UNION WITH CHRIST (Isaiah 54:4-8, Psalm 16, Romans 5:12) When we began looking at chapter 5 of Romans, we waded into a section of this letter that helps us to understand the benefits of our salvation. So far we have studied about the nature of faith and grace, and the realities of the peace and hope we have received, as well as the glory that we will share, because God has reconciled us to himself in Jesus Christ. But before we continue on with the text, I feel like I need to make a slight detour in order to lay a foundation for much of what we will be dealing with in the next few chapters. Because, when Paul writes: “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” we need some theological context for how to wrap our minds and hearts around such a statement. So buckle your seatbelts and hold on to your hats, as we enter the classroom for Theology 101! Romans 5:12 talks about our union with Adam and how we are bound to him in sin and death – a union that has led to misery and condemnation for all humankind. However, that is simply the introductory bad news setup, so we can be ready to receive the really good news about the believer’s union with Christ – a union that leads to life and righteousness. This concept of union (being joined to) both Adam and Christ raises a whole lot of questions that has tended to get very little attention in the church for several generations. Arthur Pink, a great Christian thinker, who lived from 1886 till 1952, had this to say about our union with Christ: “The subject of spiritual union is the most important, the most profound, and the most blessed of any that is set forth in the Sacred Scriptures, and yet, sad to say, there is hardly any which is now more generally neglected. The very expression ‘spiritual union’ is unknown in most professing Christian circles, and even where it is employed it is given such a [limited] meaning as to take in only a fragment of this precious truth.” He goes on to say, that it is probably so largely ignored because it is such a difficult concept to grasp – a mystery. And while most of us like the “who-done-it” types of mysteries, this mystery confounds and confuses us, because we will never grasp the fullness of it this side of heaven. There are way too many preachers these days who have so fixed their sights on telling the people what they want to hear, that they give no thought to the deep spiritual realities that far outweigh our worldly, consumer-oriented desires. Others have become so focused on the milk of the Word that even they themselves are not trained to carve up and serve the meat of the Word for their congregations. And so whole segments of the church suffer a lack of understanding, and waste away in spiritual malnutrition. In Romans 5:1-11 Paul has argued for the certainty of our salvation from the theological platform of Justification by faith. As we move forward, he takes the next step; informing us that when God saved us through the work of Christ, justifying us by faith; that justification comes in conjunction with our being united to Christ in what theologians have called “The Mystical Union” – something that is revealed to us in Scripture as one of the great mysteries of God’s relationship with the believer. The Scriptures speak of three great unions. The first is the union of the Godhead, the Trinity. Athanasius, one of the early Church Fathers, describes this mystical union in this way: “That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.” As all mysteries go, this is about as clear as we can get in describing the humanly indescribable Trinity of God. The second mystical union is that of the two natures of Christ in one person – we call this the hypostatic union, which means the foundational, personal union of God and man in the one person of Jesus the Christ. Athanasius describes in this way: “We believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man. God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man, of the substance of His mother, born in the world. Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father, as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father, as touching His manhood. Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ.” Again, difficult to fully put together in our minds, but, by faith, and through the witness of Scripture, we know that this is the true way to speak about Christ, our Savior and Lord – fully God and fully man in one person. The third mystical union is that of Christ and the believer, which is what Paul is talking about in this section of his letter. And I assure you that this mystery will remain as much of a mystery to us as the other two, because we must process them all through our finite (limited), human minds. But the good news about this union is that it is not just academic or theoretical – something that we try to understand by study and deep thinking. This union is experiential, something that we can be a vital part of in our everyday living. However much of a mystery these three unions are, we still must have them as a foundation for our faith as we trust God to make real for us what we don’t always understand, enabling us to be fully assured that what God has promised in Jesus Christ is a true salvation that is able to save us completely. This idea of union with Christ is not a new revelation to Paul, but rather a truth that he picked up from Jesus’ teachings. Jesus talked about our union with him in several places. In John 15, Jesus said: “I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me, and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” In this passage Jesus is talking about the power of our union with him to nourish us, by his power flowing through us, to accomplish all that he has commanded us to be and do. The idea of union with Christ is also evident in Matthew 26, where, during the last supper, Jesus broke the bread and gave it to his disciples telling them and us, “This is my body. Take and eat.” And then he shared the cup, saying, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” symbolizing our participation in the very life of Christ. In this Supper, by faith, Jesus becomes a permanent part of us, just as surely as does what we eat. Jesus also talked about our union with him as a solid foundation upon which we are to build our lives, when he told the story of the house built upon the rock in Matthew 7. Paul elaborated on this image in 1 Corinthians 3, saying, “No one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” And then in Ephesians 2 he compares Christ’s Church to the temple of God, saying, “In him (Jesus) the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. Notice the first two words of this verse; “In Him.” It is only because we are actually “In Christ” that it is even possible for us to be built together to be the temple he now inhabits. Throughout the letter to the Ephesians, Paul speaks about this union in terms of Christ being the head of the body and we as the members; in union with him so that “The whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” It is only by our union with Christ that the church grows and the members function properly under his direction as the head. Both Jesus and Paul talk about our union with Christ in the context of human marriage. Jesus, quoting Genesis, said marriage was ordained by God in the beginning, and in marriage the man and the woman become “one flesh”. The spiritual nature of the marriage relationship is conveyed to us in the passage we read from Isaiah, where God sees his people in disgrace when we are disconnected from him, and vows to be a husband to us; taking away our shame and reproach. In Ephesians 5 Paul taught us how we are to function in this holy relationship of marriage, and then adds “This is a profound mystery – but I am [really] talking about Christ and the Church.” Charles Hodge, one of the founding professors of Princeton Seminary, in talking about the intimacy we have “in Christ” said, “We stand to [Christ] in the same intimate and vital union that a man’s body [is] to the man himself.” We are in Him and He is in us, there can be no relationship more intimate than the believer’s union with Christ, who is as close to us as the next beat of our heart! As we move forward in our study of Romans we will be looking at the doctrine of our union with Christ in greater detail. Initially we will compare it to our contrasting union with Adam that is stated in verse 12. But in preparation for our continuing study I have laid out this initial introduction so that when it comes up in the context of Paul’s teaching, you will have a basic familiarity with this theological concept that helps us to grasp just how strong is the assurance we have in our relationship with Christ – an assurance that is worked out in us through election, redemption, regeneration, and finally glorification; all of which are a vital part of our union with Christ and our being “in Christ.” Are you “in Christ?” Have you responded to the Holy Spirit’s call for you to abandon the old life and take on the new? Do you have a deep personal relationship with Christ? Do you love him and does he live in you, and you in him? Is your heart’s desire to do what pleases him or are you still focusing only on what pleases you first? God is calling each of us to be “in Christ” to participate “in him” in his resurrection life and with God’s mission in the world, and to finally inherit eternal life “in him.”
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 15:16:41 +0000