Union with Christ as an intimate mystical mystery

From Gary Nebeker:

“I recall a time when, as a first-year Ph. D. student, I made a comment in a seminar. I told my peers and the professor who was teaching the seminar that it was silly to think of ourselves as “the brides of Christ.” We are “a part of the bride collectively,” I confidently asserted, “but we are not individually brides of Christ. That sounds weird and ‘mystical’ to me.”

My beloved professor gently corrected me. He said something along these lines: “We need to take Paul’s bridal imagery of union with Christ very seriously. This is not just corporate language, it is individual language as well. There is something deeply mysterious—even mystical—regarding our union with Christ. Marital intimacy is the closest analogy we have as humans to understand in some small way what union with Christ is like.”

I, along with my other Ph. D. students, knew this was a sacred moment. You could hear a pin drop. I will never forget it. Our professor was telling us that our union with Christ was “mystical.”

Of course, he was not talking about a profane, twisted, sexualized relationship with Christ, but of an intimacy and companionship with Jesus that is too deep for words, a union that defies rational explanation; an intimacy that is better experienced than explained.”