It is likely that even in our most spiritual contemplation we have hardly yet caught a glimpse of all the possibilities of being united to God. Our union with Him, through oneness with Christ, can be of such variety, depth, vastness, minuteness, delicacy, sweetness, power and of such increasing intensity as to thrill our whole intelligence with the mere apprehension of it. The process of this union is that of Divine grafting, which is symbolized so extensively in nature, and referred to so explicitly in Scripture.  

All around us in creation, we find by vegetable and animal surgery, that in trees, plants, and living flesh, grafting can be carried on, by which one life can fasten itself upon another life so as to be practically indistinguishable in their union. This process of grafting runs all through creation, providence, revelation and grace, and even up into the Kingdom of Glory. We must remember however that this great law, both in nature and in grace, can only be exemplified where the lives or the substances have a kindred nature and a congenial substance.  

For instance in nature, all varieties of grape-vines can be grafted upon each other, but grape-vines and trees are not congeners, and cannot be mutually grafted.  

And in the animal kingdom, certain kinds of flesh taken from live animals can be grafted upon other living animals, and what is known as skin-grafting has been successfully performed, but the two lives must be of the same great family. The flesh of a fish cannot be grafted upon the flesh of an animal. So up in the spiritual realm, the Divine life in Christ can be imparted only to a creature who possesses a spiritual nature.  

Hence the Bible never even remotely intimates that birds and four-footed beasts can be taken into fellowship with God, because they do not have a spiritual nature. They are in a certain sense united to God by creation, and upheld every moment by His all-pervading omnipresence, yet they are not united to God in His moral character, His personal knowledge and communion. Let us notice some of the applications of this great principle of Divine grafting.  

1. In the performing of miracles. There are a multitude of instances in Scripture, where God wrought the miracle by utilizing a substance or force already in existence and simply grafting upon it His extra creative power.  

When in answer to Elisha’s prayer, the Lord multiplied the oil for the poor widow, He did not disdain to use the little pot of oil that the widow already had, but using it as a nucleus, He attached to it a stream of Divine creative power. He thus engrafted the new creation of many gallons of oil upon the old creation of what He had previously made through the olive tree.  

When Jesus turned the water into wine, He repeated the same Divine mystery of grafting a new creation upon the substance of an old one. He had in the beginning created the water, for “the sea is His, and He made it.” The natural wine, they had been using at the marriage feast, was simply water turned into wine through the instrumentality of a grape vine, which had drawn the water from the earth and transmitted it into grape juice. But now the Creator Himself, Who was the “true eternal vine,” was present, and He could dispense with the grape-vine, and shorten the process from four months into less than four seconds. By His Almighty will, He could touch the water and make it blush in the presence of its God into the purest grape-juice. But notice, He did not reject the water, but taking hold of the old creation and accepting it as far as it would go, He super-joined upon it the miracle of a new creation.  

The same principle is exemplified in utilizing the few loaves and fishes, and miraculously multiplying them to feed the five thousand. What God has wrought already in creation furnishes a basis for all the miracles that ever have been or ever will be performed. Even the resurrection of the dead is not an entire creation, but a resurrection, that is, a lifting of the mortal state into an immortal state. The new Heaven and the new earth, in all their imperishable glory, will not consist in the annihilation of the substance of the present earth, but a new creation upon the basis of the old.  

2. In the matter of revelation. Here God follows the same order of grafting the Divine upon the human, the supernatural upon the natural. He reveals His truth to man according to his state, his gifts, his occupation or his individual tastes. David, the great warrior, sees an angel in Heaven with a drawn sword. Ezekiel, the scribe, sees a flying roll of parchment written within and without. Daniel, the prime minister, at the head of a great empire, sees God’s purpose concerning the kingdoms of the world in their national aspects, down to the second coming of Christ, when the saints shall take the kingdom.  

The wise men of Persia who were skilled in astronomy had the birth of the Savior revealed to them by a star in perfect keeping with their knowledge and taste. Thus all through Bible history, God’s great revelations come to men through some natural fitness or gift, by which the Holy Spirit appropriately attaches the Divine to the human.  

One of the most striking instances of this is found in the tenth chapter of Acts, where God revealed to the Apostle Peter His great missionary purpose, taking the Gospel beyond the Jews to all Gentile nations. While Peter was waiting for dinner, he spent the time on the house top in prayer and fell into a trance.  

Now we see how beautifully God blended the supernatural on the natural. We are told that Peter was hungry, and God sent him a vision exactly corresponding to it—a sheet let down from Heaven, with all manner of living creatures. A voice said, “Arise Peter, kill and eat.” See how his hunger furnished the natural basis for a vision of those meats that would satisfy his hunger, and how adroitly the Holy Spirit grafted a new and worldwide missionary vision upon such a commonplace thing as a hungry stomach.  

3. In the operations of grace. In regenerating and sanctifying the believing soul, the Holy Spirit pursues this same great law of grafting the life of Christ into the believing heart, and the graces and fruit of the Spirit upon the natural faculties and functions of the human spirit. This whole world of truth is opened up to us by that significant sentence of the Apostle, “Receive ye the engrafted word, which is able to save your soul.”  

This passage of Scripture reveals the principle of Divine grafting which I am illustrating. It shows that just as literally as one variety of fruit tree can be grafted into another and become one life, so the words of Scripture can be, by the Holy Spirit, engrafted into our human spirits, into our affections, choices, tastes, and thoughts. Thus our whole life becomes one with God’s Word.  

This is God’s purpose of salvation, to saturate our souls with the living Word of God, excluding from us every form and degree of unbelief and error, flooding our understandings with the brightness and beauty of Divine truth, and setting our hearts on fire with Divine love.  

The Prophet Jeremiah testified that the Word of God so filled him, it was like fire in his bones. Christ came to destroy the works of Satan, but not to destroy His own original creation of the constitution of man or of nature.  

Here is where many fail to rightly divide the Word of truth. Every sinner has a natural constitution, of body, soul, and spirit, which is to last forever. Divine grace is not grafted upon the man’s sins, or upon his sinfulness. It is grafted upon the Godgiven spiritual nature, and by the infusion of converting and sanctifying grace, the man is advanced from mere nature to grace. The great work of grace by which we are renewed and sanctified furnishes another basis in us, upon which the Lord will engraft the Kingdom and estate of glory in the first resurrection.  

You see, just as grace can be engrafted into our natural human spirits, so glory can be grafted upon grace. Nature, grace, and glory form three vast worlds or kingdoms in God’s universe, and they never can be joined the one upon the other except by an omnipotent act of the Creator, Redeemer, and Glorifier. When grace is grafted upon a soul, it takes the form and expression of that soul’s peculiar make-up and individuality. This accounts for the endless variety in Christian life, and what is a real work of grace in one person may hardly look like grace to another who is of such a different mold.  

When the soil is finely plowed, the roots of the growing grain can more easily penetrate it, and absorb its juices for a rich harvest. In like manner, the more thoroughly the heart is broken into all the will of God, the more completely the Holy Spirit can unite Himself to all the faculties and delicate threads of the soul. Hence after the soul is saved there is a great work to be wrought in dissolving, illuminating, expending and uniting it in every part with the fullness of Christ.  

4. The Incarnation. The highest example we have in all the universe of grafting Divine things upon the human and the natural is that ever adorable mystery of the Incarnation. The Apostle says: “Great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh.” St. John says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” Jesus, in His spiritual personality, is eternally generated in the bosom of the Father, and is a necessary and everlasting outspoken word of the knowledge, wisdom, and creatorship and the revelation of the Father. And to purely spiritual beings before His Incarnation He was the revelation of the Father, but to intelligent creatures living in flesh and blood He became the perfect revelation from the Father by His Incarnation and natural life.  

This Incarnation was effected by grafting the eternal, personal Word upon a human soul and human body, especially prepared for Him by the Holy Ghost from the substance and life of the holy virgin Mary, for Scripture says: “A body hast thou prepared me.”  

This Divine grafting of the Divine and human substances never to be separated in the unity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the pattern and sample of all Divine grafting in every other department, whether of nature, or grace, or providence, or revelation, or in the regions of glory. It is not only the pattern of which all other Divine grafting is a copy, but it is also the cause of all other grafting, for the Incarnation is the great cause out of which flow all the operations of grace and providence.  

Now it is wonderful how the Incarnation of Christ, or grafting the personal Word upon human nature, is repeated over again in a shadow, by having the Divine truth in the written Word grafted upon our hearts, by the same Holy Spirit which produced the Incarnation. A real saint is one into whose very heart, mind, and life, the words of God have been infused by the Holy Spirit until his soul carries the truth of Scripture in a living spiritual solution, as the ocean holds salt in solution. Thus Christ dwells in us by His Word, that our lives may be one—our loves, our dispositions, our yearnings for God’s glory, and our passion for His coming Kingdom made one—not in theory only, but in sweetness, life and power.