Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God

by Rankin Wilbourne

Jesus makes it clear that the amount of fruit that comes out of our lives will be a direct result of how much (John 15:5) or how little (v. 6) we heed his commandments. In fact, he goes on to say, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love” (v. 10).

That’s why the sailing metaphor is instructive. Life with God is not like a motorboat, where we are in control of the power and direction. But neither is it like a raft, where we just sit back and are carried along. It’s like sailing. While we can’t control the most important thing—the wind that makes us move—that doesn’t mean there is nothing left for us to do. We have to draw the sail to catch the wind. We must labor to be brought near.

One of my favorite images for the Christian life is a bicycle. A bicycle must have two functioning tires to move forward. The front tire is grace. Grace always leads. The back tire is demand. Demand always follows grace (Exod. 20:1–3). But both are needed for the Christian life to move forward (see chapter 3). To extend the analogy, belief and repentance are like pedals for this bicycle. You must keep pressing on both. Yes, occasionally the road will head downhill and you can coast, but if you ignore either tire or attempt to push only one of your pedals, you’ll get in a ditch. Attend to both tires, and keep pedaling.

It’s been said the Christian life is like playing with a yo-yo while walking upstairs. There are a lot of ups and downs, but the overall direction is up. What matters most is not how far along we are but what direction we are facing. How do we keep pressing on and moving up? How do we keep going in the right direction?

The first few choices you make each morning have great power to set the direction of the whole rest of your day.

We must labor to keep our union with Christ in front of us day after day or we will drift. To return to the sailboat analogy with which we began this chapter—what does it take for a boat to drift away? Nothing. If it is not anchored or tied down, it will drift away. “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away” (Heb. 2:1). As the hymn says: O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be; Let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wand’ring heart to thee. Prone to wander—Lord, I feel it—prone to leave the God I love: Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above. 12 The unflagging, unfailing grace of God is always blowing. And every day, it is our union with Christ—the reality that we are bound to him—that is our anchor, keeping us from drifting away, and our engine, the wind in our sails that propels us forward. Each day we wake up and we begin again. “Always we begin again.” 13 So today, let us “labor to be brought near,” confident that our labor is not in vain. Now for some sailing lessons.

If you’ve ever been on a long hike, then you know that if you wait until you feel thirsty to drink water, you are in trouble. You’ll already be on the verge of dehydration and possible exhaustion. In the same way, if you pray only when you feel a desperate need, you’re probably suffering from a sort of soul dehydration and possible spiritual exhaustion. And yet, if you don’t put these means of abiding in their place—as nourishment—they can become merely boxes to check, duties to perform, one more thing to do on an already-long list. As we said in the last chapter, life with God is like sailing. You can’t move yourself. You are completely dependent on a power outside of you. You need the wind, and the wind blows where it will. You can’t control it. But you can catch it. And to catch the wind, you must draw the sail. To draw the sail, certain skills must be learned and put into practice. But these skills will benefit you only if you’ve decided to go on the journey in the first place. So let’s assume that you want communion with God. How then do you draw the sail?

Some of us might feel suspicious about spiritual disciplines, seeing them as rote or mechanical or empty. And they can be. But union with Christ changes how we understand these means of grace. It makes you see them in ways you never have. When union with Christ becomes the lens through which we view these means, they are transformed from mechanical duties into living opportunities to come into the presence of the living Christ.

The reader of the Bible comes to the text not as a stranger to Christ—who is the central subject of all Scripture—but as one who is actually connected to Christ by the Holy Spirit, as one who is really in the real presence of the risen Lord in the prayerful reading of Scripture. Meditating on Scripture can and should be a real-time experience of communion with the living Christ. 3 Do you approach the Bible with the expectation that the same Spirit who inspired these words once, long ago, is the same Spirit who is in you now, speaking to you and illuminating these words for you? There is a reason the Bible is called “living and active” (Heb. 4:12), because the living Christ is actively speaking through these words to those who are willing to listen to his voice (John 10:27).

This doesn’t mean you always experience the feeling of God’s presence. You can’t control the wind! But it does mean you can always hoist the sail and come into his presence expecting to hear a word from him.

Oswald Chambers once said, “The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best.” 7 Because God is better than anything we could be asking for, better even than life itself (Ps. 63:3–4), the call to persist in prayer is not for God’s sake, but for ours—to train and purify our desires. Prayer is integral to abiding because the real point of prayer is not something but someone.

But throughout the New Testament, baptism is described as a sign of our union with Christ (Col. 2:12; Rom. 6:4; Gal. 3:27). What is most important about baptism is not how (immersion or sprinkling?) or whom (children or adults?) but what. Baptism is a sign of our entrance into union with Christ. 13 It may look forward in hope or back in celebration, but anytime you see someone being baptized—if you are a Christian—it is a visible reminder of what is most true about your life. “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Rom. 6:3 NIV). Likewise, the Lord’s Supper is a sign of our ongoing union with Christ. In observing the Lord’s Supper, we remember (“Do this in remembrance of me”) in gratitude (Eucharist, as the Lord’s Supper is sometimes called, means “giving thanks”), but these are perhaps secondary to what is more important. In taking the Lord’s Supper, we commune with the living Christ and his body (1 Cor. 11:27). It is no accident that the observance of the Lord’s Supper is most often called communion. “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16). The Bible is saying that the Lord’s Supper doesn’t merely remind us of a gift. It is a gift. And that gift is nothing less than Christ himself. As Christ says, “This is my body, which is given for you” (Luke 22:19). What the signs of bread ...

The doldrums are an important, even necessary, part of learning to abide. They protect us from the dangerous temptation of enthroning our experience of Christ over the real Christ. 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. But precisely because it is the real God you are seeking, by definition this means you must give up your right to control him. You can’t control the wind! You are utterly dependent on a power outside of you. Jesus says, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). It’s a terrifying truth, but in order for it to become life giving to us, we have to be made aware, sometimes painfully so, that we can’t coerce or control God by our own frantic maneuvering. Think about how silly and pointless and exhausting it would be for someone to stand up in his sailboat and blow with all of his might onto a limp, hanging sail. How sad. But isn’t that how many of us approach these means of grace—if we just try hard enough, we’ll be bound to move? No wonder we get so easily flustered. 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. Y...

This means the most important periods of your communion with God will almost necessarily be those when you are “not getting anything out of it.” The doldrums. The most important seasons of growth will often be the ones you feel the least growth. The doldrums. They are training you to put your trust in the wind. Waiting for the wind, and being out of control, forces us to let go of our cherished idol of instant gratification. “For God alone my soul waits in silence” (Ps. 62:1). 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.

Edwards knew he had to keep these resolutions in front of him every week. You might think, I’m not Jonathan Edwards! And that is precisely the point. If a man of his towering intellect and spiritual sensitivity needed a disciplined habit to remind himself of the truths of the gospel, how much more then do we?

Blaise Pascal was a seventeenth-century French mathematician and scientist. He was a genius (as a child, he discovered all the theorems of Euclid before he’d ever even heard of Euclid!), and some of his mathematical theorems are still studied today. Then when he was thirty-one, something life-altering happened to him. And we know this because eight years later, when he died an untimely death, a worn parchment was found sown into his coat. Written on it was the following testimony: The year of Grace 1654. Monday, 23 November From about half past ten in the evening until about half past midnight. FIRE! “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,” not of philosophers and scholars. Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ … My God and your God … The world forgotten, and everything except God … Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy … the fountain of living waters … Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Let me never be cut off from him! 20 Pascal kept this parchment on his person for eight years, moving it from coat to coat, so that it was literally next to his heart wherever he went. 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. And if Pascal, a genius, needed a reminder sewn into his coat, then how much more do we need to sew reminders into our lives?

Our response to God is not the root of his love; it is the fruit. But the fruit is where the nourishment drawn from the root manifests in sweetness and beauty. And the presence of fruit will give us greater assurance that our lives are rooted in him: “By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3–6). Now why is this distinction between union and communion so important for us? 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?). And we get seduced into thinking it’s up to us to keep it up. Abiding then becomes a chore, a box to check, a bar to clear—“Read your Bible!” comes across like “Clean your room!” “Pray more” sounds like “Do more.” It then becomes easy to feel frustrated and think, But I’m not getting anything out of this. So why bother? Don’t you see how this is like standing up in your sailboat and blowing on your own sail? Not only will you never move forward this way, not only will you exhaust yourself, but how could you ever rest? How could you ever have any assurance that God loves you if the ground of your confidence is your own frantic blowing?

when you don’t read or pray, God is not like a disappointed schoolteacher, scolding you for failing to complete your assignment. Rather, God is your patient and loving Father. He desires communion with his child so much that Owen says nothing grieves God more than our “hard thoughts” about him, that is, our unwillingness to believe that God really is this tender and kind toward us. Why does nothing grieve God more? Because he knows “how unwilling is a child to come into the presence of an angry father.”

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 To return to our sailboat image, a storm, though terrifying, can propel you further and faster along than you ever imagined. You were totally disoriented and felt like you were going to die, but you woke up and discovered you had moved hundreds of miles in the night, far swifter than sunny days and smooth sailing could have ever propelled you. In the same way, the storms of life can lead you where you want to go, as long as communion with God is your horizon. 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.

But if your storms are still on the horizon or not yet in view, may I suggest that it can be most helpful to consider your theology of suffering before the need arises, such that your suffering is not amplified by confusion when it arrives. Just as sailors run emergency drills in fine weather to prepare for the storms to come, so you have the opportunity to prepare your heart by considering how and why God can use suffering in your life.

Jesus lived a perfect life and terrible things still happened to him. Jesus was the only one who ever trusted and obeyed God perfectly, yet he nevertheless was made to walk the way of suffering unto death, leading George MacDonald to conclude, “The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.”

The problem with defining union with Christ as “you are in Christ and Christ is in you” is that it makes union with Christ sound as though it’s all about “you.” But in fact, 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.

Union with Christ means we are part of a larger family, a broader mission, a longer story, a bigger world, and a deeper love.

In John 17, Jesus prays, “Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, [I ask] that they also may be in us … I in them … that they may become perfectly one” (vv. 21, 23). 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. “For you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). 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.”

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.

Union with Christ, therefore, gives much-needed breadth to our understanding of what salvation means, specifically whether it is a personal matter or a public concern. I have said union with Christ rescues us from false choices, and here is a prime example: Is your salvation an individual thing or a community thing? Is it about you, or is it about the church? Some of us might lament that there is a low view of the church today, such that a large number of people who identity themselves as Christians are reluctant or unwilling to affiliate with a local church.

For is anything more narcissistic than to hear, “You are so loved by God that if you were the only person in the world, he would have died just for you?” 7 This is a dangerous half truth, and like any half truth, it obscures something critical. 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?

Did the biblical writers describe salvation primarily as a legal category having to do with an individual’s standing before God, or did they mean it as primarily a social category having to do with the community of God’s people? 8 Union with Christ shows you that this is a false choice. If you are in Christ, then, by definition, you are a part of his body (1 Cor. 12:27). That’s why the church historically (from the early church through the Reformation and even beyond) said things that sound strange, even offensive to our ears today, such as, “Outside of the church there is no salvation.” 9 In their thinking, in line with the biblical writers, there was no separation. To love Christ means that you love his body, the church.

Union with Christ gives us much-needed breadth to understanding the church’s mission. 13 It says that grace and justice, the cross of Christ and the kingdom of God, can no more be separated than Christ himself can be torn in two. If we insist on only one or pit one against the other, then we are dividing the heart of Christ, who so plainly cared about both (compare Luke 4:18 and Mark 10:45). 14 Union with Christ is about being united to the heart of Christ. Accordingly, we must be both the declaration community and the demonstration community. If Christ cares about both, shouldn’t his church? If we are united to him who is full of both grace and justice, how could we choose just one?

When the twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth was asked, “When were you saved?” he famously answered, “It happened one afternoon in AD 34 when Jesus died on the cross.” 17 And yet, if you are “in Christ,” there was a time when you were “without Christ” (see Eph. 2:12). The possibility of being connected to him is rooted in a history that predates you. But that seed must take root in the soil of your time-bound life (1 Pet. 1:23). The seed comes to fruition when we respond to God in faith. By faith, Christ’s finished work in the past is applied to our lives in the present by the Holy Spirit, who gives us the eyes of faith to see who Jesus is and what he has done for us (Acts 26:18). The Holy Spirit is the bond who connects us to Christ today. And once Christ’s life is connected to yours, nothing, not even death, can separate you from him (Rom. 8:38–39). He is yours and you are his forever.