What a difference when one joins himself to the Lord! He becomes one
spirit with the Lord. For while our union with Christ involves also our bodies
as a part of our person it is really a union of the spirit and only as such
includes our bodies. Christ and the Christian become “one spirit,” he in us,
and we in him in a wondrous mystical union. This is the very highest plane that
by what is highest in our being, namely the spirit, lifts us into a union that
is completely spiritual, blessed, and heavenly. This is the unio mystica which is so abundantly
attested in the Scriptures. With no absorption of our spirit into Christ, with
no mingling or fusion of the two, with no loss of the identity of either, our
spirit is joined to Christ’s so that one thought, one desire, one will animate
and control both, namely his thought, desire, and will. This mystical union is
adumbrated in the marital union of husband and wife, Eph. 5:28–33, yet only
adumbrated, for no human relation is capable of doing more. (R. C.
H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s First and Second Epistle to the
Corinthians [Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Publishing House, 1963], 265-66)
