasing to God or not is because of its effect on communion.
Anything that hinders communion is sin.
Adam and Eve were able to be naked and not ashamed because God established an order. As finite beings, like Jesus, we were to rely on an infinite God to navigate the challenges of our finitude. The order was for us to look to God who understands all, and then to each other in the illumination of His counsel. In His order there are no misunderstanding, allowing us to work in perfect harmony. That’s communion.
Sin disrupted that communion, throwing us into darkness (darkness being an allegory for disorder and misunderstanding). Rather than looking to God first, we now look to each other with incomplete and often incorrect information, thus misunderstanding and thus sin.
We’re all suffering being out of communion with God.
But, God.
We are brought into fellowship with God through communion with Jesus Christ.
Everything that separates us from God has been removed through His life, death and resurrection, which becomes ours through communion.
Communion is more than eating bread and drinking wine as a symbolic association with Christ. It’s much more.
Communion is the pursuit of oneness, where willing participants are bound by a common unifier. They intentionally share themselves and what promotes their union, while also seeking to remove what may hinder it, including obstructions within themselves.
Communion is the pursuit of oneness with God through Christ. Jesus is our common unifier. He is The Way to God, through whom we can relate to God, then to each other and all of creation. This is what makes for our peace.
Jesus alone sees the Father. He came to make Him known to us. We see the Father because we see Jesus, through whom we receive the Father for ourselves. Other’s see Jesus because they see us (beginning with the patriarchs, prophets and the apostles), through whom He is preached and they come into fellowship with Him to receive the Father for themselves. All of this facilitated by Holy Spirit, all for the purposes of magnifying God’s glory, the limitless expansion of good.
Oneness to this end.
We look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, as our example. We give ourselves as a living sacrifice toward promoting this oneness, giving all that we have, including our material substance. This is why the early church rightly came to the conclusion that “neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.” (Act 4:32)
Never again will we allow Satan to obstruct a right view of God and each other. So, we also make war against everything that hinders our expressing the oneness that already is, especially the obstruction within ourselves; lies, pride, selfishness, idolatries.
This is communion, or at least what I understand so far.
Our entire mission and purpose in this life is drawing others into deeper communion with Christ by the lifting up of Christ through our deepening communion with Christ.
For it is written,
“And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”
– John 12:32
Communion is where we began.
Communion is where we will end.
Communion is what always has been.
This is a call to communion.
Will you come?
Those who answer can then be naked and not ashamed, not only in heaven but now,
“For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”
— Romans 10:11
Come.
*Special thanks to our mentors Pearson and Pepper Liddell for allowing the Holy Spirit to use you and for being willing participants, who intentionally share themselves, to draw me into communion with Christ as they draw nearer in communion with Christ.
I love you.
