Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God

by Rankin Wilbourne

Abiding, as with any art, requires practice and discipline to reach that point of freedom and enjoyment. And like any artist, you’ll need to keep on practicing—repeatedly and habitually—or you’ll get rusty.

I must breathe in faith—I am in Christ and Christ is in me. God is good, God is in charge, and God loves me. Above all, what will make this day a good day will be abiding in Christ today, listening to his voice, keeping in step with his Spirit, walking in faith and repentance.

Meditating on Scripture can and should be a real-time experience of communion with the living Christ.

Union with Christ is how the Bible comes alive. The Bible is no longer just words on a page, and the call to meditate on it is not simply a call of duty.

The good is always the enemy of the best.”

Prayer is to union with Christ what conversation is to marriage; it’s how this union remains vital. If you never spoke to your spouse beyond “Good morning” and “Good night,” then you would undoubtedly be drifting apart. You would not be experiencing the fullness of your union.

Union with Christ reminds us that the real reward of prayer is not what we’re asking God for. The real reward of prayer is communion with God, made possible by our union with Christ

By injecting these gifts with deeper meaning and enchantment, union with Christ gives us something that is sorely needed today—a deeper appreciation of the place of the sacraments in worship. The mindset of union with Christ can revitalize your expectations and experience of gathering in community to worship.

The Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure.

We need a community in which to confess our sins to one another (James 5:16) and to hear the gospel spoken over our lives by others.

See, if you always got a high, or a spiritual surge, every time you drew the sail, it would be easy to shift into pursuing your own immediate gratification instead of pursuing Christ. It might become less about the horizon and more about another spiritual jolt. In the name of seeking God, you’d be using God to help you maintain a sense of control over your own life.

The doldrums train you to place your trust in God and not in your own frantic blowing. There will be, even must be, times when you draw the sail and nothing happens. You are doing everything “right.” You are reading the living Word, but it does not seem alive. You are praying to the living God, but it seems like no one’s listening. You are worshipping, but it just sounds like noise. You’re doing all you know how to do, yet you are stuck. The doldrums are there to remind you that it is the real God you are seeking. You must wait on him because he is God. He is not in our service. We are in his. Waiting on him means … waiting on him.

Waiting on God is critical to knowing God (Ps. 130:5–6) because it teaches us that we are not God.

When you remember that these means are precisely that—means to an end; when you remember that you are not looking for an experience (which may or may not come) but communing with God, who is always there; when you remember that there will be doldrums, then you can be assured that the most important times of meditation and prayer, worship, and community may in fact be the times you enjoy them the least. Take heart.

“Resolved, to examine carefully what that one thing in me is which causes me in the least to doubt the love of God.” 18

Pascal knew that while God would never forget him (Isa. 49:15), he was prone to forget God. So he sewed a reminder into his life, a daily tutorial to keep his union with Christ before him.

The point is that each of these three found a way to make pursuing God a habit. They found a way to keep the promises of God “on your heart … when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise”

even Jesus set aside time to commune with God (Luke 4:42; 5:16; 6:12), and he was God’s own son.

Trollope was saying that over the long run, the unglamorous habit of repetition sparks creativity and adds to productivity. “Inspiration is for amateurs,” photographer and painter Chuck Close said, “the rest of us just show up and get to work.”

Real artists, spiritual or otherwise, just show up and get to work.

Jesus is saying that the way we respond to God will affect our experience of him. If we trust God and obey him, then Jesus promises he will “manifest” himself to us. He will make himself more apparent. Jesus couldn’t be clearer that we will know God better by obeying him more.

Union is the secret to communion. Because only when you are absolutely “sure” and “certain” (see Heb. 11:1) that you are loved by God, that you are safe in Christ, will you want to pursue the one who already loves you best.

Union with Christ makes the art of abiding a duty of delight.

nothing can cause you to lose heart like suffering. But neither can anything lead you into God’s heart like suffering can. If you let it, suffering can drive you “like a nail” into the heart of God.

Suffering can be a shortcut toward this destination. It’s a shortcut no one would ever choose, but looking back, few would trade it for where it has brought them.

What you need most is only to know the central claim of this book—you are not alone, Christ is with you, in you, and you are hidden in him.

Can you say of yourself, with Paul, “I want to know Christ”?

Paul says that the power of Christ is inseparable from participation in his sufferings, that the way to know Christ is the way of becoming like him in his death. Do you really want to know this Christ?

Paul makes an important provision. You could hardly call it hidden in the fine print of the contract. It’s right in front of us: “provided we suffer with him.” This is the required path of living in Christ’s family and sharing in his glory.

If we are united to Christ, we are united to “a man of sorrows, … acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). We are united to a suffering servant. How could we expect not to suffer if we are united to one who suffered so much?

To know Jesus is to know his cross and to carry your own. Apart from carrying this cross, you cannot know this Savior, nor be united to him. The Christ in you is indeed triumphant and victorious, but, again, he is “a man of sorrows, … acquainted with grief.”

In Christ, we have with us one who has moved into our neighborhood, as it were. He is able to sympathize with us in every way because he too speaks the language of sorrow and loss. To be united to him and to know the comfort he brings must of necessity involve sharing in his sufferings

In our pain, there is a temptation to prefer our own will above God’s will for us, which is a temptation even our Lord faced (Luke 22:42). In our bewilderment, there is a temptation to turn away, to try to hide, or to seal off places in our hearts from a God we might be inclined to think is frowning at us or punishing us. But if you know that you are “in Christ,” and all the wonders that little phrase entails—that you are completely atoned for by Christ, covered by Christ, forgiven in Christ, washed clean in Christ—then you can be sure and certain that God loves you even though you may not know why he is allowing this suffering or what it will mean.

It can’t mean God is punishing you or condemning you since Christ already bore all the punishment and condemnation that our sins deserved, and he bore it completely, “once for all”

“The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.”

What has that got to do with his four little girls who are dead? Everything! Do you know why? When things go wrong, one of the ways you lose your peace is that you think maybe you are being punished. But look at the cross! All the punishment fell on Jesus. [Or] you may think … maybe God doesn’t care. But look at the cross!

The only way it can be “well with your soul” in the midst of agonizing personal trauma is if you know and are assured that you are covered “in Christ.” This is why Spafford, as he processed his own grief, calls to mind the complete sufficiency of Christ’s cross to bear the penalty of all his sins. This is how he doesn’t succumb to the torment of thinking he is being punished or condemned for his own sins or that he has brought this suffering down on himself or on those he loves.

While some suffering can be the Lord’s discipline to draw us back toward him (Heb. 12:5–11), it is not the Lord’s punishment for us, if we are in Christ. Christ has borne the condemnation, “not in part, but the whole.” And this storm may yet be God’s instrument to remind us (or those around us) of our utter dependence on the grace of God. It is always true that we are completely dependent on the grace of God for our salvation. It is always true that we are not in control. It is always true that we need Christ more than we can imagine.

God uses suffering not to punish us but to cause us to remember the miracle of his grace and his abundant provision. God uses suffering to bring us back to himself, back to his own heart.

Suffering drives us into the heart of God because this is what is in God’s heart—his suffering, still-scarred Son (Rev. 5:6). But thanks be to God, who causes the comfort of Christ to abound in our hearts as well

Like aging, suffering and pain are inevitable. The question is whether this pain will drive you further in to the heart of God or further away from the one who is “near to the brokenhearted”

But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

“But I can tell you one thing for certain: God was the first to cry for your boy.”

God sees, God knows, and God is with us. If we are united to Christ, we have the real presence of Christ, the suffering servant, weeping with us and carrying us along. He understands, and he is near.

In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? … Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

one of the most rewarding aspects of union with Christ is that it reminds you it’s not about you. To be in Christ, is, by definition, to be a part of something much bigger, more comprehensive, and more wonderful than you.

When you are united to Christ, you are connected to the whole body of Christ in a bond that is even closer than the ties that bind you with your own flesh and blood.

“Christian community is not an ideal we have to realize, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”

If Christ is your Savior, then all those who have ever known him, from across the centuries and around the globe, from every nation and people group, are your new brothers and sisters.

But when we stop here, we make the fatal mistake of placing ourselves at the center of the gospel.