The most important doctrine you have not heard of (Union with Christ)

Do you realise that the Bible’s favourite way of describing our relationship with Jesus is one that we hardly ever use?  All over the pages of the New Testament there are references to our being ‘in Christ’ and Christ being ‘in us’.  It is called the doctrine of 

‘Union with Christ’, and it is the most important doctrine the church has forgotten!

Why don’t we think of this doctrine much?  Possibly because it is a little complicated.  Does it matter whether we understand this doctrine?  Absolutely!  One theologian said that this idea of Union with Christ ‘is the Christian life’.  It effects how we understand the past and present work of Jesus.  It shapes how we think of our relationship with God.

This idea of Union with Christ has many dimensions, so we are going to look mainly at how Christ represents us before the Father, how Christ resides in our hearts and how Christ relates us to each other.

Christ represents us before the Father

The Bible says that we are born ‘in Adam’.  He was our representative, or what theologians call our ‘federal-head’.  When he rebelled against the loving rule of God, we sinned in him.  Human life has never been the same since.  That doesn’t sound fair in our culture of extreme individualism.  But we must not let our culture be the sole determinate of what is fair in God’s eyes.  Most cultures throughout history have accepted that people are interrelated.  When a king says, ‘we are going to war’, the nation gets ready for battle.  

The good news is that Jesus has restored more than Adam lost.  He is the new Adam, and he offers to our federal-head.  We can have him as our representative instead of Adam.

One writer points out that because we are ‘in Christ’ ‘whatever is true of him is now true of us.  He died, we died. He is raised, we are (and will be) raised.  He is vindicated, we are vindicated.  He is loved, we are loved.  And so on, all because we are in him’ (Rory Shiner).  ‘God thought of us going through everything that Christ went through, because he was our representative’ (Grudem).

Jesus is our representative before the Father.  This means that God accepts us as perfectly righteous, because he was perfectly righteous.  His obedient life is transferred to my account.  Even though we let God down every day, the Father accepts me as the most deserving of children.  Your place in his family is not destroyed by your failures and shortcomings.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we could be made the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).  So, when you read the gospels and see Jesus act with compassion, sacrifice, love, grace and delight to obey God you should be filled with gratitude.  You have benefitted from his perfect life.  Shortly before his death the theologian, Gresham Machen, sent a telegram to a friend saying, ‘I am so thankful for the active obedience of Christ.  No hope without it.’  ‘By one man’s obedience many will be made righteous’ (Romans 5:19).

Not only did Jesus represent us in his life, he represented us in his death.  Looking ahead to the cross, the prophet Isaiah declared, ‘the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (Isaiah 53:6).  Peter explains that ‘he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree’ (1 Peter 2:24).  We were buried and raised with him (Romans 6:4). When Jesus died, our old self died.  When Jesus was raised from the dead, we were raised to new life.  In Christ our sins have been washed away and we are new creatures.

Are you ‘in Adam’ or ‘in Christ’?  You don’t end up being ‘in Christ’ against your will.  You are not ‘in Christ’ by birth.  Going to church, praying, being baptised, having first communion or confirmation will not bring you into Christ.  God draws people to his Son.  Christ will never turn anyone who comes to him to be their king.  But you have to be willing to have a new identity and become a new person.   

Christ is resident in our hearts

Now I suspect that most of you have not visited the website, ‘Royal Central.’  It will tell you all that you need to know about the British Royal family, including how to know when the Queen is resident in Buckingham Palace.  It used to be simple.  If there were no flags flying, then she was not at home.  If there were flags flying then ring the doorbell, she’s in.  Now you know she is out if the Union Jack is flying and is in if the Royal Standard is flying.  I tell you that because it explains why some of grew up singing a children’s song, ‘There is a flag flying high in the castle of my heart … because the king is in residence there.’  Through the Holy Spirit, the very Christ who is now seated at the Father’s side, dwells within you.  The king is in residence there.   

Paul tells the Galatians, ‘I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (2:20).  The fact that Christ lives in you is not shown by a flag, but by a life that he is transforming! 

Our old self died with Christ and so we are no longer slaves of sin (Romans 6:6). Christ now lives in you and he enables you to live the Christian life.  Apart from him you can do nothing (John 15:5).  While sin promises freedom, it leaves us ashamed and full of regret.  We need no longer need live a life of defeat.  ‘I can do all things in him who strengthens me’ (Philippians 4:13).  One of the reasons we fall in the face of temptation is that we depend on our own strength rather than lean on Jesus.  When we sin, we think, ‘I am better than this’, but we are not.  We are helpless without Christ.  Only in him we can live the godly life (2 Timothy 3:12).  Change comes through humility: when we accept that we are helpless and rely on his strength not ours.

What difference does it make to you that Christ is in you when you are tempted?  What difference does it make that he has brought you at the price of his own blood?  What difference does it make that he sees what you see, hears what you hear and knows how you feel?  What difference does it make that God promises that you will never be tempted beyond what you can bear, and that when you are tempted, he will always provide a way out (1 Corinthians 10:13)?                      

Christ relates us to each other
When Saul of Tarsus persecuted the church, the risen Christ asked him, ‘why do you persecute me?’ (Acts 9:4).  Jesus identifies himself with his people.  We are ‘one body in Christ, and individually members of one another’ (Romans 12:5).  Just as my mother expressed her one wish for her children was that we would get on with each other, Jesus prayed to his Father that ‘they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they may be in us’ (John 17:21).  Do you want to please the one who lives in you?  Then love his people and be a part of his church!  Indeed, love for his people is one of the strongest evidences that Christ lives in you (1 John 4:20).
Because we are one in Christ there can be no place in the church for sexist jokes, racial prejudice or class snobbery.  ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28).  Jesus promises that whenever we help the neediest brother or sister in Jesus, what we do we do for him (Matthew 25:40). 

Conclusion
The great London preacher, Charles Spurgeon, said, ‘there is no joy in this world like union with Christ.  The more we can feel it the happier we are.’  But how can we feel our union with Christ?
The one who dwells within us is called sympathetic (Hebrews 4:14-16).  He was a man of sorrows familiar with grief (Isaiah 53:3).  He knew what it was to learn obedience through suffering (Hebrews 5:8).  He was tempted in every way, yet without sin.  He knows what it is to feel guilt, for he took our guilt upon his shoulders.  He was forsaken, so that we would never be forsaken (Psalm 22:1).   While he is not pleased when we fall into sin, his heart reaches out to us, he feels compassion for us, and he wants to help us get to our feet.
Finally, because in Christ not hopeless.  I was reading a short biography of the Yugoslavian dictator, Tito.  It said that in his latter years he was aware of his mortality but could not face going to funerals.  He was scared of death.  As I pass through my middle-age I am trying to come to peace with the idea of one day I will die.  But we have nothing to fear if we are in Christ.  What shall separate us from the love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus?  Not even death (Romans 8:38).  We die ‘in Christ’ and we shall ever be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:14-17).
One theologian exclaimed that union with Christ is the Christian life.  It is here ‘is no truth … more suited to impart confidence and strength, comfort and joy in the Lord than this one of union with Christ’ (John Murray).