12. Union with Christ
CHAPTER 12
Union with Christ
Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.
(Hebrews 2:11)
This whole passage is a beautiful picture of our identification with Christ. We are …
One with Him in Nature
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity…” (Hebrews 2:14a). “For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants” (Hebrews 2:16). How precious this word “shared!” He has the very same humanity with man and by actual sympathy understands every instinct, feeling, hope and fear. Not only has He a human body, but a reasonable soul and all the attributes of mind and all the sensibilities of heart which we possess, and not only so, He still retains this perfect humanity. He has carried it to the right hand of God.
Partaker of the human name,
He knows the frailty of our frame.
Let not the transcendent glory of His Deity obscure this glorious important truth. He who is the Son of God is equally the Son of Man. But next, He is also …
One in Sonship
“So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.” “Behold I and the children whom God hath given me” (Hebrews 2:13, KJV). Not only does He come down into humanity, but He also takes the saints up into His Divinity; for they are, indeed, through Him, “partakers of the Divine nature.” His own very being is imparted to the believer and He shares His actual relation to the Father. “Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” It is not that we are adopted into sonship, as a poor child of obscure birth may be received into a noble family, to become the legalized son and heir, but it is as if that child could be reborn into the very blood of that highborn house. We have been actually made partakers of the same nature as God.
Hence the apostle John has finely expressed the deep reality of our sonship in his wonderful words, “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God” (1 John 3:1); and then he adds, “and we are the sons of God,” not merely called and even legally declared the sons of God, but actually the sons of God by receiving the life and nature of God and therefore the brethren of our Lord—not only in His human nature but still more in His divine relationship. “So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.”
He gives us that which entitles us to that right and makes us worthy of it. He does not introduce us into a position for which we are uneducated and unfitted but He gives us a nature worthy of our glorious standing; and as He shall look upon us in our complete and glorious exaltation—reflecting His own likeness and shining in His Father’s glory—He shall have no cause to be ashamed of us.
Even now He is pleased to acknowledge us before the universe and call us brethren in the sight of all earth and heaven. Oh, how this dignifies the humblest saint of God! How little we need mind the misunderstandings of the world if He “is not ashamed to call us brethren!”
It is said that an English officer was once being treated with neglect and scorn by his fellow officers on account of his promotion from an obscure position to higher rank. They were not willing to forget his humble birth and passed him by with neglect and coldness. His commanding officer heard of it and so one day he stepped into his tent and talked to him for some time, and then taking him by the arm, the two of them walked for half an hour in front of the other officers’ tents. The officers saluted their commanding officer as he passed them, in profound respect in which his companion shared. He then left the ground while they looked after him in amazement and humiliation, and after that day there was no lack of respect for the new officer. His commander was not ashamed to own him.
Thus our blessed Brother claims kinship with the believer before earth and heaven; thus He presents his prayers before the throne and owns his name before His Father’s face and makes the name of a mortal to be honored in the highest court in this universe.
One in Spiritual Experience
But again, He is one with us in spiritual experience. The same grace which we receive He also had to receive; the same faith which we have to exercise He exercised. In this passage He speaks of putting His trust in God just as we trust, and praising Him for deliverance in the midst of the church just as we do when we receive our blessings. The great Forerunner has already passed over the pathway of the Christian life, so wherever the sheep follow He has gone before.
This wonderful truth is sometimes difficult to realize. Christ is depicted as dropping down from heaven with a life all foreign and sublime, that we do not quite take in without much thought, the full meaning of His teachings that He, like us, was led through all the discipline of a life of faith and dependence: that He could truly say, “The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19). “Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me” (John 6:57). He was dependent on the resources of prayer, communion with God, the constant supply of the Holy Spirit, and He understands all the struggles of spiritual life by actual affinity.
Hence we find Him in the prophetic picture exclaiming, “Therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know I will not be put to shame. He who vindicates me is near. Who then will bring charges against me?” (Isaiah 50:7-8). This was the language of faith, a faith that overcame in the hour of trial, just as we overcome. Not only had He the same experience as we, but He brings us into His very experience. This is really the nature of true sanctification, that it imparts to us the sanctity of Christ. This is the meaning of the passage: “He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all one.” He gives His own sanctity and makes His people one with Him in His spirit of holiness. It was this that He meant when He said, “For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified” (John 17:19). He consecrated Himself to live in His people and reproduce His own pure and perfect life in their experience. Holiness is thus the indwelling of the Holy Christ, the unity of a human spirit with the spirit of Jesus.
But again, He is …
One with Us in Trial
“In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering”; “therefore he was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Therefore He has passed through every variety of human suffering and is now able, from actual experience, to sympathize with the succor those who are tempted and to make them realize that they are never alone in their afflictions, but understood by His kindred heart and sustained by His sympathy and love.
Not only so but He still retains this power of sympathy and feels the throb of our every pain, for He is able to be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” The word “touched” expresses a great deal. It means that our troubles are His troubles and that in all our afflictions He is afflicted. It is not a sympathy of sentiment but a sympathy of suffering.
There is much help in this for the tired heart. It is the foundation of His Priesthood and God meant that it should be to us a source of unceasing consolation. Let us realize more fully our oneness with our Great High Priest and cast all our burdens on His great heart of suffering love. If we know what it is to ache in every nerve with the responsive pain of our suffering child, we can form some idea how our sorrows touch His heart and thrill His exalted frame. As the mother feels her baby’s pain, as the heart of friendship echoes every cry from another’s woe, so in heaven our exalted Savior—even amid the raptures of that happy world, suffers with all His children bear. “Therefore, since we have a great high priest … [l]et us then approach the throne of grace with confidence” (Hebrews 4:14a, 16a). Let us bear with patience the yoke as He carries the heavier end. But He is also…
One with us in Death
Not only does He suffer all the trials of His lot but He is not exempt from mortal fate; for we read that God appointed that He through the grace of God should taste death for every man, “… that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15). Even the dark gates of this last prison house He too has entered. There is something very suggestive in the expression that “He should taste death for every man.” It seems to suggest that he had all the bitterness of the cup to drain and has taken the taste out of death for all who are united with Him. There is no poison in the cup now and no virulence in the sting. He tasted it; but the bitterness of death is past if we are in Him. “For if a man keep my sayings he shall never see death.” He shall only see the face of our blessed Lord and the open gates of heaven. All the death that was in the cup, Christ has drunk, and there is the glad shout, “But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthains 15:57).
Death and the curse were in the cup;
Oh, Christ, ’twas full for Thee!
But Thou has drained the last dark drop,
’Tis empty now for me.
For me, Lord Jesus, Thou hast died,
And I have died in Thee;
Thou ’rt risen, my bands are all untied,
And now Thou livest in me.
Finally, He is …
One with Us in Glorious Destiny
The writer of the book of Hebrews quotes from the eighth Psalm which describes the future dignity and destiny of man. The psalmist speaks of the glorious dignity of man in these words, “… you put everything under his feet” (Psalm 8:6b), and the apostle argues if this be literally true, it implies a dignity that leaves nothing that is not put under man, but he says as a matter of actual observation, “and put everything under his feet” (Hebrews 2:8b). How then can the words be true of man?
The glorious explanation is that they are true of the Son of Man, the Great Head of the race. “But we see Jesus … now crowned with glory and honor” (2:9a). He takes up the honor of the race and wins the crown of dominion for humanity, and then he shares it all with us. For all that He has won He has won as a man for redeemed humanity; and has raised us up with Him to sit in heavenly places, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness to us by Christ Jesus. Every crown He wears He shall share with us. “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne” (Revelation 3:21). This is the high and glorious hope of every child of God. This is the meaning of our union with the Son of God. Well may the apostle say, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Such a hope may well inspire and unspeakably encourage the children of God.
Let us think of some of its practical applications: First, let us learn the secret of even of our faith. It is the faith of Christ springing in our hearts and trusting in our trials. So shall we also sing, “The life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Thus looking off unto Jesus, “The Author and Finisher of our faith,” we shall lie down upon them in blessed repose and be borne up by them with the faith which is no more our own than the promises upon which it rests. Each new need will find us leaning afresh on Him for the grace to trust and to overcome.
The true spirit of prayer is the spirit of Christ in us. “In the midst of the church will I sing praises unto thee.” Christ still sings these praises in the trusting heart and lifts his prayers into songs of victory. Paul and Silas knew the true spirit of prayer in the prison of Philippi and turned prayer into praise, night into day, the sorrow into joy. When He indwells as the spirit of faith He will also become the spirit of praise.
But again, this should comfort us in trial; our Brother is bearing all that we bear and if He can stand it, surely we can. His Father would not allow His own beloved Son to have a needless pain and therefore we may be sure that there is a “need be” for all we are called to bear. If Christ is carrying the other end of the yoke, we may know it is right and that we shall not sink under the load. Let us then rejoice that we are partakers of the sufferings of Christ that “when His glory shall be revealed we shall be glad also with exceeding joy” (See 1 Peter 4:13).
Let this comfort us amid imperfect experiences and realizations of victory. “We see not yet all things put under Him.” How true this is to us all! How many things there are that seem to be stronger than we are; but blessed be His name! They are all in subjection under Him and we see Jesus crowned above them all, and Jesus is our Head, our representative, our other self, and where He is we shall surely be. Therefore when we fail to see anything that God has promised and that we have claimed in our experience, let us look up and see it realized in Him and claim it in Him for ourselves.
Our side is only half the circle—the heaven side is already complete; and the rainbow of which we see not the upper half shall one day be all around the throne and take in the other hemisphere of our now unfinished life. By faith, then, let us enter into all our inheritance. Let us lift up our eyes to the north and to the south, to the east and to the west, and hear Him say, “All the land that you see will I give them.”
Let us remember that the circle is complete, that the inheritance is unlimited, and that all things are put under His feet. Have we counted this true without abatement, or have we discounted it and lost its fullness? Shall we not henceforth “Crown Him Lord of all,” and put all things under His feet, and then, keeping step with Him, put our feet on the difficulties and adversaries that we have feared so long, and go out henceforth in the chariot of His Ascension, to sing as we ascend, “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him” (2 Corinthians 2:14).