One with God

Who gives us a being to be Christians, to have a new nature, but God? Who maintains and preserves that being but God? And who keeps and preserves us until we are changed into a glorious being in heaven but God, who is all-sufficient, self-sufficient, sole-sufficient, and only-sufficient? This God is our God now in Christ. Man has a reasoning soul and is fitted by nature to have communion with God. If God be our God in Christ, we have a spiritual being, which is as much above the dignity and prerogative of our natural being as our being by nature is above the basest creature in the world. However, the world takes no notice of them because their excellency is seen with another eye than the world has. 'The God of the world blinds the eyes of unbelievers' (2 Cor. 4:4). They cannot see into the excellency of God's children, no more than they know God himself and Christ himself. In this our excellency consists, that God is our God in Christ, who was God; and that he might bring God and us to good terms together; that he might make God our God. He was Immanuel, God with us—God with us in favour and love. God in Christ is so near our nature, that there is a oneness in union. By reason of this near union of the Godhead to our nature comes that comfort whereby God has sweet communion and interaction with us in Christ. God by his Spirit is graciously one with us as his children. Now we may say, God is our God; and upon good grounds, because God is Christ's God, and in him our God, which is a point of singular comfort.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
A Heavenly Conference, pp. 123-26
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