The believers in the Body of Christ constitute many different members, but one spiritual Body—one organism. As believers and bondservants we know that true oneness is our potential.
Let’s look first at the illusions about oneness that are so subtle and undetected.
One false illusion would be thinking that compatibility is oneness.
Another illusion would be thinking that unity by means of suppression or domination is oneness.
A third one would be the illusion that oneness is destroyed by confrontation.
And a fourth would be the delusion that unity is obtained by conformity.
Number five would be the delusion that oneness is a submersion of the individual’s commission and calling. Oneness does not take away the aggressiveness with which a believer in Christ fulfills his commission.
Number six would be the false illusion that oneness has excluded diversification of ministry.
What’s our function in Christ? It has to be on the right spiritual level. It can’t be our own independent, rebellious efforts as individuals. It has to be totally one with the heart of God and with the heart of the brothers, even whether we understand it or not. In spirit the oneness has to be there; then we each do that thing, not our own personal thing but that individual thing that God has in mind for each one of us to do.
Now let’s look at some true principles about oneness.
Oneness is the antithesis of conformity, and it releases in each of us the fulfilling of our own distinctive commissions without competitiveness.
Oneness is total. It involves every relationship: family relationships, church relationships, and our relationship to God.
And it is impossible to have any one of these relationships right without all, or to have all without the oneness first with the Lord.
Oneness is not a repair job between relationships; oneness is a state of being that invades every relationship—all relationships!
The goal of oneness is not to answer problems or settle differences. Oneness is not a magic state wherein we can now solve all our problems; oneness, in fact, brings us to a new evaluation of problems and a new definition of our goals and motivations.
Oneness enables you to rise up out of the arena of all existing human conflicts and problems, and lifts you into the realm of the Lord’s perfect provision for you and to His authority and faith to claim it.
There is no oneness without the miracle impartation that removes us from the arena of our personal problems, and contentions, and incompatibilities, and conformities. Oneness is created by a miracle of impartation.
Oneness is the result of a translation from life on the soulish flesh level to living in the Spirit.
Oneness establishes the anointed commission that is distinctive to every individual, and it also establishes the sharing—the participation of every individual into the commission of every other individual.
Oneness begins with our being able to appropriate even the nature of Christ, but it is distinctly manifested in our appropriating the attributes of Christ and flow of Christ that is coming through our brother by each individual manifestation of each other.
Oneness is often the end of a peaceful detente in our relationships on the human level; but it is also the open door to the joy of oneness expressed in the New Testament, as well as in Isaiah (II Corinthians 1:24; Isaiah 61:7, 10; Acts 2:41–47).
The will of God performed with a pure motivation and oneness is the source of each believer’s joy and satisfaction in the Kingdom.
Oneness is attained by faith. The great enemies of this oneness are the fearfulness in relationship, the fearfulness of doing the unusual or doing the unconventional, the fearfulness of embracing the insecurity of discipleship, the fearfulness that retains the Ananias and Sapphira cache.
There is a fearfulness that is based upon the motivation of self-preservation that is the enemy of the Kingdom discipleship and oneness.
The oneness has no enemy greater than the misguided ministry of the church that tries to preserve the individual from the work of the cross and pull him out of his problems, when God designed the stresses he is under to bring him out of his independent individuality and into the oneness of the Kingdom.
How much ministry, well-intentioned and good, has been exercised to keep alive what God was killing?
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