“Union with Christ may be the most important doctrine you have never heard of.  Union with Christ is central to our transformation which means that it is essential for our salvation.  The Christian life is not a self-improvement project, and not about making the old self better, but rather it is about the new self as the old self is put to death.  In Christ, we are a new creation, and this new identity bring with it a new self awareness and a new mindset.”

Click here for The Love of God, part 1

The topic of Union with Christ goes wide and deep, and is not only central to our salvation, but it is the whole of the Christian life.  Union with Christ has been an important doctrine across most of church history, expressed by the Apostles in the New Testament, affirmed by the early church fathers, affirmed during the dark ages, embraced whole heartedly by the Reformers, taught strongly by the Puritans, and did make its way into American Christianity through the historic denominations such as Anglican, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Eastern Orthodox and others. However, as I have spent most of my adult life in non-denominational Evangelical churches, I have seen that church history is largely missing from the teachings and the doctrine of Union with Christ was not a topic that was ever preached.  Rather than explore all the reasons why this critical doctrine has been ignored, for now I will focus on the importance of the doctrine for every believer.

Anyone who has spent any time with me the last few years knows that I strongly believe that three characteristics of  spiritual maturity are: 1) a tolerance for mystery, 2) recapturing a sense of wonder, and 3) childlike trust.  All three of these characteristics of faith require an active imagination.  Many things make us uniquely human, but one of the best, and most loving things that God gave us was the ability to imagine.  It has been disappointing to see the Cartesian influence in western bible translation, which has removed the word imagination in translating and have most commonly replaced it with thinking.  Ephesians 3:20 best translated states that God is able to do abundantly more than we could ask or imagine.  In this verse we see that our faith must carry us to places in our imagination beyond what we can understand, because our God as revealed in the Bible is too big to be confined to human understanding.  In our Union with Christ, we embrace the mystery of what it means to have Christ live in us by the power of the Holy Spirit; we ignite our sense of wonder and mystery in spiritual realities such as being seated with Him in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6) and also being crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me (Galatians 2:20).  These practices in our communion with God grow our faith to be more child-like in that we are moved towards complete vulnerability and trust in God, like a child in the arms of a parent!  Jesus asked Nicodemus, “if I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe when I tell you heavenly things?” (John 3:12).  Just as Paul tells us to test ourselves to see if we are in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5), it would seem to be wise for us to consider this question as well.

What is Union with Christ?

Union refers to Union with Christ, the spiritual reality of the presence of Christ in us when we were born again.  Union with Christ is one of the most important lessons we can understand as we seek to grow up in Christ to spiritual maturity.  The first item of importance is that our union with Christ is only made possible by His atoning sacrifice on the cross for our eternal salvation (Romans 6:10; 1 Peter 3:18; Hebrews 7:24-25, 9:11-12, 10:10).  We were dead, but God made us alive (Ephesians 2:5).  By God’s sovereign election we are called into union with Christ and sealed in the family of God (John 1:12-13; Romans 8:15-17; Ephesians 1:3-14), which not only what makes a relationship with God possible, but it is also to govern our communion with God.  That is to say that our justification before God, through faith in the finished work of Christ is a truth upon which our experience of God is to rest during our time of growing in holiness, or the process of Christ being formed in us (Romans 8:29; Galatians 4:19).  This foundational truth will give us good footing to stand firm by faith in times when our experience of God is not as warm and fuzzy as it may have been at other times.  During our faith journey, we will have times of feasting and times of fasting, and it will be during fasting, those times of desolation (Psalm 63:1) that we need to dig our heels in to stand firm.  When Paul gives us the armor of God, he tells us to shod our feet with the gospel of peace (Ephesians 6:15).  In the time of Christ, Roman soldiers put nails in their boots so that they could not lose balance in combat.  In Ephesians 6, as Paul is speaking of spiritual warfare (v. 11-12), he instructs us to stand firm by the gospel of peace, because we now have peace with God (Romans 5:6-10) by Christ who made peace by the blood of His cross (Colossians 1:20).  Therefore, by grace through faith, our union with Christ is established (Ephesians 2:4-10; Galatians 2:20).

Growing up in Christ

For the believer, Union with Christ is foundational to Communion with God because it is that Union by which we have access for Communion.  Our faith and our feelings will not always align, so in times of feeling distant from God, we can have assurance of our connection by the finished work of Christ.  Life is best when they align, but while feelings will change, our faith will be anchored in Christ to grow steadily in the same direction over many years.  In our relationship with God, we enter in by faith and begin down the path to grow-up spiritually.  While we may not always feel that God is near, we can walk by faith by trusting in His promises in the Bible.  So that means that we need to know scripture by getting our daily bread.  We not only learn scripture, but we are to internalize it through prayer and meditation.  Scripture is layers deep and as we grow-up spiritually, we will see passages we have had memorized for years, and suddenly it speaks to you in a whole new way.  This is what we call the doctrine of illumination, because the Holy Spirit speaks to our hearts through the Bible, illuminating scripture for each part of our journey.  This is analogous to having milk as a baby, but eventually moving on to solid food.  Over time you acquire a taste for foods you did not care for when you were younger, but you suddenly find yourself eating sushi and vegetables voluntarily.  As a new believer, I would eat up the New Testament and only looked at the Old Testament for Bible in Year plans or if I had a class.  Today, I love the Old Testament and often jump back and forth with the New Testament doing my own cross referencing.  I am also seeing scripture in deeper layers, so it is not uncommon for me to camp out in a passage for a few weeks and letting it speak to me, something I was not equipped to do earlier in my faith journey.  By knowing scripture, we get to know our God, His attributes, His promises, His lovingkindness, and His incredible patience and forgiveness.  Then, when darkness falls on our life, we can say like the Psalmist, that the prayer of our life should be the experience of God’s love by day, and to remember His song in the night (Psalm 42:8).  We can have assurance that because God is good, God is sovereign, God has good plans for us, and God is all-powerful, then we can have confidence that whatever disruption has fallen on our life is not without purpose, and God calls us to trust Him whole heartedly to see us through the darkness.  Knowing the attributes of God will help us navigate any situation.  When we know who our God is, then we can look at our circumstances and stand firm in the storm.  The faith journey will never be as we imagined despite our best efforts to plan, adapt and have contingency plans.  Why?  Because a central part of growing up in Christ is to have our will aligned with His will.  In scripture we have His revealed will, but it is only when we learn to walk according to His revealed will that we uncover His unrevealed will for our lives.  Growing up takes time, largely because in our spiritual youthfulness, we have a vision for what we want in our lives with little understanding of what we need.  The result is that God, in His lovingkindness, will provide what we need and often it is not what we imagined.

People Change, God doesn’t!

One of the most important attributes of God from a human perspective, is that God does not change.  That is to say that God is immutable, which is a great value to know because we are not immutable, in fact we are in constant change from the moment of conception.  Since we are constantly changing, we can have confidence by our Union with Christ, that whatever we are experiencing in our Communion with God is secure in being anchored to the Unchangeable.  This is incredible important for our faith because it allows us to have a confidence that God remains exactly as He has revealed Himself.  This is a unique fact of Christianity, to have a God who is immutable, sovereign, good, and loving, is also a proof of the truth of Christianity.  Every other religion is declared false by many things, but a common trait of them all is that they have a view of god that is very human in character.  In Christianity, we have God becoming man to demonstrate true humanity and what it was supposed to be.  By the doctrine of Recapitulation, Jesus is the True Human living out the life that Adam failed to execute.  Whether it is the god of Islam who is both good and evil, the gods of Mormonism that are constantly evolving, the impersonal gods of eastern religions who change as creation changes, or the impotent gods of the numerous non-Christian cults, they all fall short of the Biblical attributes of God expressed in scripture and lived by Jesus when He walked among us.

¹⁵ For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷ and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. – Romans 8:15-17 

In thinking about our Union in Christ and our Communion with God, it is important to recognize a significant spiritual reality.  That reality is that the love of God is the sustaining power in our Union with Christ, and it is that sustaining power that secures us when we do not feel connected to God.  This is critical to understand because I have spoken with many people over the years who wonder if their faith is genuine, if they lost their salvation, if God is mad at them, if God is disappointed in them, if that last sin was the final straw and God is no longer interested in redeeming you.  All of these feelings are true in the sense that they are actually felt and believed by the Christian, but also none of them are true or even possible because our Union with Christ is His guarantee (Romans 8:31-39), even if we are faithless, He remains faithful because He cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:13). 

In Him ¹¹ also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, ¹² to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. ¹³ In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, ¹⁴ who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory. – Ephesians 1:11-14

Prayer: Eternal God, heavenly Father, you have graciously accepted us as living members of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, and you have fed us with spiritual food in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.  Send us now into the world in peace and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart, through Christ our Lord. Amen!