Now we come to the integrated life. What are we aiming at? What do we wish to see from our Christian experience? What are we supposed to look like on the other side of a transforming relationship with Christ? The word that I found best describes this goal is the word integrated.
You can see that the lines separating the body spirit and soul are now dashed lines. This illustrates that how we live, what we think, and what we value is now one. We are no longer a “double minded person” (Js 1.8).
Notice at the center of this picture there is the Divine presence of God. This is the theology of omnipresence, but as a reality experienced. The Divine presence of God is now the Reality from which we center all of life around, and the source of all our activity in the world.
When we are living with the center of our life correct, our activity then becomes apprenticing Jesus in the world and learning the “family trade” of redemption. God is in the business of redemption, and we are to learn this trade by “shadowing” God in this world. The fancy bible name for this is “incarnation” God with flesh. We are now to be the ongoing incarnation in the world bringing God’s redemption. We become, through the Holy Spirit within us, the presence of God in the world. Paul refers to this as being an Ambasador for Christ (2 Cor. 5.20) and the church practices this by praying and acting “in Jesus' name.”
This apprenticing has a few pathways. In our personal life, we now display the fruits of the Spirit in our attitudes: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). When people encounter us, they encounter one who displays the characteristics of God, and thus, they encounter God through us.
Another pathway is through the gifts of the Spirit. It is hard to nail down a list of the gifts, there are a few different ones in the Scriptures, but we do know that the Holy Spirit wishes to do something with our life, and He empowers us to do so with gifts. These gifts are God’s actions in the world.
The third pathway that I see as an encounter with God is through the Body of Christ, a local community of believers that is an expression of his presence. When the body of Christ gathers together for worship, teaching, prayer, and serving, we become a microcosm of the global and historical church of God within our community.
Through these three pathways we reach into the contexts that we live and redeem what God wishes to redeem, and to battle that which God wishes to battle. When we do this we are contributing to the goal of Revelation 21 of a new heaven and a new earth, one that is married together (or integrated).
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