Living. Moving. Being.

For in him we live and move and have our being. __Paul in Acts 17:28__

This passage has hung over me for, well, at least a year, perhaps longer. It is one of those passages that seem to be a black hole of meaning, endlessly deep and powerful, full of possible interpretations. I never have been able to get my mind around it, plumb the infinite depths. It just seemed like the thing I was seeking (or was it seeking me?) was hovering over me, that it was just out in front of my face, just beyond my grasp, like one of those electronic rabbits at the dog track. And like those dogs chasing the fake rabbit, I was in hot pursuit, but I simply could never get my brain to wrap its tendrils around Paul’s words.

That may have changed last week.

Maybe.

Rewind to Sunday morning at 5:30 AM. I was in my car on my way to work. Now normally there is very little thought process happening in my brain at 5:30 AM other than “keep the car on the road.” But for some reason, perhaps my mind was finally at a point where it could hear the Spirit, but I thought about this passage. Like I said, I’ve chewed on it and chewed on it—the Latin word is meditatio, meaning “to ruminate” (which is what a cow does to its cud)—and this time it seems like I’ve—pardon the expression—“hacked up” a possible meaning.

What if this is a Trinitarian statement, hinting at the work of each of the “members” of the Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Watch.

In him we live… Christ is our life. Christ came to give life. Christ is Life. Paul wrote in Philippians, “To live is Christ” (1:21). He continues in Galatians, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (2:20). Jesus himself said, “I came to give you life” (John 10:10). Oh, and by the way, Jesus said, “I am the Life” (John 14:6). I’ll stop now, but there are more. There can be no argument that Jesus is a Life-giver, all of Christendom, nay, all of humanity is banking on that reality.

…and move… The Spirit is the “force” (with apologies to George Lucas, Luke Skywalker and Yoda) behind our movement, which makes sense given that is the Spirit of the Life-giver. Jesus tells Nicodemus in John 3, “The wind (read: Spirit) blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” Jesus tells his followers on the night of betrayal that the Spirit will guide them into all truth. All throughout Acts we find the Spirit guiding the apostles, guiding the followers of the Way, the early Church into situations that would lead to the glory of God. The Spirit even physically moves people at times: “The Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away…” (Acts 8:39). The Spirit is the mover in our lives, the power through which we do everything that we do for the Kingdom.

...and have our being… Hang with me on this because I need to break out my limited linguistic and grammatical knowledge (which would fit on the head of a pin) to make this make sense. In Exodus 3 Moses asks God what His name is. God says, “I AM.” Without going into the ridiculous depth of that answer I will say that “I AM” comes from the “be” verb: am, is, are, was, were. Microsoft Word © tells me, by my hitting Shift + F7, that synonyms for “be” are “exist,” “alive,” “be alive,” be real.” So God simply says, “I exist.” When we say that we have our being in God we are saying that because he is—because he “be’s”—we are—we “be.” We have our be-ness. We are made in the image of Be, therefore we are Be-ings. In his being-ness I find my be-ing, my existing, my aliveness, my realness. “Be” also has as its meaning “be present” or “be there.” Presence. There-ness. These attributes not only beautifully describe God, but they describe how we are to “be” in this world. We are presences, “there-ers” to the world, available and always living in the now. So in the Father we have our be-ness, our presence to the world and we are made available to all. Just as he is present to the world in his “Be-ness” we, too, are present to the world in our “Be-ness.”

Now to backtrack to the beginning of that passage that I intentionally skipped over to point out the role of the Trinity in our lives, I would like to take a quick look at the phrase in Him. I’ve always thought that this phrase, which appears over and over again in Paul’s writings, particularly in Ephesians and Colossians, applied to Christians only. But I’m not so sure. Remember that when Paul says in him we live and move and have our being that he is talking to a group of philosophers in Athens, a decidedly polytheistic culture. Paul is telling them (or so it seems to me) that all of humanity lives, moves and has its being in God. He even concludes his statement by quoting one of their own pagan poets to underscore his point. Think about that. Think about what that changes in how we present the good news. People aren’t somehow entering into a club that we’ve already bought memberships to; no, when they accept Christ as the reality of life they are awakening (the Biblical word for this is "enlightenment") to a reality that they have been a part of all along, namely, that in God, all along, they have been living and moving and being right along with us. They are now awakened to that fact and all of life looks different. Every action, thought, or word is seen in a different light now. How sweet is that!?

Now it is your turn. What are your thoughts?

shalom, matt