It was one of those fall days in Michigan perfect for playing in the backyard. A little cold, but just cold enough that it felt good to run around. I was playing soccer with my two oldest sons. Jacob, the younger of the two, was on my team against Ian, his older brother. After stopping Ian’s shot on goal I motioned for Jacob to run to the other end of the yard for a long pass. As he started running, I kicked the ball with the inside of my right foot. The ball sailed past both sons and kept rolling . . . rolling . . . rolling, until it finally found its way into the goal at the other end of the yard. Ian was a bit deflated. Jacob, five years old at the time, was amazed. With a look of wonder on his face he turned to me and said in all seriousness, “Wow, Dad, only you and Jesus can do that.”
I can’t really speak to Jesus’ abilities at soccer. I checked Wikipedia and didn’t get many details. But I can say that my son’s pronouncement would have been theological dynamite if he had only changed one word. See, most of us know we are supposed to be like Jesus. On our better days we even want to be like Jesus. We’d love for someone to look at our lives, see our godliness, and say, “Wow, only you and Jesus can do that.”
This is not a bad sentiment. But the problem is with the word “and.” That conjunction ought to be a preposition. “Only you in Jesus can do that.” Christlikeness is possible, but not by merely working with Jesus or simply imitating his example. Only by knowing our position in Jesus can we begin to live like Jesus.
JESUS CHRIST AND UNION STATION
The theological term for being in Jesus is “union with Christ.” How this connects with holiness will become apparent soon enough, but first we need to put some theological meat on these bones, because most of us are mighty thin on this point of theology. Union with Christ may be the most important doctrine you’ve never heard of. As Christians, we know we’ve been saved by Christ, we should look like Christ, and we can have a relationship with Christ. But we almost never consider how all this depends on our union with Christ.
The whole of our salvation can be summed up with reference to this reality. Union with Christ is not a single specific blessing we receive in our salvation. Rather it is the best phrase to describe all the blessings of salvation, whether in eternity past (election), in history (redemption), in the present (effectual calling, justification, and sanctification), or in the future (glorification).
Every blessing is received in Christ (Eph. 1:3). No aspect of our salvation can be excluded from our union with him. This is the foundation and basis for all his gifts. So while it’s appropriate for theologians to talk about an “order of salvation” (ordo salutis), whereby we are called by the Spirit, born again, moved to faith and repentance, justified, adopted, sanctified, preserved, and glorified, we must never separate these benefits from the Benefactor. Every blessing in the order of salvation flows from our union with Christ. As John Murray said, “It is not simply a step in the application of redemption; when viewed, according to the teaching of Scripture, in its broader aspects 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.”
The doctrine of union with Christ is so common in the New Testament that you may have missed it. Over two hundred times in Paul’s letters and more than two dozen times in the writings of John we see expressions like “in Christ,” “in the Lord,” or “in him.” We are found in Christ (Phil. 3:9), preserved in Christ (Rom. 8:39), saved and sanctified in Christ (2 Tim. 1:9; 1 Cor. 1:30). We walk in Christ (Col. 2:6), labor in Christ (1 Cor. 15:58), and obey in Christ (Eph. 6:1). We die in Christ (Rev. 14:13), live in Christ (Gal. 2:20), and conquer in Christ (Rom. 8:37)—just to name a few examples. Another thirty-two times Paul speaks of believers participating together with Christ in some aspect of redemption, whether it’s being crucified with Christ, being buried with Christ, being raised with Christ, or being seated with Christ. Apart from this kind of union, all the blessings of Christ would be outside us. It’s only when the Spirit joins us to Christ and we are engrafted into his body that we can participate, not only in Christ’s benefits, but in Christ himself. The whole of the Christian life, from election to justification to sanctification to final glorification, is made possible by and is an expression of our union with Christ. That’s why Jesus’ final request in the High Priestly Prayer is that “I [may be] in them” (John 17:26) and why Paul says “Christ in you” is the hope of glory (Col. 1:27).
UNION CONFUSION
The doctrine of union with Christ has not played a prominent role in popular Christian thinking in recent years. The neglect is probably owing to a couple of factors. First, it can be hard to wrap your mind around this doctrine. After all, what exactly does it mean that we are joined to Christ or that he is in us and we are in him? Thinking spatially does not work. Christ isn’t stapled to our side. He doesn’t shrink-ray himself so that he can live like a microscopic organism in our left ventricle. The union isn’t physical, but theological. Union with Christ implies three things: solidarity (Christ as the second Adam is our representative), transformation (Christ by the Holy Spirit changes us from the inside out), and communion (Christ abides with us as our God). Union with Christ is like wedlock, where we are joined to Christ in a covenant of love. It is like a body where we as members are joined to our living Head. Or you might say union with Christ is like a building, where we are the house and Christ dwells within us. These biblical analogies are earthly ways of describing the heavenly reality of our union with Christ.
The other reason most Christians stay away from this doctrine is because it is easily misunderstood. Most basically, we must not equate union with fusion. The biblical teaching is that our person is joined to the person of Christ so that God is our God and we are his people. But this covenantal relationship is not the same as a fusion of natures. Our person does not dissolve into the person of Christ in an ontological union whereby the distinction between God and his people is eliminated.
Ontology is the fancy word for “being.” So an ontological union would mean we actually share in the essence of God himself. For example, the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart said, “He who is one with God, is ‘one spirit’ with God, the same existence.” Surely this is not the right language. In certain strands of mysticism, not to mention Eastern religions, union with God is an Absolute Unity where two distinct beings are no longer distinct. But this is not what the Bible teaches about union with Christ. Just as the three persons of the Trinity share a union but are three distinct persons, and the two natures of Christ are united but remain distinct natures, so Christ has union with us without obliterating our own unique personhood. We do not become gods.
We can, however—in a certain sense—be deified. Second Peter 1:4 speaks of believers becoming “partakers of the divine nature.” This language is strange to Western ears. And yet, deification (also called theosis) has always been central to an Eastern Orthodox understanding of salvation. But Orthodox theology has been careful to distinguish between God’s “essence” and his “energies.” We participate in the active life of God, not in the ineffable nature of God. Even Calvin said the purpose of the gospel is “to make us sooner or later like God; indeed it is, so to speak, a kind of deification.” But he makes it clear that “deification” does not mean losing ourselves in God. Becoming like God means growing in the qualities and virtues of God. There is no mixture of human and divine. Our humanity is fully retained, but it is also set on a process of being fully restored. We cannot become God; but we can become like him.
The important point is that we do not think of spirituality as fundamentally an exercise in detachment from our soul so that we can fly to the sky and be absorbed into some Divine Absolute. We must always remember that union with Christ is possible because of the Son’s descent to earth, not because of our ascent into heaven. The basis of our union with Christ is Christ’s union with us in the incarnation. He became one with us so that we might become one with him. Christian spirituality does not rest on mysticism; it rests in a Mediator.
FROM BEING WITH CHRIST TO BEING LIKE CHRIST
I know this chapter has been more technical than the others, but the theological exploration is for good reason. Union with Christ is more than a fascinating doctrinal concept for bookworms and vocabulary junkies. It really matters for the way you live your life. It matters for your spiritual health. And it matters for your holiness.
There are several ways in which union with Christ guides our growth in godliness. For starters, it reminds us that the pursuit of holiness is also the pursuit of Christ. We aren’t interested in being virtuous just to be good people. Our first love is Jesus. Holiness is not ultimately about living up to a moral standard. It’s about living in Christ and living out of our real, vital union with him.
Similarly, union with Christ helps put justification and sanctification in their proper relationship. There has been a tendency in theology and in the Christian life to view justification and sanctification in isolation. This leads some Christians to emphasize faith at the expense of works, or conversely, for other Christians to focus on our pursuit of righteousness apart from the imputed righteousness of Christ. But justification and sanctification are both “in Christ” gifts (1 Cor. 1:30; 6:11).
Theologians sometimes call this the double grace (duplex gratia) of union with Christ. They are two sides of the same coin, distinct yet joined. Calvin is right when he says about justification and sanctification, “those gifts of grace go together as if tied by an inseparable bond, so that if anyone tries to separate them, he is, in a sense, tearing Christ to pieces.” Sanctification doesn’t just flow from justification, so that one produces the other. Both come from the same Source. Christ justifies no one whom he does not also sanctify. By virtue of our union with Christ, he bestows both gifts, the one never without the other. “Thus it is clear how true it is that we are justified not without works yet not through works, since in our sharing in Christ, which justifies us, [progressive] sanctification is just as much included as [imputed] righteousness.”
MAKING THE REALITY REAL
As important as these points are in connecting union with Christ and personal holiness, there is another connection much more prominent in the Bible. Our progress in the pursuit of holiness comes largely from understanding and appropriating our union with Christ. As John Murray states, “Nothing is more relevant to progressive sanctification than the reckoning of ourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God through Jesus Christ (cf. Rom. 6:11).” Apart from our union with Christ every effort to imitate Christ, no matter how noble and inspired at the outset, inevitably leads to legalism and spiritual defeat. But once you understand the doctrine of union with Christ, you see that God doesn’t ask us to attain to what we’re not. He only calls us to accomplish what already is. The pursuit of holiness is not a quixotic effort to do just what Jesus did. It’s the fight to live out the life that has already been made alive in Christ.
If I had to summarize New Testament ethics in one sentence, here’s how I would put it: be who you are. That may sound strange, almost heretical, given our culture’s emphasis on being true to yourself. But like so many of the worst errors in the world, this one represents a truth powerfully perverted. When people say, “Relax, you were born that way,” or “Quit trying to be something you’re not and just be the real you,” they are stumbling upon something very biblical. God does want you to be the real you. He does want you to be true to yourself. But the “you” he’s talking about is the “you” that you are by grace, not by nature. You may want to read through that last sentence again because the difference between living in sin and living in righteousness depends on getting that sentence right. God doesn’t say, “Relax, you were born this way.” But he does say, “Good news, you were reborn another way.”
As a believer, you belong to Christ. More than that, you are joined to Christ. By faith, through the Holy Spirit, we have union with him. Christ lives in you and you in him. You are one with Christ, so live like Christ. Be who you are. That’s the consistent message of the New Testament:
- In Christ, we are dead to sin and alive to righteousness. “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4; cf. Col. 3:1–3).
- In Christ, we are new creations so that we might live for him and not for ourselves. “And he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. . . . Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:15, 17).
- In Christ, our sinful flesh is put to death and a new kind of life (a new Person, actually) is at work in us. “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” (Gal. 2:20).
- In Christ, we are no longer sons of disobedience and children of wrath but are alive with Christ and able to do the good works prepared for us. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. . . . For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:4–6, 10).
- In Christ, we can walk as he did. “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him” (Col. 2:6).
- In Christ, we are holy and precious and called to live like it. “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col. 3:12–14).
Time after time, the Bible reminds us of our identity in Christ in order to call us to obedience to Christ. Do not strive after holiness because you cower in dread of God. Strive after holiness because you are confident you already belong to God.
THE OTHER ROMANS ROAD
Nowhere is the connection between union with Christ and sanctification clearer than in Romans 6. In this passage Paul is trying to answer the question “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” He’s just finished extolling justification by faith alone through grace alone in Christ alone. Now he anticipates an objection: if grace is so great, then we can all keep sinning (Rom. 6:1). “Hey, we can have the best of both worlds. Sin in this life and glory in the next!” But of course this is not gospel logic. Jude 4 warns of “ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
Clearly, grace is no excuse for license. Paul loves to talk about the scandal of free grace. In fact, he never leaves that message behind. It’s not like Paul hits grace hard for a while and then says, “Okay, enough about grace. Let’s get down to business and talk about a whole lot of things you have to do now that you are justified.” No, he never moves on from grace. But—and this is massively important—he was eager to extol the grace in justification and the grace in sanctification. Because of this grace, Paul says, and in the power of this grace, here’s how you are going to be different now that you are a Christian.
Some people think all religions are the same. Every religion, they say, teaches you to love your neighbor, help the poor, deny yourself, and tell the truth. Well, even if it were true that all religions had basically the same ethics (and it most certainly isn’t true), there would still be the issue of motivation. Why do these good things? Why be a “good” person? Is it to earn your way into heaven? Is it to support family values and Western civilization? Is it to get better karma? Is it to find enlightenment or rid yourself of cravings or achieve Nirvana? Is it to be released from the cycle of birth and rebirth? Or is being good important because it helps you feel better about yourself? The religions of the world don’t agree on the rationale for our ethical behavior.
For Paul, the motivation starts (but doesn’t end) with your identity in Christ. Look at Romans 6 and see what is objectively, definitively, irreversibly true of you as a Christian. You were baptized into Christ Jesus (v. 3). You were crucified with Christ (v. 6). You died with Christ (v. 8). You were buried with Christ (v. 4). You were raised with Christ (vv. 4, 5). When 1 Corinthians 10:2 says the Israelites “were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,” it doesn’t mean they were literally immersed in him or sprinkled with him. It means they were joined to him. They participated with Moses in the exodus—they as his people and he as their representative and head. In the same sense we are baptized into Christ. Whether our physical baptism takes places as an infant and is later appropriated by faith, or takes place as an adult with a profession of faith right then, we are meant to see in the sacrament a sign of our union with Christ.
As Christians we do not always feel close to Jesus. But that does not change the reality of our union with him. We are told to “consider [ourselves] dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11) because that’s what is true of us as Christians. We must reckon ourselves to be what we are in Jesus—dead to sin and alive to righteousness. I once heard a story about a man struggling with same-sex gender attraction who admitted to his mentor that he was going back to the gay bar scene that particular evening. His pastor simply told him, “I don’t think you will, because that’s not who you are.” That’s good counsel. And very biblical.
Union with Christ fundamentally and irrevocably changes our relationship to sin. Our old self has been crucified (Rom. 6:6), and sin has no dominion over us (v. 14). This doesn’t mean a part of us called the “old nature” has been replaced with a different substance called a “new nature.” Paul is not talking about parts. He is talking about position. The old man is what we were “in Adam” (cf. 5:12–21). Death, sin, punishment, transgression—that’s the “in Adam” team. But we died to that team. The contract was revoked. We now wear the “in Christ” jersey. Union with Christ is like being placed on an NFL football team through no talent of your own. Though you didn’t earn your way on to the team, now that you wear the jersey you want to play like a real football player.
Or, to use a few different analogies:
- Union with Christ is like being released from a nasty prison. You used to curl up in your bed when someone walked by because you didn’t want to get beaten. You would pass dirty magazines through the wall. You would threaten and intimidate people to get first in line for the grub. But once you are out, you don’t act like that anymore. You are in a different world now.
- Union with Christ is like a ten-year-old refusing to be called a “baby” by his friends. He knows he’s not a baby anymore. He’s a boy. So he starts acting more grown up.
- Union with Christ is like a student coming to college on a horse, unloading a quill and ink bottle, lighting a bunch of candles, and trying to communicate by Morse code, only to realize she’s not in the right century. We’d all be surprised to meet such a college student. She needs to start living in the proper age.
Of course, these aren’t perfect analogies. They don’t take into account the way Christ also changes us from the inside out, but as imperfect examples they do get at Paul’s argument in Romans 6. Paul is not using union with Christ to play Jedi mind tricks on the church in Rome (“these aren’t the sins you’ve been looking for”). Rather, he wants them to know and consider all that is true of them in Christ (Rom. 6:9, 11). Their identity, and yours, has been altered. You play for a different team. You live in a different age. You belong to a different realm. You go by a different name. Therefore, don’t let sin reign in your mortal body (v. 12). Don’t present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness (v. 13). Instead, offer yourselves to God as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification (v. 19).
The Bible is realistic about holiness. Don’t think that all this glorious talk about dying to sin and living to God means there is no struggle anymore or that sin will never show up in the believer’s life. The Christian life still entails obedience. It still involves a fight. But it’s a fight we will win. You have the Spirit of Christ in your corner, rubbing your shoulders, holding the bucket, putting his arm around you and saying before the next round with sin, “You’re going to knock him out, kid.” Sin may get in some good jabs. It may clean your clock once in a while. It may bring you to your knees. But if you are in Christ it will never knock you out. You are no longer a slave, but free. Sin has no dominion over you. It can’t. It won’t. A new King sits on the throne. You serve a different Master. You salute a different Lord.
In effect God says to us, “Because you believe in Christ, by the Holy Spirit I have joined you to Christ. When he died, you died. When he rose, you rose. He’s in heaven, so you’re in heaven. He’s holy, so you’re holy. Your position right now, objectively and factually, is as a holy, beloved child of God, dead to sin, alive to righteousness, and seated in my holy heaven—now live like it.” That’s the way indicatives and imperatives work together in union with Christ. It’s also the long way of saying “be who you are.”
Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 587.
John Murray, Redemption—Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955), 161 (emphasis mine). See also Robert Letham, The Work of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 80, 81; Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 100, 106. Likewise, the Westminster Larger Catechism understands the “order of salvation” (ordo salutis) to be the outworking of our union with Christ (66, 69).
Bruce Demarest, The Cross and Salvation: The Doctrine of Salvation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006), 313. According to Demarest, there are 216 occurrences of “in Christ” (and similar constructions) in Paul and twenty-six in John. Sinclair Ferguson puts the first number around 160 (Holy Spirit, 100).
See Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 392. See also Lane Tipton, “Union with Christ and Justification,” in Justified in Christ: God’s Plan for Us in Justification, ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Fearn, Ross-shire, UK: Mentor, 2007), 25. Both Moo and Tipton include numerous biblical references for “in Christ” and “with Christ” language.
Theologians often speak of an “alien righteousness” in our justification. The idea is that we are saved by a righteousness not our own. While this is certainly true, the word “alien” can be misleading. For Christ is not alien to us but dwells within us.
See Letham, Work of Christ, 82–83.
Meister Eckhardt, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defence, trans. and ed. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1981), 56.
Orthodoxy as a branch of Christianity is not to be confused with the term “orthodox,” which refers to historic, biblical theology. The ESV Study Bible provides a good definition of Orthodoxy: “Orthodoxy comprises a range of autocephalous and autonomous churches, the Russian and Greek being the most prominent. During the first millennium a.d. the Latin West and the predominantly Greek-speaking East drifted apart linguistically, culturally, and theologically. Rome’s claims to universal jurisdiction and its acceptance of the filioque clause in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed led to severed relations.”
See, for example, Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979), 21–23.
Calvin’s Commentary, 2 Peter 1:4. See Calvin’s Commentaries Volume XXII, ed. John Owen (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1993), 371.
Calvin’s commentary on 1 Corinthians 1:30. See Calvin’s Commentaries Volume XX, ed. John Pringle (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1993), 93.
Institutes 3.16.1 (emphasis mine). For more on Calvin’s doctrine of union with Christ see William B. Evans, Imputation and Impartation: Union with Christ in American Reformed Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008); Mark A. Garcia, Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin’s Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008); J. Todd Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Richard B. Gaffin Jr., “Union with Christ: Some Biblical and Theological Reflections,” in Always Reforming: Explorations in Systematic Theology, ed. A. T. B. McGowan (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007), 271–288.
John Murray, “The Pattern of Sanctification,” in Collected Writings of John Murray, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1977), 2:311. See also Walter Marshall, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification: Growing in Holiness by Living in Union with Christ (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005).
