Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God

by Rankin Wilbourne

The gift of holiness in Christ doesn’t make the pursuit of it unnecessary.

In the Bible, holiness is both what we already are and what we are called to become.

“Jesus is a complete Saviour. He does not merely take away the guilt of a believer’s sin, he does more—he breaks its power.”

He not only declares us holy, but he also empowers us to be holy.

Our positional righteousness is complete, but our practical righteousness is not. We are trying to bring our earthly reality in line with our spiritual reality. When our practical righteousness != our positional righteousness, then our sanctification is progressive. When our practical righteousness = our positional righteousness, then our sanctification is perfect.

“You are in Christ” gives you assurance. “Christ is in you” gives you power. Together they help us move out in confidence.

Christ has made holiness a reality for you (you are in Christ) and a possibility for you (Christ is in you).

Take an area that is a struggle for many of us—honoring God’s gift of our sexuality. As God created us for intimate union with himself and others, our yearning for intimacy is intense. So it’s no surprise that this desire is so easily exploited or distorted. And yet, watch what Paul draws on to help the Corinthians fight sexual temptation. “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Cor. 6:15). He reminds them of their union with Christ. “You are one with Christ,” he’s saying, “so then how can you unite yourself to another in a way that you know dishonors him?” (see vv. 15–17). He reminds them of their identity in Christ and then calls them to holiness. “That’s not who you are,” he’s saying in effect, “and that’s not how you need to live any longer.” 16 As opposed to simply saying, “Don’t do that,” when you battle temptation, instead call to mind your union with Christ. Use the presence of Christ to stand firm against anything that threatens you.

There are no happy disobedient Christians.

You can place this as the purpose over each new day: pursue holiness, not as a bar to live up to, but as an ennobling compliment to live into. Become a human being today.

If you spiritualize the ascension (or ignore it), then Jesus is no longer a threat to the rulers of this world. But the New Testament writers say that he is not only ascended; he is now enthroned as “the ruler of kings on earth” (Rev. 1:5).

Jesus, as our high priest, stands in solidarity with us, whom he represents.

(The Christian community has been memorably compared to Noah’s ark—the stench on the inside would be unbearable were it not for the alternative outside.)

Moreover, knowing how much Christ suffered while he was sinless shows us that a life of trust and obedience, a life of striving to please God, does not exempt us or release us from a life of pain and suffering. Why do bad things happen to good people? The Bible doesn’t give us an airtight answer to this. Instead, it gives us a perfect person to show us that no life, not even the best one, is exempt from pain and suffering.

We don’t usher in or build up the kingdom of God; we witness to it, with the cross before us as both our message and our means.

How many times have you read a story of someone who endured some terrible suffering and, years later, said, “Though I never would have chosen this, I wouldn’t trade it now for anything, because of what it has turned into in my life”? If that is the perspective that a few years or decades can give, imagine pulling back your perspective to eternity.

throughout the book of Revelation, there is a correspondence between an unseen spiritual war and the visible conflicts on earth. The happenings on earth are understood in terms of an ongoing spiritual battle between the victorious Christ and the spiritual powers that still challenge his reign and rule. All this may sound fantastical to us, yet it is not too hard to imagine that behind some of the injustice and evil we see today, behind unjust and tyrannical regimes, behind sex trafficking and the pornography industry, behind totalitarian oppression, persistent racism, child soldiers, and horrific evil stand not only a few isolated bad seeds but real, albeit invisible, powers of darkness. You can dismiss this as primitive and superstitious, the relic of an outworn mythology. But as poet Charles Baudelaire once said, “This is the devil’s greatest trick, convincing people he doesn’t exist.”

The cross of Christ is the victory of God (oh, strange victory!) over all the powers of this world that pretend to be absolute. “Nothing now is absolute except God as he is known in Jesus Christ; everything else is relativized.” 25 This means Christ is not just your individual savior, who came to save you from your individual sins and then whisk you away from this world. Rather, Jesus is the King of all creation, who in the most unlikely place and in the most unlikely fashion, unmasked, disarmed, and defeated these opposing powers with his own bleeding hands.

Today, the battle rages on. The rivals to Christ’s supremacy have been decisively defeated but not yet destroyed. In Christ, as Christ’s body, we engage these powers, seen and unseen, in the humble confidence that we are united to our King. He must win the battle, and he will. And one day he will return as King, to complete the new creation his own resurrection has begun. It has begun.

Over and against a shallow emotionalism that reduces the things of God only to how they impact us individually, but also over and against an arid intellectualism that reduces the things of God to abstract doctrines of cold assent, union with Christ brings together what we so desperately need today: the highest theology and the deepest spirituality.

This is a prayer that we might experience what we believe.