Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God

by Rankin Wilbourne

Because we naturally fall into the trap of assessing the security of our union (Does God really love me?) on the strength of our communion (How am I feeling? How am I doing?).

One of the Puritan writers put it memorably, “Your heart is not the compass Christ saileth by.” 2

but our refusing to believe that he is so kind, and that he desires to be with us so much more than we do with him.

The Bible is filled with calls to “not lose heart” (2 Cor. 4:1; Eph. 3:13; Ps. 27:14), which implies that we will sometimes feel as though we’re about to or maybe that we already have (Ps. 40:12). And 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. 1

the storms of life can lead you where you want to go, as long as communion with God is your horizon.

such that your suffering is not amplified by confusion when it arrives.

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” (Heb. 10:10; Rom. 8:1). 4

it gives us a perfect person to show us that no life, not even the best one, is exempt from pain and suffering.

Why is remembering that you are “in Christ” so crucial to navigating suffering? Horatio Spafford was a prominent Chicago lawyer and follower of Christ in the mid-1800s. After his four daughters drowned in an Atlantic shipwreck, he wrote the now-famous hymn “It Is Well with My Soul.” When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, “It is well, it is well with my soul.” My sin—O the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part, but the whole, Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more; Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul! 6 Why, in his grief, does Spafford call to mind his own sin being “nailed to the cross”? In his book Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, Timothy Keller asks: 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! 7 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 co...

when we know our suffering can’t mean God doesn’t love us, suffering becomes a spur to “keep drawing the sail,” keep drawing near to God, even when we are confused or disappointed and may feel like pulling away.

One day, you may find yourself washed up on the shore of a far country by a way you would have never wished to travel. And yet you find this is not a place you want to leave.

Jesus is praying that we might become in practice what we already are in reality. We are called to become one because we are already one in Christ.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer captures this mystery in his book Life Together when he writes, “Christian community is not an ideal we have to realize, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.” 3

He “has made us both one” (Eph. 2:14). He has torn down the walls that so often divide us—of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. As Martin Luther King laments, we can live in...

As scholar D. A. Carson writes: The church itself is not made up of natural “friends.” It is made up of natural enemies. What binds us together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything of the sort. Christians come together, not because they form a natural collocation, but because they have been saved by Jesus Christ.… In this light, they are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’ sake.

Is it any wonder people don’t treasure the church when the gospel is often presented solely in individual terms (Christ died for you and forgives your sins so you can go to heaven)?

You are so loved by God, but God didn’t die just for you: “God so loved the world” (John 3:16), and God so loves the church, “which he bought with his own blood” (Acts 20:28 NIV). But when we make the gospel primarily about us as individuals and the benefits it brings us, is it so surprising that the church comes across as an unnecessary add-on, as excess baggage, as an easy target? Is it surprising that a common sentiment today is “Jesus, yes; church, no,” as if you could have one and not the other?

the kingdom of God “is not,” as one missionary statesman puts it, “a candle we kindle and carry, shielding its flame from the wind. It is the light that already shines on our radiant faces, turned toward that dawning glory that is already lighting up the Eastern sky with the promise of a new day.” 12

Tennessee Williams once described one of his characters as a “water plant,” 15 suggesting that she was rootless and dislocated, cut off from her history, and adrift. This displacement is a recurring theme in modern literature, and social theorists have increasingly commented on our growing sense of loneliness, especially as societies become more transient.

He is “the first and the last” (Rev 1:17), the “Alpha and the Omega” (v. 8). Scholar Richard Bauckham says that when the Bible calls Jesus the Alpha and the Omega, it is not only equating Jesus with God. It is saying that Jesus precedes and originates all things. He is “the only source and goal of all things.” 18 And we are united to him!

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. You are united to him who is ruling and over-ruling over all the details of history. So today you can be encouraged, knowing that Christ, who sees “the end from the beginning” (Isa. 46:10), has united your story to his own.

As we look at ourselves, we may see only failure or disgrace, but this is neither the whole truth nor the final truth about who we are in Christ. Jesus sees into the very depths of our shame and pours his love into these broken places.

Union with Christ shows us truth is not an abstract idea to be understood. Truth is a Person to whom we are united and in whom our lives are rooted and grounded in love. This is what it means to be saved—to be united to him who is grace and truth, justice and peace.

Ephesians 3 is a prayer for what preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones once called “experiential knowledge.” 1 To return to the theme we touched on in the introduction to this book, it’s one thing to know the truth, but it’s another thing altogether for this truth to come alive, capture our imaginations, and change our lives. Our imagination must be renewed by the reality of our union with Christ. To bring our book around full circle, this is a prayer that acknowledges the gap between the inheritance we’ve been given and our present experience of how we see ourselves (filled with all the fullness of God, really?). This is a prayer for the gap to be closed, or at least narrowed, that we may know the riches of our glorious inheritance, that we may know “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,” that we “may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Imagine you inherited a bank account with $100 million in it, bequeathed to you by someone who loved you dearly. You are aware of this treasure. You have been given a deposit guaranteeing your inheritance (Eph. 1:14). You receive weekly statements reminding you of your substantial balance (that is, you go to church). But suppose you have never drawn down on this fortune. You remain in dire poverty, living paycheck to paycheck. From one point of view, you are exceedingly wealthy, but insofar as how you live, you remain poor. You know you are wealthy beyond imagining, but you don’t really know your wealth. If your reluctance to draw on your inheritance were born of a true modesty, it might be commendable. But perhaps it stems from a refusal to accept such a lavish gift: “Oh no, I don’t deserve anything like that. That would be too much. I’ll just keep the life I have.” Or maybe it stems from fear or an unwillingness to risk, or even begin to imagine how, and how much, your life can change. “I’ll just remain as I am, thank you.” Does this not describe how so many of us are living? It’s like living in a trailer while millions of dollars worth of oil course underneath the land you own. Untapped. All this time untold riches have been right under our noses, but most of us keep on living the life we know. Even if we aren’t particularly happy with it, at least it’s familiar. We modestly decline rather than embrace a risk-filled, unknown future.