AS YOU MAY KNOW, I have written a great deal about mysticism over the years, with a vast chapter devoted to it in “The Serpent and the Cross” (pages 561-689). In those writings I showed how eastern and western mysticism have generally involved typical Gnostic or neo-Gnostic notions about being “oned” with God and achieving personal divinity, which of course has to be a delusion. I have also shown in that same book (pages 333-335) how so many of the big-deal mystics and gurus who have claimed personal divinity and so-called “enlightenment” have actually been sexual manipulators and exploiters of their devotees, which somehow makes all those grandiose spiritual claims to be of no effect. [You can either obtain a physical hard-copy of that 1,044-page book by contacting me or you can download an eBook edition of it here: https://diakrisis-project.com/2026/08/20/the-serpent-the-cross-is-now-available-for-download-as-a-free-ebook/ ].

However, the exposing of the Gnostic manifestation of classic mysticism does not mean that there is no aspect to being a disciple of Christ which could be called ‘mystical’. For if that was the case, we would have a faith which was without any multi-dimensional and infinite depth. It would be pedestrian and rooted only in in matter. Yet flesh is not our true spiritual home. When something is “mystical”, it does not mean that it is a representation of mysticism. I will show in this brief article that there is a mystical reality to our faith which needs to be understood lest, in our desire to avoid falling into mysticism, or through a fear of spiritual depth, we thereby reject the true mystical reality of our faith.

Firstly, we can only speak of the true mystical when it involves those who recognise that God is God and that we are His creation; whereas Gnostic-style mysticism is a manifestation of false religion as it claims that through its practices and techniques one can actually become Divine. In that sense, the “oned with God” type of mysticism can be said to be satanic, for the original occurrence of a human being deceived into imagining that he or she can attain godhood is right there in the blueprint of the Fall of Man in Genesis 3:5.

The words “mystery” and “mystical” are closely related etymologically and spiritually. A mystical saying that the Apostle Paul uses very frequently (roughly 160 times if you include “in the Lord” and “in Christ Jesus”) is when he speaks about believers being “in Christ”, in reference to our actual spiritual condition (e.g., Ephesians 1:3–7; Ephesians 2:6,13; Romans 6:11; 8:1; 12:5). Not only that but he also speaks about “Christ in you”, for example here, when he says, “the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27; Galatians 2:20; 2 Corinthians 13:5). So the great twin-mystery in the life of the disciple of Christ is this: We are both “in Christ” and “Christ is in us”. If you do not find that to be mindblowing, then you most certainly should!

You may say, “I can’t get my head around that”. But you’re not supposed to — well, not with your head anyway! Yet this is the mysterious mystical reality of our spirituality. This is of infinitely more significance than being a slave to thinking you need to wear a suit on a Sunday, or learning to recite your church‘s confession of faith, or calling yourself a Christian, or going to “Spring Harvest”, etc. Always doing, doing, doing. Performing, performing, performing. Always thinking one has to DO things in order to be spiritual, while being obsessed with the outward elements.

It is so easy for us to become bogged down in the everyday things that we see around us and create a very pedestrian way of life that we call “Christian” which relies on outward elements only — basically, stage props. A local church which encourages primary adherence to these outward elements becomes rigid and legalistic, censorious and petty-minded. Folks use these outward elements to hold onto their faith, but in such a way that they fail to see the true extent and depth of that faith, the astonishing ramifications of which go way beyond what we can see, touch, taste, hear, or feel in this world. After all, if one is “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17), that has to mean far more than outward performance, or merely “becoming a Christian” by some kind of intellectual assent. In this sense, so much of the easy-believist style of evangelism ignores that vital mystical quality of our faith when it all comes down to that buzz-phrase, “making a decision for Christ”, which completely dismisses the fact that salvation is “not by works”, not by anything that we can make happen with our own will (John 1:13), but is instead “a gift from God” (Ephesians 2:8-9). That is the mystical at work.

When one is “in Christ” this means that one is spiritually in union with Him. I do believe that many, if not the majority, of disciples of Christ have a truncated idea of what this involves and do not fully appreciate the spiritual consequences. I wrote about this in “The Serpent and the Cross” (pages 645-647) in the chapter on Mysticism because I did not want people to overreact against the idea of mysticism by then becoming pedestrian, three-dimensional legalists who are profoundly frightened of the full flower of genuine spirituality — the true mystical reality of our faith. In our avoidance of Gnostic mysticism we must not negate the true mystical reality of what it means to be in union with Christ — He “in us” and we “in Him”. So here is what I said about this wonderful subject in the second edition of “The Serpent and the Cross”:

Extract from “The Serpent and the Cross” begins here:

Augustus Strong (1836-1921) asserts that the nature of the union of the believer with Christ is not “a union of essence, which destroys the distinct personality and subsistence of either Christ or the human spirit — as held by many of the mystics” (A.H. Strong, Systematic Theology, Vol.3, Pickering Inglis, 1981, f.p.1907, p.799). As Robert Dabney (1820-1898) has rightly pointed out, the Christian believer, after he or she has been indwelt by the Holy Spirit, is “still a separate person, a responsible free agent, and a man, not a God. The idea of a personal or substantial union would imply the deification of man, which is profane and unmeaning” (Robert L. Dabney, Systematic Theology, Banner of Truth, 1985, fp.1871, p.615). In a compelling section on “Union with Christ” in his Systematic Theology lectures, the great Augustus Strong (whose writings on this subject I so much admire) shows that the union of the believer with Christ is:

“An organic union,— in which we become members of Christ and partakers of his humanity… A vital union,— in which Christ’s life becomes the dominating principle within us… A spiritual union,— that is, a union whose source and author is the Holy Spirit… An indissoluble union,— that is, a union which, consistently with Christ’s promise and grace, can never be dissolved (Matthew 28:20; John 10:28; Romans 8:5,39; 1 Thessalonians 4:14,17)… An inscrutable union,— mystical, however, only in the sense of surpassing in its intimacy and value any other union of souls which we know” (Ephesians 5:32; Colossians 1:27). [A.H. Strong, op. cit., pp.800-801].

The true nature of the union of the believer with God is brought out in numerous Scriptures which show that Christ, through His Spirit, indwells all true believers in order to bring about a radical transformation so that they can be “renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created [us]” (Colossians 3:10). This is a renewal in influence not in essence, as John reveals it to be an “anointing from the Holy One” (1 John 2:20), an act which comes from a transcendent God restoring us to the spiritual state in which we were at the beginning of history, only this time without the potential for a Fall (Psalm 37:23-24; 1 Peter 1:5). Such transformational work in believers is being undertaken so that they shall be once more in His likeness, having certain divine qualities, being “partakers of His holiness” (Hebrews 12:10), and renewed in the spirit of their minds, in righteousness and true holiness (Ephesians 4:23-24).

Having said all this, it is important to stress that a genuinely mystical change does take place at the most radical level within the person when he or she becomes united with Christ. It is an unfortunate fact that the erroneous writings and experiences of the mystics and Charismatic sects throughout the history of the Church have tended to engender a knee-jerk reaction against this among many believers, leading to what can be a very superficial view of the indwelling Holy Spirit, so that this becomes little more than a benign influence in the life of the Christian. George Smeaton beautifully highlights this reactionary problem when he writes this:

“Divines [by which he means the saints] sometimes hesitate to accept the idea of inhabitation [by the Spirit] in the full sense of the term, lest they should seem to fall into excess or to adopt the language of the enthusiasts [old word for charismatics]. We are as fully [aware] as they can be to the duty of speaking with sobriety and caution, when we recall the language of the mystics of medieval times and the extravagances of the heady high-minded sects of the time of Cromwell, which produced a recoil from the Scripture doctrine of the Spirit, from which many have not recovered to this day. But we ought equally to be on our guard against the opposite extreme of erring by defect, lest we obscure or misrepresent the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit”. [George Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, Banner of Truth, 1974, pp.231-232].

So we must not let a reaction against the mystics — whether Montanist, medieval or modern Charismatic — intimidate us into quenching the Spirit or lessening the intensity and immediacy of the relationship which the believer has with Christ. For, as A.H. Strong puts it in mighty powerful terms:

“It is this [union with Christ] and this only which constitutes him a Christian, and which makes possible a Christian church. We may, indeed, be thus united to Christ without being fully conscious of the real nature of our relation to him…Christ and the believer have the same life. They are not separate persons linked together by some temporary bond of friendship,—they are united by a tie as close and indissoluble as if the same blood ran in their veins. Yet the Christian may never have suspected how intimate a union he has with his Saviour; and the first understanding of this truth may be the gateway through which he passes into a holier and happier stage of the Christian life”. [emphasis added] [Augustus H. Strong, op. cit., p.802].

Those wonderfully warm words from Augustus Strong, surprisingly in the midst of a work on systematic theology, should thrill you to the core of your being to think that you are “united by a tie [with Christ] as close and indissoluble as if the same blood” ran in your veins as in His. THE SAME BLOOD! That really is a mindblowing thought and a thoroughly truthful one. To realise this for the first time leads one into a deeper closeness with Him than ever before and, for the sake of our perseverance, we should never forget it.

Extract from “The Serpent and the Cross” ends there.

I hope that you are now seeing here the full extent of the mystical reality of our faith. The key word to consider here is transcendence. We have a faith which transcends outward elements, mere flesh, because we are part of a kingdom which is “not of this world” (John 18:36). We also are not of this world (John 17:14-16). Therefore our spirituality transcends the stuff of which this present creation is made or, rather, the stuff into which this present creation has fallen. This is not to say that the outward elements have no purpose whatsoever. We can use them outwardly if necessary; but we must only see them as outward and temporary and of no profound significance in the full order of things. It must be said, though, that someone who has become a “partaker in the Divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) does not need to be a slave to written commandments for he or she does them naturally as one who is now “in-lawed to Christ”, as I will develop below.

The mystical life of the disciple of Christ is one which is lived “of the Spirit” rather than “of the letter” (2 Corinthians 3:6). When Paul uses these words here, he is contrasting the old covenant (the letter) with the new (the Spirit) — the outward with the inner. We are “in-lawed” to Christ (1 Corinthians 9:21) rather than the Old Testament law. This is what legalists cannot understand, for they are obsessed with the written word to the exclusion of the spiritual truth which lies behind it. They would rather wave their church constitution or confession at you than understand how you live life spiritually and are moved by the Spirit rather than the letter. For they would consider that to be akin to antinomianism as they have no understanding whatsoever of the genuine spiritual life of the one who is “in Christ”. They may say that they are “in Christ” because it is written in the Bible and they love the letter; but they have no inner experience of that in their lives. The letter is of no use whatsoever if the spiritual reality which lies behind it is not grasped and lived out during our brief time in this present world.

Before concluding, I must emphasise (if it is not already apparent enough) that I do not say any of this to encourage people to seek the experience of the charismatic, which is in fact a grotesque counterfeit of the genuine spiritual life “of the Spirit” and “in Christ”. For living a life which is “of the Spirit” does not make you behave like an intoxicated moron or crazy person, laughing like a hyena, jumping around, uttering gibberish, and so on. Living a life which is “of the Spirit” does not put you in a trance and enable you to be hypnotically manipulated by a heretical preacher. Living a life which is “of the Spirit” makes you so contrastingly sane — being so clearly “in your right mind” that it puts the fear of God into people (cf. Mark 5:15).

Finally, I must underline that being a “partaker in the Divine nature” does not mean that we are partakers in the Divine essence, as that is what the Gnostic type of mystic would claim. Being a partaker in the Divine nature is the equivalent of being “in Christ” or having “Christ in us”. Lest there be any misunderstanding at this point, I must also draw attention to the fact that being “in Christ” and having “Christ in us” has nothing to do with the so-called “Christ-Consciousness” of neo-Gnostics. For they believe that (their version of) the Christ is already in everyone born into this world and just needs to be discovered by practising some techniques. The exclusively Christian view is that one only becomes “in Christ” and has “Christ in us” after being “born from above” (John 3:3), and thereby “made alive with Christ” (Colossians 2:15).

I do hope that this little piece has brought to life the full mystical reality of our faith. For the more that reality is grasped, the deeper our faith becomes and thereby the more profound is our assurance of faith which then comes with it.

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2026
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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