We God’s people have a tendency to attempt to clean the outside of the cup, so that the inside might be clean. But Jesus let us know, in no uncertain terms, that this is entirely backwards: “First clean the inside of the cup and the platter so that the outside of them might be clean also” (Matt. 23:26). The implication is that the only way for a true cleansing to happen is from the inside out. When we work from the outside in, nothing truly gets cleansed; nothing of any value happens. Nowhere is this truer than in our relationships with one another. We are so often trying to get our relationships with one another right in an external way.

Let’s start, however, by discussing our individual lives first. The inside is the spirit. The outside is our behavior, our actions, our words, our ways of living. God has done a marvelous thing through the cross of Jesus Christ -- He has moved inside of our spirits. He has become one with our spirits. “He who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (I Corinthians 6:17). In our spirits resides the new man -- Christ. We are a new creation. We are one with God. God resides, in His fullness, in our spirits! From this place within He pours out into our hearts, and into our minds, His thoughts, His knowledge, His understanding, His love, His ways. This process is what Paul calls being “transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Our mind becomes newer and newer every day with more of His thoughts, more of His attitudes, etc. This new mind, new heart, new understanding, changes our behavior. From being cleansed on the inside, the outside becomes clean.

We do not get right with God by studying the Bible, learning what good behavior is, and doing it. This is approaching God and trying to please God and trying to make our behavior right by what Paul calls “the works of the Law.” Rather, we are cleansed by the blood (the dying) of the Lord Jesus, which causes us to die to what we were to unite us to Him deep within our being. This is eternal life. This life, then, grows within us and corrects our behavior and ways of life.

Said another way, union with God in our spirits makes us, in the course of time, behave as we should in every area of our lives. So, this union start in our spirits, and grows up into our souls. In due time, this life will work its way out so that, at Gods appointed time, our bodies also will be changed by the life within us, and “this mortal shall put on immortality” and “death shall be swallowed up by life.” This is the eternal life completely saving and completely transforming our entire being.

So this saving, this cleansing, this changing, happens from the inside to the outside. Union with God produces right understanding and right behavior.

We know this. Yet in our relationships with one another, in our groups that we form, we try to get one another right by external means, so that we can be one. We try to force a certain way of gathering on one another, or what doctrines must be adhered to, etc., so that we can fellowship and be one.

But this is entirely backwards. We first must be one -- there must first be the union of life, being together the “ONE new man” that Paul described (Eph. 2:15). Paul says that with this union of life comes peace. Just like we are at peace with God, and our being has been merged with His being in a beautiful union (not closeness, but UNION), so it is with one another.

Yet, as we take an honest look at the relationships of us God’s people, there is anything but peace! Instead we are trying to get together, and trying to attain to unity. But it will never work that way. Rather, we must start at the only place that can produce good relationships -- our union together in life. We cannot start with our good behavior and our good doctrines. That is attempting to cleanse the outside of the cup. We must start with union of spirit.

Every true believer who is alive in Christ is part of one new being with us. We start by accepting one another, counting one another as precious (Romans 15:7 -- “receive one another as Christ received us”), and abiding together in peace and in the flow and working of the Holy Spirit. This is why Paul said, “endeavor to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). We are one in spirit. That is where we start. We must keep from doing things that tear at this oneness. This oneness, this life of the Spirit, will flow out among us to transform us together. This will “knit our hearts together in love.” From this place of union, we grow to have the knowledge and the relationships that we should. As we speak the truth (the spiritual, revealed truth by the Spirit of Truth, in the mind of the Spirit) in love, we grow into the “unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God” (Eph. 4:13).

Do you see the beautiful progression? Unity of spirit, unity of having one life together, produces, by the outworking of that life in peaceful fellowship, a unity of faith and knowledge! Union with each other in the Holy Spirit produces correctness among us, and in our relationships, and in our doctrine, NOT the other way around!

We must get this! We must grasp this, in order to prosper in our relationships with one another. Union produces correctness, not correctness produces unity.