7 United with Christ
United with Christ
Is there more to Christianity than practicing morality and supporting a church? Many think not, but there is. Christianity is a new life, consisting of new relationships with God, men, and things; and it all springs from one source—a unique link between the Christian and his Master, Jesus Christ.
The New Testament makes this quite clear, but talks of the link itself in language that is startling and hard to pin down. Union with Christ is affirmed in terms that sound too strong to be true. Thus, Paul says that “Christ . . . is our life” (Colossians 3:4), and “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20 KJV); and he speaks of Christians doing and experiencing literally everything in Christ, and of baptized persons as having put on Christ (Galatians 3:27). So, too, Jesus says, “Abide in me, and I in you . . . I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15:4ff.). What sort of link can it be that prompts such statements?
Twofold Union
The link has two aspects. Take them separately.
First, it is a relation to Jesus’ person—one of discipleship. The Jesus of the Gospels is alive today, risen and real. In terms of character, attitudes, and concerns, he remains just what he was in his earthly life—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). And he calls us to do just what he called his first disciples to do—give him total loyalty and love, learn from him, and faithfully obey him, denying ourselves in order to identify with his will at all points, so that what he is finds its reflection in what we are. This is the new commitment aspect of our link with Jesus.
Second, this link is also a relation to what theologians sometimes call the Christ-event. The usual label for it is incorporation. We should understand this aspect of the union as follows.
God’s eternal Son became Jesus the Christ by incarnation; to put away our sins he tasted death by crucifixion; he resumed bodily life for all eternity by resurrection; and he reentered heaven’s glory by ascension. This is the Christ-event. It is truly historical, for it happened in Palestine 2,000 years ago. Equally true, however, it is trans-historical, in the sense of not being bounded by space and time as other events are: it can touch and involve in itself any person at any time anywhere. Faith in Jesus occasions that involving touch, so that in terms of rock-bottom reality every believer has actually died and risen, and now lives and reigns, with Jesus and through Jesus. (Note that when the phrase “in Christ” is used, “in” is shorthand for “with” and “through” together.) This is the new creation aspect of our link with Jesus.
We have looked at the two aspects separately so as to get clear about each, as a pianist learning a piece might do with first the right-hand, then the left-hand notes. But as both sets of notes must be played together to produce the proper sound, so we must mentally fuse both aspects of our link with Jesus if we are to affirm it scripturally. The way to express it is that in the Jesus to whom we go in faith the power of the whole Christ-event resides, and that in saving us he not only sets us right with God, but also, so to speak, plugs us in to his own dying, rising, and reigning. Thus we live in joyful fellowship with him, knowing ourselves justified by faith through his death, and finding therewith freedom from sin’s tyranny and foretastes of heaven on earth through the transforming power within us that his dying and rising exerts.
This is an over-short statement of an overwhelming truth. The classic expositions of it are Romans 6-8 and Colossians 3: both should be studied.
Baptism and Union
Baptism bears directly on all this; for by taking the candidate momentarily under water, baptism signifies not only the washing away of sin’s guilt but also the dying and rising with Christ that brings freedom from sin’s rule. “Have you forgotten,” writes Paul, “that when we were baptized into union with Christ Jesus we were baptized into his death? By baptism we were buried with him, and lay dead, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead in the splendour of the Father, so also we might set our feet upon the new path of life” (Romans 6:3ff., NEB).
If anyone wants to know the real nature and heart of Christianity, let him look at baptism; for baptism proclaims in both aspects together the link with the living Lord that makes all things new.
Further Bible Study
Life in the Son:
John 6:35-59; 16:1-11
2 Corinthians 5:14-21
Galatians 3:23-29
Questions for Thought and Discussion
Is Christianity primarily a matter of morality or of relationship? Explain your answer.
What does the fact that Jesus Christ never changes tell us about discipleship?
What is meant by saying that the Christ-event is transhistorical? What does this fact imply for you?