Union with Christ, Part 2: Theology and Application

I delivered this message at Spring Creek Bible Church on April 14, 2013, as part of the Union with Christ series.

Introduction

This is part two of our study on our union with Christ.

Last Sunday I tried to lay the biblical foundation for the doctrine of union with Christ. We looked at the (1) direct statements, (2) prepositional phrases, and (3) metaphors. We weren’t able to cover even all of the key passages, because of the sheer quantity of biblical data on this theme.

I argued that the prominence of this theme throughout the New Testament and its connection to so many other doctrines make it one of the most important doctrines of the New Testament.

It’s a theme that pervades much of the New Testament, but it is especially prominent in John and Paul. Paul’s treatment is the most extensive. That is perhaps because in his very first encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus Jesus’ first words to him were, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” Jesus identified himself with his people in an unmistakable and profound way, and this seems to have left a lasting impression on Paul and his theology of salvation and all of life.

This week we turn our attention to the theology and application of union with Christ.

As we begin our study, let’s first answer the question of what union with Christ is.

What is union with Christ?

This concept can be vague and ethereal. So a brief definition may help to frame our discussion. The Westminster Larger Catechism defines our union with Christ this way:

The union which the elect have with Christ is the work of God’s grace whereby they are spiritually and mystically, yet really and inseparably, joined to Christ as their head and husband (Question 66).

The essence of this doctrine is being connected with Christ and sharing with Him in all of the fruits of his mediatorial work.

Here are some other definitions and descriptions of union with Christ:

• Billings: “Union with Christ is theological shorthand for the gospel itself.”
• Billings: “Union with Christ is a central New Testament description of Christian identity, the life of salvation in Christ. It entails the giving of a new identity such that in Christ, forgiveness and new life are received through the Spirit.”
• Longenecker: “Being ‘in Christ’ is the essence of Christian proclamation and experience. . . . [W]ithout treating the ‘in Christ’ motif we miss the heart of the Christian message.”
• Murray: “Nothing is more central or basic than union and communion with Christ” (161).
• Murray: “Union with Christ is really the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation.” (161).

Before we get into its theology, let’s quickly identify what union with Christ isn’t.

What union with Christ isn’t.

Union with Christ is not theosis, deification, or divination. That is, in union with Christ, we don’t become God.

Both Eastern Orthodoxy and Mormonism teach different versions of theosis, deification, or divination. We don’t have time to discuss their views in detail, but it’s important to be clear what we’re not saying when we talk about union with Christ.

We are not talking about becoming part of God himself or becoming divine.

We do not lose our individuality or distinct personality in this union either. We are not assumed into God in a way that we cease to exist as distinct individuals.

Todd Billings puts it this way: “[U]nion with God is a differentiated union, one that does not annihilate the clear distinction between Creator and creature. . . . [B]eing united with God does not make believers ‘consubstantial with God,’ as if they were a fourth member of the Godhead.”

Now that we have a general understanding of what union with Christ is and isn’t, let’s look at the main theological themes surrounding this doctrine in the New Testament.

Part 1: Theology

We could spend a significant amount of time covering this deep and broad theological topic. But since our time is short, I’d like to briefly look at five propositions about union with Christ.

1. Union with Christ encompasses the entirety of salvation.
2. Union with Christ keeps us theologically balanced.
3. Union with Christ is the foundation for Christian unity.
4. Union with Christ is made visible in baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
5. Union with Christ is God’s primary way of glorifying himself.

1. Union with Christ encompasses the entirety of salvation.

That’s another way of saying that union with Christ is more than an event in the ordo salutis.

Here’s what John Murray says, “[U]nion with Christ is in itself 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. Indeed the whole process of salvation has its origin in one phase of union with Christ and salvation has in view the realization of other phases or union with Christ” (161).

Later he says, “All to which the people of God have been predestined in the eternal election of God, all that has been secured and procured for them in the once-for-all accomplishment of redemption, all of which they become the actual partakers in the application of redemption, and all that by God’s grace they will become in the state of consummated bliss is embraced within the compass of union and communion with Christ” (170).

Union with Christ is the best way to summarize all of salvation.

Many theologians argue—and I tend to agree based on the NT data—that union with Christ is the overarching saving blessing of God.

• Joel Beeke in his new Puritan Theology says, “[U]nion with Christ, not justification by faith, is the chief blessing a Christian receives from God. The believer’s union with Christ enables him to receive all the benefits of Christ’s work, including justification, adoption, and sanctification. To have Christ is to have all” (483).
• John Calvin assigned “the highest rank” to union with Christ.
• John Owen called it the “principle and measure of all spiritual enjoyments and expectations” and “the cause of all other graces that we are made partakers of.” “[O]ur adoption, our justification, our sanctification, our fruitfulness, our perseverance, our resurrection, [and] our glory” “are all communicated unto us by virtue of our union with Christ.”
• Thomas Goodwin called it “the fundamental constitution of a Christian” and the “first fundamental thing of justification, and sanctification and all.”
• John Preston called it “the ground of all salvation.”

So in dealing with union with Christ, we’re dealing with something far more embracive than single any aspect of salvation in the ordo salutis.

There are four separate aspects or phases of our union with Christ:

1. Union with Christ in the planning of salvation, that is, before the foundation of the world.
2. Union with Christ in the accomplishing of salvation, that is, in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
3. Union with Christ in the application of salvation, that is, in our being saved.
4. Union with Christ in the consummation of salvation, that is, in our glorification.

Let’s look now at the four phases or aspects of union with Christ.

1. Planning of Salvation

As far back as Scripture traces salvation, we find the doctrine union with Christ. This union was as good as reality in the mind and purpose of God before the creation of the world. Union with Christ was not an afterthought. It is the essence of the gospel from all eternity.

• Ephesians 1:4: . . . he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. . . .
• 2 Timothy 1:9: [God] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,

2. Accomplishing of Salvation

The NT repeated views believers as having participated in some sense in the mediatorial work of Christ. As Grudem says, “whatever Christ did as our representative, God counted it as being something we did, too.”

We participate in the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.

• Romans 6:6: We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
• Romans 6:8: Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
• 2 Timothy 2:11: . . . If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
• 2 Corinthians 5:14: For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;
• Colossians 2:12: having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
• Ephesians 2:6: And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,

This begs the question: in what sense were we in Christ in these events? The answer is found in Romans 5. We were in Christ in a representative sense, the same sense in which we were in Adam.

There’s a danger we need to avoid at this point. Our participation in these events in Christ was not meritorious. We aren’t saved because our dying with Christ had some atoning value. Rather, we’re saved because we share in the meritorious death of Jesus. It’s benefits become ours by virtue of our gracious union.

As an aside, this also reinforces why we believe the death of Jesus is inherently effective for those for whom he died. You cannot view the atonement apart from those in union with him in his death.

3. Application of Salvation

Our entering into the experience of union with Christ does take place at a moment in time.

As Murray says, “We do not become actual partakers of Christ until redemption is effectually applied.”

Ephesians teaches that before being saved, we were “without Christ” (2:12) and “children of wrath” (2:3). So clearly we were not yet living in union with Christ.

So where does union fit in the ordo? This particular aspect of union with Christ happens in tandem with effectual calling and is followed by regeneration, conversion, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, glorification, etc.

Murray, pointing to 1 Cor 1:9, says, “It is by the effectual call of God the Father that men are made partakers of Christ and enter into the enjoyment of the blessings of redemption.”

The main point is that in the ordo salutis God calls us into the experience of the union with Christ that he planned in eternity and accomplished at the cross, and that all other aspects of salvation and spiritual blessings flow out of this union.

4. Consummation of Salvation

The union with Christ that had its origin in eternity past will continue into eternity future. There never comes a time when our union with Christ ends. From beginning to end, salvation is about union with Christ.

Our future resurrection and glorification is tied to our union with Christ.

• 1 Corinthians 15:22–23: For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
• Romans 8:17: and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
• 1 Thessalonians 4:17: Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

Whether Christ calls us home in death or in his coming, our union with him will be fully realized when our spirits and bodies are glorified to be like his. Our spiritual union with him will find its culmination in a proximate union with him. We will “always be with the Lord.”

From eternity past, to the cross, to the present, into eternity future, God always thinks of us in union with Christ. What a great foundation for confidence assurance.

2. Union with Christ keeps us theologically balanced.

It keeps us theologically balanced in our theology of God and our theology of salvation.

1. Theology of God

There are two chief dangers in our theology of God. We’ll either make him too transcendent, that is, too far of and distant, like deism, or we’ll make him too immanent, that is, too near and like us, like pantheism.

While union with Christ tends to emphasize God’s immanence, it doesn’t do so at the expense of God’s transcendence. In fact, it is union with Christ properly understood in light of God’s accommodating himself to us in Christ that gives God’s transcendence and immanence equal weight and holds them in harmony.

Billings: “Divine transcendence and immanence do not point in opposite directions; they are not principles to be ‘balanced’ by a golden mean. Rather, in the matrix of accommodation, emphasizing transcendence makes God’s closeness and intimacy with us possible, because it is none other than the Holy One of Israel who has accommodated himself to us in Jesus Christ.”

2. Theology of Salvation

Believers of different persuasions tend to emphasize certain doctrines at the expense of other doctrines. Some emphasize faith at the expense of works. Others emphasize works at the expense of faith. Some emphasize justification at the expense of sanctification. Other emphasize sanctification at the expense of justification.

The doctrine of union with Christ provides a way to hold both sides of these competing truths together in harmony. In Christ, we are given the “double grace” of justification and sanctification. We are reckoned righteous because of Christ’s righteousness, but we are all made righteous by being vitally connected to our righteous head.

Billings puts it this way, “As Calvin makes clear, in union with Christ we receive two distinct yet inseparable gifts: justification, in which we are declared righteous before God as ones who are clothed with Jesus Christ, and sanctification, the gift of a new life, a new creation, which manifests itself in Spirit-empowered gratitude.”

• 2 Corinthians 5:21: For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
• 1 Corinthians 1:2: To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:
• 1 Corinthians 1:30: And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,

By emphasizing union with Christ, we are able to maintain a biblical balance and not get pulled off in the direction of legalism or antinomianism.

3. Union with Christ is the foundation for Christian unity.

In our Western culture, we tend to emphasize the individual, personal aspects of salvation. And while they are true—each person must stand before God alone and give an account—we often tend to minimize the corporate aspects of salvation.

But union with Christ is both individual and corporate.

As Billings points out, “[I]n union with Christ, we are united not only to Jesus Christ but to his body.”

Union with Christ has vertical and horizontal dimensions.

Calvin put it this way: “It is necessary for us to be incorporated, as it were, into Christ in order to be united to each other.”

This is all throughout the New Testament:

• John 17:11, 20–23: And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. . . . “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
• Romans 12:4–5: For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
• 1 Corinthians 12:13: For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
• Galatians 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
• Ephesians 2:14–18: For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
• Philippians 2:1–5: So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,

You cannot take union with Christ seriously without taking union with other believers seriously. Conversely, you won’t be able to fully live in unity with the body of Christ until you see how it is rooted in the doctrine of union with Christ.

4. Union with Christ is made visible in baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

The two visible symbols of the church, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, are all about union with Christ.

1. Baptism into Christ and His Death

When we baptize believers, we talk about their identifying with Christ. They are no longer their own. They are physically symbolizing their sharing with Christ in his death and resurrection.

• Romans 6:3: Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
• Romans 6:4: Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
• 1 Corinthians 12:13: For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
• Colossians 2:12: having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

2. Sharing in Christ’s Death in Communion

Every time we gather to eat the bread and drink the cup, we are commemorating both the vertical and horizontal aspects of union with Christ.

1. Vertically, the Lord’s Supper is itself a visible picture of our union with Christ as we feed on him for the nourishment of our souls. We proclaim the Lord’s death, which we share in by virtue of our union with him, until he comes.
2. Horizontally, we gather as the unified body of Christ and share together in his death which unites us as one.

So union with Christ is at the heart of what it means to live as the church and practice its ordinances.

5. Union with Christ is God’s primary way of glorifying himself.

Christ as head of his body, the church, is at the center of God’s plan to glorify himself.

• Ephesians 3:20–21: Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
• Philippians 4:19–20: And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.

God is receiving glory for this now and will continue to receive glory for it for all eternity.

• Ephesians 3:10: so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
• Ephesians 2:7: so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

God is putting on display for the heavenly beings the glory of his wisdom and will forever put on display the glory of his grace—both of which are wrapped up in union with Christ.

Our highest calling in this life is to bring glory to God, and we can’t do that to its fullest without a proper understanding of how God’s glory displays itself in our union with Christ.

Part 2: Application

I’d like to now turn to the application of this great doctrine to our daily life. The Bible doesn’t contain doctrinal teaching for its own sake. There’s almost always an ethical goal. God desires that we live a certain way in response to his truth.

The NT authors consistently base their exhortations on the doctrine of union with Christ.

Union with Christ has powerful implications for us in four broad categories:

1. Our daily Christian walk
2. Our relationship with God
3. Our relationship with other believers
4. Our relationship with those who are outside the body of Christ

1. Union with Christ and Christian walk

John Murray, “There is no truth, therefore, more suited to impart confidence and strength, comfort and joy in the Lord than this one of union with Christ. It also promotes sanctification, not only because all sanctifying grace is derived from Christ as the crucified and exalted Redeemer, but also because the recognition of fellowship with Christ and of the high privilege it entails incites to gratitude, obedience, and devotion” (171).

1. We have everything we need in Christ.

You don’t need to look to anyone or anything else. Life in union with Christ is a full life with no lack of any good thing.

We are complete in him.

• Ephesians 1:3: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
• 2 Corinthians 1:19–22: For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
• Philippians 4:19: And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
• Colossians 2:3: in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
• Colossians 2:10: and you have been made complete/filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

Scripture lists many specific things that we have by virtue of our union with Christ. Here are just a few:

1. We have satisfaction and joy in him.
2. We have peace in him.
3. We have victory in him.
4. We have comfort in Christ.
5. We have motivation in him.
6. We have confidence in him.
7. We have eternal life in Christ.
8. We have security and hope in Christ.

And much more. There are numerous passages for each one of these truths.

2. We have power over sin and unto righteousness in Christ.

There is nothing more empowering in our battle against sin than union with Christ.

In Christ, the vine, we tap into the limited supply of his grace.

• 2 Timothy 2:1: You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus,
• Philippians 4:13: I am able with reference to all things in the one who strengthens me.

Being united to Christ guarantees our victory over sin.

• 1 Corinthians 15:57: But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
• 2 Corinthians 2:14: But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.

Union with Christ helps us fight sin in two main ways:

1. Our participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus has broken the power of sin in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. We don’t have to sin.
2. Just as we participate with Christ, he participates with us. We take Christ with us where we go and join him to what we do. Would you bring Christ with you to do evil?

Participation in Christ’s death and resurrection

Romans 6 is one of the most important passages in the New Testament on sanctification, and Paul roots his exhortations squarely in our union with Christ in his death and resurrection.

• Romans 6:1–14: What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Union with Christ makes sin unthinkable.

It is unfathomable that we who are united to Christ could participate in evil.

• 1 Corinthians 6:13–20: . . . The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
• Romans 13:13–14: Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

2. Union with Christ and Our Relationship with God

1. Communion with God

Because we are in Christ, we can have open communion with God. We can come right into the very presence of God because we are clothed in Christ, united to him.

Here’s how Ephesians 3:12 puts it: “[I]in [Christ] we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.” In Ephesians 2:18, Paul says, “For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”

2. Gratitude to God

Being united to Christ should make us the most grateful of all people.

• Paul says that as ones in Christ we should give thanks in everything (1 Th 5:18) and be “overflowing with gratitude” (Col 2:7).
• Every spiritual blessing that God has blessed us with is our because we are in Christ (Eph 1:3). We were dead, but were made alive in Christ (Eph 2:5).
• We were made the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor 5:21). We have already been raised up and seated with Christ in heaven, where God will one day “show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6–7).

In Christ, we are the objects of God’s love.

• Romans 8:37–39: No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Because we are in Christ, we are recipients of the same love that God has for his own Son. If that doesn’t overwhelm you, I don’t know what will.

Even a few seconds of mediation on all we have in Christ will quickly flood our hearts with gratitude.

3. Humility before God

• 1 Corinthians 1:30–31: And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
• Philippians 3:9: and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—

Our union with Christ is God’s doing, not ours. And we’re united to the merits of another. We bring nothing commendable to the union. Christ alone is the giver, and we are the receivers.

3. Union with Christ and Our Relationship with Other Believers

1. We should live in unity with other believers because we are all united to Christ.

Under the theology section, we saw how often Scripture roots its calls to unity to our union in the one body of Christ. When we get union with Christ right and fully understand that we are all united to Christ together—and to each other—we are provided with a powerful picture of how we ought to live in harmony.

2. We should treat other believers as people united to Christ.

Calvin says, Just as “no part of our body is touched by any feeling of pain which is not spread among all the rest, so we ought not to allow a brother to be affected by any evil, without being touched with compassion for him.”

Union with Christ explains why love for God and love for fellow Christians cannot be separated. It’s why people who say things like, “I love Jesus but not the church” are speaking nonsense. It’s all or nothing.

There are two main passages that powerfully convey this truth.

• Acts 9:3–5: Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. (cf. Acts 26:12–18)

In Jesus first introduction to Saul, he made his vital union with his people unmistakably clear. When you mistreat Jesus’ people, you mistreat Jesus himself.

We learn this same truth from Matthew 25, when Jesus separates the sheep from the goats.

• Matthew 25:31–46: “. . . I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we . . . ?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ . . . For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we . . . ?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

What a powerful motivation this is as we ponder how we treat our brothers and sisters in Christ. Doesn’t that expression have new meaning now? We are brother and sisters in Christ. When you are tempted to mistreat your husband, your wife, your mom, your dad, your son, your daughter, your brother, your sister, your friend, hear the words of Jesus: “Why are you persecuting me?”

Jesus takes personally and seriously any mistreatment of his body.

On the flip side, Jesus’ union with Christ is such that acts of service and kindness to others are done unto Christ (Col 3:23; Eph 5:22).

Union with Christ, properly understood, should transform how we treat each other.

4. Union with Christ and Our Relationship with the World

Union with Christ has application to more than just how we treat other believers who are united to Christ. It is also powerfully applicable to how we interact with the world without Christ.

Here are four ways union with Christ helps us in relation to the world:

1. Union with Christ and its double grace of justification and sanctification empowers us to be obedient to the commands to love our neighbors.
2. Union with Christ is participation in Christ’s own work of bringing in his sheep who are outside the fold.
3. Union with Christ reminds us that our witness to the world is most compelling as it comes from one body in union with Christ.
4. Union with Christ reminds us that there are others who have been chosen in Christ, died with Christ, and are waiting to hear the gospel to come into the experience of union with Christ (2 Tim 2:10, where Paul says he endures all things for the elect, so they can obtain salvation in Christ).

Billings articulates it this way: “The good news of union with Christ is that Christians do not have the burden of being redeemers; instead, they belong to the Redeemer and bear witness to the living Christ. A theology of union with Christ provides strong grounds for a relational, culture-crossing ministry that is always pointing beyond itself to Jesus Christ—the sole Redeemer, the unique incarnate Word.”

In union with Christ, there is profound application for (1) our own daily walk, (2) our relationship with God, (3) our relationship with other believers, and (4) our relationship with the world.

Let us spend time meditating on the transforming power of union with Christ.

Conclusion

Union with Christ is deeply theological, yet incredibly practical. It takes us to the heart of the gospel. Let us join together—as one in Christ—with a renewed commitment to study, understand, and apply this crucial doctrine of our union with Christ.