The first thing that we learn about the Spirit of God in the Bible is that He hovered over matter. God the Father had spoken that matter into existence, and the Word which was powerfully spoken that way was God the Son, God the Word. And then the Spirit came, and He hovered over the spoken text, interpreting it.
God the Father was also the one who uttered the decree that the Son of God would go to the cross and die. When the Lord wrestled with this terrible will in the Garden, the will of His Father, He was wrestling with the Word that had been spoken. But, as was made evident by His glorious submission to it, He also was the Word that was spoken. And even here, no Word is without a Reader, without an interpreter. And it is the Spirit who interprets, and He reads in such a way as to accomplish what He is interpreting.
Jesus died and rose so that we might all be knit together in love. He died so that the disparate and warring factions of a fragmented humanity might be brought together in one new man. And thus it is that the Spirit is active and working in our lives, accomplishing this very thing. We are told in Colossians that our increase in grace is an increase that results from being progressively knit together into the Head, which is of course the Spirit’s work. But He does not unite us in some other ethereal region; He does not unite us in the airy fairy upper reaches of the heavenlies. He hovers over matter—over us, over bread and wine, over you and your irritating neighbor. And so come, and welcome.
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