This is a lightly edited transcript of what I actually said when I delivered this message at Spring Creek Bible Church on April 7, 2013, as Part 1 of the Union with Christ series. It differs from what I planned to say; for the prepared text, see the manuscript. (In the live session, nineteen volunteers read more than two hundred verses aloud; here those readings are represented by their references and the key phrases, so the message reads as continuous prose.)
I have the privilege tonight and next Sunday of speaking on the believer’s union with Christ, and I’m very grateful to Pastor Steve for the opportunity. This is one of my favorite topics in all of Scripture. I still remember the first time I heard it really unfolded and expounded—it wasn’t something I’d heard much growing up in church, and it had never really sunk in. So it hit me powerfully when I saw it shown to me all throughout Scripture, and it’s been a favorite theme of mine ever since. One reason I love it is that it gets right at the heart of the gospel—a message all about Jesus Christ and what he has done for sinners. I also love that it’s thoroughly biblical (it’s all through the Bible, especially the New Testament) and deeply theological (it’s tied to so many doctrines), and yet immensely practical. This doctrine touches so many areas of our lives. It isn’t just a theory to tuck away in our brains; it’s something we can come back to every day as we walk the Christian life.
I’ve divided the study into two parts. Tonight we’ll primarily lay the biblical foundation, and I’m going to do something a little unusual: we’re going to read a lot of Scripture together—that’s why I’ve asked some of you to help by reading passages. I want to leave us with a sense of how important and how pervasive this theme is throughout the New Testament. Many of you may be able to think of a handful of passages on union with Christ, but tonight we’ll read over two hundred verses—and that’s not even all of them. Next week we’ll take all that biblical data, synthesize it into some propositions we can organize and understand, and explore what impact it should have on our daily living.
Before we start, let me recommend a few resources. John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied treats each component of the ordo salutis and has one of the most helpful chapters on union with Christ I’ve read—brief, worth the price of the book. Michael Barrett’s Complete in Him: A Guide to Understanding and Enjoying the Gospel also has an excellent, practical chapter. A nice, concise summary is Robert Letham’s Union with Christ. For working out what the doctrine means for the life of a congregation, J. Todd Billings’s Union with Christ: Reframing Theology and Ministry for the Church is very good. And the best technical study is Constantine Campbell’s Paul and Union with Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study—nearly five hundred pages, not for the faint of heart, but excellent. I’m glad to see many more books on this doctrine appearing in recent years. If you’d like additional recommendations, talk to me afterward or send me an email.
My primary goal tonight is simply to impress on you the importance of this doctrine. I’m hoping many of you are like me—you’ve heard the phrase “union with Christ,” didn’t really know what it meant, and it hasn’t had much impact on your life. My hope is that tonight begins the process of making this a sweet and important doctrine you turn to again and again.
What Others Have Said
I’d mainly like to let Scripture speak for itself tonight, but let me begin with a few who have studied this doctrine deeply—and, as it happens, they all share the first name John. First, John Calvin, the sixteenth-century Reformer:
To the mystical union we assign the highest rank—Christ, when he becomes ours, making us partakers with him in the gifts with which he was endowed. Hence we do not view him at a distance and outside ourselves, but as we have put him on and been engrafted into his body; he deigns to make us one with himself, and therefore we glory in having a fellowship of righteousness with him.
Calvin ranks this doctrine at the highest level, and he makes the point that we don’t view Christ from a distance, as one who imputes his righteousness to us from far off; rather, we share in his righteousness because we are united to him. He comes near, and we become one with him. John Owen, in the seventeenth century, said:
Union with Christ is the cause of all the other graces that we are made partakers of. They are all communicated unto us by virtue of our union with Christ. Hence is our adoption, our justification, our sanctification, our fruitfulness, our perseverance, our resurrection, and our glory.
For Owen, union with Christ is the core out of which all these other graces flow. And John Murray, the twentieth-century Presbyterian who taught at Princeton and Westminster, wrote:
Nothing is more central or basic than union and communion with Christ….Union with Christ is a very broad and embracive subject. It is not simply a step in the application of redemption….It underlies every step of the application of redemption. Union with Christ is really the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation, not only in its application but also in its once-for-all accomplishment in the finished work of Christ….There is no truth more suited to impart confidence and strength, comfort and joy in the Lord than this one of union with Christ.
Murray sees union with Christ running through the entire sweep of salvation—from God’s choosing us in Christ in eternity past, to Christ’s finished work, to our conversion, to our final glorification. And, he argues, once you understand it, you see how practical it becomes for devotion, worship, and service.
What Is Union with Christ?
A natural first question is: what is union with Christ? If you look up the exact phrase in a concordance or Bible software, you won’t actually find “union with Christ” in the Bible. In that way it’s a bit like the doctrine of the Trinity—you won’t find the word “Trinity” either, yet the theme is everywhere. The closest we come to the exact words is Romans 6:5, which speaks of our being united with Christ in his death and therefore also in his resurrection.
So what does it mean to be united to Christ? We’ll say more next week, but at a basic level it means a close, intimate relationship and connection with Christ. That’s vague, I know, but as we get into the passages—especially the analogies—it will grow clearer. Union with Christ emphasizes God’s immanence: God has drawn near to us. He is transcendent, far above all creation, and yet he condescends—he comes near to us in Jesus and brings us near to him, into a close relationship of intimacy and fellowship.
Four Kinds of Biblical Evidence
As we read tonight, we’ll see four kinds of data. First, a handful of direct statements, like Romans 6:5, that say we are united to Christ—that we are joined to Christ and are one with Christ. Second, some closely related theological themes: the indwelling (we usually speak of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, but many passages also speak of Christ dwelling in us and the Father dwelling in us—a Trinitarian indwelling), and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, since we are baptized into Christ. Third, and most abundant, a set of prepositional phrases. The primary one is “in Christ”—or “in Jesus Christ,” “in the Lord,” “in him,” “in whom”—which appears over and over in the New Testament. The next most important is “with Christ.” Two related ones are “into Christ” and “through Christ.”
Fourth, a number of analogies the Bible uses to picture the truth. Analogies are one of the best ways to grasp something complex or unfamiliar: they take something you know and say, “the thing I’m describing is like this.” We’ll see that the relationship among the persons of the Trinity is, at some level, an analogy of our relationship to God in Christ. The body analogy is common—Christ the head, we the body, united (a head doesn’t walk around apart from its body). The building analogy appears in Ephesians 2 and 1 Peter 2. John 15 gives the vine and the branches—a living plant with life in it; cut off from the vine, you’re cut off from life. The human race is an analogy: as Adam was united to all humanity, so Christ is united to all who are in him. Marriage is an analogy—husband and wife become one flesh. And there are others: members of the same family or household, and eating and drinking in John 6 (you take food in, and it becomes part of you). Those capture the core analogies we’ll see tonight.
Now let’s turn to the Scriptures, where I want to spend the bulk of our time. This could feel tedious, but I hope it won’t—listen for those key phrases, the “in Christ,” “in him,” “in whom,” “with him,” and let their force sink in. We’ll move quickly, a passage at a time, with brief comments. (Don’t worry about writing them all down; I’m happy to send the complete list by email.)
Walking Through the Scriptures
Matthew. We’ll start with a single verse, Matthew 26:31: “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” Here Jesus is the shepherd and his disciples the sheep, and what is done to the shepherd affects the sheep. It’s not the strongest analogy, but it’s worth noting the close relationship between Jesus and his people.
John 6. Jesus repeatedly identifies himself as the bread of life: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever” (vv. 35, 48, 51). He commands people to eat him—and you can hear the crowd’s reaction: “This is a hard saying.” But the point is the closeness of the relationship. You’re not far off from Jesus; you take him in. That pictures the intimacy of believing in him, coming to him, and having your soul satisfied in him.
John 14:19–20. “Because I live, you also will live”—what happens to Jesus happens to us, because of this close relationship. And then: “You will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” So union with Christ is more than union with the second person of the Trinity; there is union with all three persons. Jesus doesn’t stop to explain what it means for us to be in him and him in us, but we’ll see more of it in Paul.
John 15. The vine and the branches: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me….Apart from me you can do nothing.” Fruitfulness comes only through connection to the vine; cut off from him, we wither.
John 17:21–23. “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you….I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one.”
Acts 9:4–5. On the Damascus road, the Lord says, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Saul answers, “Who are you, Lord?” and Jesus replies, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Stop and think about that. Saul had done nothing to Christ directly—he didn’t even know him—yet Jesus says, “why are you persecuting me?” To hurt Christ’s people is to persecute Christ. That’s a powerful indication of his union with his people.
Romans. Redemption is “in Christ Jesus” (3:24). We have justification, peace, access, reconciliation, and grace reigning “through our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:1–2, 9, 11, 21). Romans 6 is a key passage on how union unfolds our sanctification: we were “baptized into Christ Jesus” and “into his death,” “buried with him,” “united with him” in his death and resurrection, our old self “crucified with him” (vv. 3–6); “if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (v. 8); we are to consider ourselves “dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (v. 11); and “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 23). We died with Christ and will live with him; if we want life, we must be united to Christ, where life resides.
Romans 8 continues: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (v. 1). Michael Barrett calls union with Christ the security of the gospel, and you can see why—there’s the idea of being sheltered, protected, inside of Christ. Verses 9–10 speak of the Spirit of God dwelling in you, then call him the Spirit of Christ, then say “Christ is in you”—again, the Trinitarian fullness of the doctrine: Christ dwells in us by his Spirit. Nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 39). And “we, though many, are one body in Christ” (12:5)—the body analogy, one in Christ our head.
1–2 Corinthians. “You are in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption….Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Cor. 1:30–31). “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (15:22), with victory “through our Lord Jesus Christ” and our labor “in the Lord” never in vain (15:57–58). And all of God’s promises “find their Yes in him”; it is God who “establishes us with you in Christ” (2 Cor. 1:19–21).
Galatians 2:20. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” We weren’t there in person and weren’t physically crucified, yet in some real sense, when Jesus was crucified, we were united to him in it—even before we existed—and now the new life we live is the life of Christ living in us.
Ephesians. There’s no better place to end than Ephesians 1–2. Listen for “in Christ,” “in him,” “in whom”: God “has blessed us…with every spiritual blessing…in Christ,” having “chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him”; “in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses”; and “in him…you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” (1:3–13). Then chapter 2: “even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ…and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (2:5–6). In some sense we are already seated with Christ—a truth you can meditate on for a long while. Though we are here in the flesh, there is a real sense in which we are with Jesus at the Father’s right hand. If that doesn’t speak of security, I don’t know what does. And “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works” (2:10).
Ephesians goes on and on—Paul just packs the theme in. In fact, if you look carefully, English translations sometimes don’t know what to do with all the “in hims” and “in whoms,” and they’ll occasionally combine a few because it makes for awkward English. I understand wanting a readable Bible, but when you read it in the Greek you feel the fuller force of just how strongly Paul emphasizes this theme.
We don’t have time to look at the occurrences in Philippians and Colossians, in 1–2 Thessalonians, 1–2 Timothy and Titus, or in 1 John—so we’ve only scratched the surface. I hope tonight you’ve seen that this theme is far more prevalent than you ever knew, and that your eyes are now turned to look for it in your own Bible reading. If you mark up your Bible, get a pencil or a highlighter and start tracing this theme—Ephesians is a great place to start. It will begin to overwhelm you with all that you have: every spiritual blessing is yours in Jesus Christ.
So I’d encourage you to keep reading and studying these passages for yourself, and to pray that God would open this theme to your own eyes for your edification and growth. I think you’ll find that it feeds your soul, leads you to worship and gratitude, and gives you powerful incentive to walk in obedience to the Lord.
Let’s close in prayer. Father, we thank you that we can come to you in Jesus Christ. We thank you that you chose us in him before the foundation of the world and united us to him—that when he died, in some sense we died with him, and when he was raised, we were raised with him. All that you have done in Christ for us, you have done with us, united to him, sharing in all he has done. Thank you for the rich truth of this doctrine—how you have come near to us, reached down and brought us near to you; you dwell in us, and we dwell in you. How then could we go on in sin, being one with Jesus Christ? Help us to understand more and more of this powerful truth as we prepare to look at it further next week. Grow our devotion to you, our love for you, and our grasp of the fullness of the gospel, and continue to transform us—because we are united to Jesus Christ. In his name we pray, amen.