A wine which our souls were heretofore too weak to hold!

Being conformed to the being of our origin

When a man wills that his being be conformed to that being of his origin… when the man thus accepts his own causing life, and sets himself to live the will of that causing life… he thus receives God’s life into himself. He becomes, in the act, a partaker of the divine nature, a true son of the living God, and an heir of all He possesses. By the obedience of a son, he receives into himself the very life of the Father.

Obedience is the joining of the links of the eternal round. Obedience is but the other side of the creative will. Will is God's will, obedience is man's will. The two make one.

If we do the will of God, eternal life is ours…

Our souls shall thus become vessels ever growing. And ever as they grow shall they be filled with the more and more life proceeding from the Father and the Son – from God the ordaining, and God the obedient.

We can never know the delight of the being, the abundance of the life He came to give us, until we have it. But even now to the holy imagination it may sometimes seem too glorious… to think of awakening to this higher life and being filled with a wine which our souls were heretofore too weak to hold!

Selah.

George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons II: “Life,” quoted in “Your Life in Christ: The Nature of God and His Work in Human Hearts,” edited by Michael Phillips.