Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God

by Rankin Wilbourne

we can read the story of Felicitas, a second-century martyr. Charles Williams (one of the Inklings, a literary discussion group comprised of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, among others) writes in his book on the history of the Holy Spirit in the church: Her name was Felicitas; she was a Carthaginian; she lay in prison; there she bore a child. In her pain she screamed. The jailers asked her how, if she shrieked at that, she expected to endure death by the beasts. She said: “Now I suffer what I suffer; then another will be in me who will suffer for me, as I shall suffer for him.” 11 This sense of another in me, says Williams, “in a sentence defined the Faith.” 12 And so from the pens of the theologians to the cries of the martyrs, we can see that union with the indwelling Christ was the sum and substance of the gospel in the early church.