Union with Christ: A Forgotten Truth
07 Oct 2022
Experiencing the reality of the doctrine
A close friend confided in me recently that he had come into an exciting fresh spiritual experience, bringing him into closer intimacy with God. He said he felt a deeply wonderful unity of spirit with Christ – unparalleled in all his 30 years as a believer - but was nervous about sharing his experience with other Christians lest they considered it tantamount to claiming oneness with God.
Recent resurgence
My friend’s wariness is hardly surprising; for most of the past century, union with Christ has rarely been at the forefront of evangelical teaching, leading some to question whether it is even an orthodox doctrine. But the concept is well rooted in both biblical and historical Christianity and has recently enjoyed a resurgence of interest.
An academic study, Paul and Union with Christ won the 2014 Christianity Today Book Award in Biblical Studies. Three years later, a book simply titled ‘Union with Christ’ won the Christian Book Award for New Author and has become immensely popular. Writing the foreword to that book, Tim Keller emphasised that union with Christ is “a biblical teaching crucial to understanding and communicating the gospel.”
American Reformed theologian and author, Kevin Deyoung went further, saying: “Union with Christ may be the most important doctrine you’ve never heard of … The whole of our salvation can be summed up with reference to this reality.”
To be ‘in Christ’ is to be united with him, our lives being inextricably intertwined with his.
The biblical basis
While the term ‘union with Christ’ is not one used in the Bible, (except for the NIV version of Philippians 2:1), dozens of New Testament texts prove the dominance of this theme. The letters associated with Paul employ the term ‘in Christ’ no fewer than 160 times (compared to the word ‘Christian’, used only 3 times in the entire New Testament). To be ‘in Christ’ is to be united with him, our lives being inextricably intertwined with his.
Paul says that we have died with Christ, and our lives are now “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). Christ represents those who belong to him so completely that we are said to have been “crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20); “buried … with him” (Rom 6:4); “raised with Christ” (Col 3:1); and even “seated with him in the heavenly places” (Eph 2:6).
There is no place that captures union with Christ more succinctly than Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”
The historical evidence
History is consequently rich with focus on union with Christ, both across the centuries and across theological traditions. Three of the most influential voices of the early Church (Irenaeus, Athanasius and Augustine) all stressed the importance of this biblical truth.
History is consequently rich with focus on union with Christ, both across the centuries and across theological traditions.
Martin Luther relied on New Testament imagery of marriage to affirm the reality of the believer’s union with Christ. Calvin said: “He deigns to make us one with Him” and “The Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ effectually unites us to Himself”. The Puritans of the 16th and 17th centuries continued the Reformation reliance on union with Christ as central to salvation and the Christian life, notably John Owen and Thomas Goodwin.
Moving forward to the 19th century, you find many popular Christian writers enthusing about union with Christ. Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, said, “It is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Saviour … The sweetest part is the rest which full identification with Christ brings. I am no longer anxious about anything.”. In the early 20th century, Oswald Chambers wrote, “Salvation is not merely deliverance from sin, nor the experience of personal holiness; the salvation of God is deliverance out of ‘self’ entirely into union with Himself”.
Experiencing union with Christ
It is all too easy to give nodding agreement to these statements, and to the truth behind them. Most of my Christian life I’ve done just that – thinking, ‘Yes, it’s wonderful to be in Christ’ but not give space for my mind and heart to go deep into the reality of it. Many of the books written on the subject similarly focus on the theological nature of such union, rather than on what this implies in terms of practical experience.
the issue is more one of ‘seeing’, ‘recognising’ and ‘acknowledging’ what is already a settled truth,
A.W. Tozer made it clear that when he spoke about the “union of the soul with the Saviour”, he was “not talking about a ‘theological union’ only”, but “also of a conscious union, a union that is felt and experienced”. Charles Spurgeon similarly exclaimed, “There is no joy in this world like union with Christ. The more we can feel it, the happier we are.”
It is essential that union with Christ not be regarded as yet another spiritual experience that we must strive for if we are to attain a victorious Christian life. Rather, it is already a reality for everyone who has been born of the Spirit. Therefore, the issue is more one of ‘seeing’, ‘recognising’ and ‘acknowledging’ what is already a settled truth, and learning to bring that truth into our present experience through faith.
In that sense, it is no different to any other truth we read of in Scripture which only later becomes part of our personal experience.
Paddling in the shallow end
No person I know captures the experiential truth of union with Christ more vibrantly than Tom McCann, author of ‘The Transforming Presence’ (reviewed in PT recently). His chapters on this theme overflow with the fullness of personal knowledge of this truth:
“We now find ourselves irretrievably joined into one entity with the divine,” he exudes, “indivisibly united to Christ in all his attributes and completeness … We cannot get any closer than that! … If we can grasp this, it will remove any consciousness of lack, deficiency and weakness … It changes forever who and what we are… This fact changes everything!” (p.97).
we cannot depend on mystical experiences – but nor should we deny them; we simply need to ensure they are grounded in biblical doctrine.
Certainly, there is a profoundly mystical element to union with Christ – it being difficult to describe what it means without using similes and multiple metaphors (one reason, no doubt, why many choose to ignore it). Of course, we cannot depend on mystical experiences – but nor should we deny them; we simply need to ensure they are grounded in biblical doctrine.
McCann admits he doesn’t fully comprehend what union with Christ truly means; “It feels like I am paddling around in the shallow end of a vast ocean. I guess it’s like trying to hold infinity in our grasp, it just can’t be done!”
Experiential knowledge of union with Christ appears to be rare among believers today (which is another reason my friend was wary of sharing his experience with others). But if union with a resurrected Christ truly is, as Dane Ortlund, puts it in his book, Deeper, “the most irreducible reality about you”, and if 18th century theologian, Jonathan Edwards was correct in stating that “by virtue of the believer’s union with Christ, he does in fact possess all things,” then what would stop a believer longing to grasp the reality of such truth, not just in their mind, but deep in their heart and soul?
Additional Info
Author:
Tom Lennie