Mystical Me: The Indivisible Oneness of Christ and His Church

The story of Paul's dramatic conversion is a story that the Apostle Paul never completely told. While the original encounter is recorded in Acts chapter 9, Paul came back to this story on several occasions including two other times in the book of Acts and four times in the Epistles. When Jesus encountered Saul, His opening statement to him was; "Saul, Saul why persecutes thou me." What makes the 'me' in Jesus' statement a mystery is that the preposition 'me' is a singular pronoun referring to one person, yet Jesus was not referring to Himself alone but also to a body of believers who forms part of this 'Me'. The content of Saul's encounter captures two key mysteries of the New Testament: The Mystery of Christ - as He relates to the body of Christ and the Mystery of the Church. Both are uniquely New Testament context revelations which has no reference points or shadows in the Old Testament. Years later in his writings to the church, Paul joined these two mysteries together and called it "A Great Mystery" in Ephesians 5:32.