Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God

by Rankin Wilbourne

Imagination is that distinctly human capacity by which we image anything and everything that is not immediately visible to our eyes.

We may know what God has saved us from, but have we lost sight of what God has saved us for

It’s been said, “The longest journey a man will ever make is the journey from his head to his heart.”

So, to consider the question what exactly is union with Christ? let’s start here: union with Christ means that you are in Christ and Christ is in you.

Faith is how union with Christ becomes operative and powerful in your life.

Faith is a God-given gift that allows you to take hold of God’s having taken hold of you.

If you are in Christ, this is now the defining truth of who you are. Your life, your story, becomes enfolded by another story—Another’s story. That’s one way to define fait...

The only thing that could be better than having Jesus with you, beside you, would be having Jesus within you, wherever you are and wherever you go.

Christ dwelling in us by his Spirit is a guarantee that we can and will change.

Being a Christian is not about absorbing certain doctrines about God. Nor is it about being a better or different kind of person. The goal is having a personal, vital, profoundly real relationship with God through Christ by the Holy Spirit. The goal is enjoying communion with God himself. Union with Christ is not an idea to be understood, but a new reality to be lived, through faith.

When I base my Christian life on my Christian experience, I become locked in the labyrinth of my own performance. I am only as sure of God as my current emotions and obedience allow. My eyes are fixed on myself.

In the main, there are two dominant voices on offer today—one we will call the way of extravagant grace, “just believe,” and the other we’ll call the way of radical discipleship, “just obey.”

Only those who believe in his grace will have the power to obey him.

Undiluted grace and uncompromising obedience meet in the person of Jesus. He is always full of both.

As we have emphasized, becoming a Christian means more than believing Christ did certain things for you long ago. It means that Christ joins his life to yours in such an intimate and comprehensive way that the prevailing metaphor for this union in the Bible is marriage (Eph. 5:32).

You can hear the high call of Christ not as a bar to live up to but as an ennobling reality to live into.

Everything between the opening of Genesis and the end of Revelation is part of God’s plan for how that restoration will take place. God’s purposes have never changed. His original intent is his final intent: that the people of God might dwell in the place of God, enjoying the presence of God—this is the arc of the whole biblical story, from Genesis to Revelation.

We are united to Christ like parts of a body (1 Cor. 12), like living parts of God’s temple (1 Cor. 3), like a husband and wife in the bond of marital union (Eph. 5). Or, our union with Christ is like new clothes that we put on (Eph. 4).

James describes the life that Christ died to enable you to live.

It is a beautiful dance: our highest joy is found in God’s glory, and God is most glorified in us when we find our highest joy in him.

And it is at the cross of Christ that we see God’s glory most clearly because the cross is our best picture of who God is: God providing from within his own life the gift of bringing us back into his life.

The first and greatest benefit of our salvation is that Christ unites us to himself. For this reason, John Murray says, “Nothing is more central or basic than union and communion with Christ,” for it “is the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation.”

Union with Christ is a whole new mindset. It offers surprising answers to our oldest questions: Identity—Who am I? Destiny—Where am I headed? Purpose—What should I be doing? Hope—What can I hope for along the way?

The main idea of this chapter is simple but revolutionary. Union with Christ gives you a completely new self-understanding found outside of yourself in Christ. Union with Christ gives you a new identity.

Against the prevailing mindset of our day—you are what you make of yourself—union with Christ tells you that you can discover your real self only in relation to the One who made you.

Your mindset is the lens through which you see the world and yourself.

For you to want the new mindset Christ offers and the new identity it confers, you have to see it in sharp contrast, even collision, with the mindset you’ve previously been living under. You have to see it as a more attractive, more compelling option.

We may co-opt God into our plans, but we don’t want him making plans for us.

God becomes a stagehand to the play we are writing and starring in.

Jesus will not be an accessory to your identity.

Novelist Walker Percy says, “I have learned that the most important difference between people is between those for whom life is a quest and those for whom it is not.”

As Nietzsche said, “If you have your why for your life, you can get by with almost any how.”

As C. S. Lewis puts it, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”

Dante was the one who showed me that sin was not the breaking of rules so much as my misdirected love.

Peter Kreeft writes, “We are half-men, he is perfect man. We are inhuman humans, he is perfect humanity. We are alienated from ourselves, he is perfectly himself … He is more us than we are.”

“Not only do we only know God through Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ.”

But one of the great discoveries of the Christian life is coming to see our failings as occasions to praise Christ for his complete sufficiency.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones puts it, “We must never look at any sin in our past life in any way except that which leads us to praise God and magnify his grace in Christ Jesus.”

For relationships, even and especially difficult relationships, are the school in which we learn to deny ourselves and love others.

Leo Tolstoy once defined boredom as “the desire for desires.”

In the Bible, holiness is not an optional extra reserved for the cloistered few or only those most advanced. It is God’s expectation for all of his people at all times and places.

To be holy means to be set apart for God’s purposes,

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

J. C. Ryle puts it this way: “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.”

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

If we base our objective standing before God on our subjective day-to-day performance, we have a recipe for spiritual depression.

Unless you grasp and live out of your union with Christ, the call to holiness will be oppressive, unbearable, and impossible.

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

His commands make you wise: “Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding” (Deut. 4:6). His commands make you free: “And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts” (Ps. 119:45 KJV). His commands are always for our good: “And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes … for our good always” (Deut. 6:24). And his commands lead us to life: “You make known to me the path of life” (Ps. 16:11).

Where does the strength come from to move out in joy and peace? It begins with the assurance that God is for you—that’s your anchor! And the knowledge that God is in you—that’s your engine! And the confidence that God is with you and not disappointed in you—that’s the hand on your back. These can only come from laying hold of your union with Christ.