Many have emphasized Union with Christ as essential doctrine. Union with Christ is certainly fundamental in the Apostle Paul’s understanding of salvation. [1] John Stott calls this union “indispensable to our Christian identity,” [2] and declares that it is central to the entire New Testament gospel. And John Murray emphasizes that same essential quality when, in Redemption Accomplished and Applied he says, “Nothing is more central or basic than union and communion with Christ,”[3] and describes this union as “the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation”.[4] Yet, Murray and others don’t just emphasize union as a bare theological fact, devoid of application for the believer. In fact, Murray calls his readers to consider the personal and transforming nature of this doctrine when he says:
There is no truth, therefore, more suited to impart confidence and strength, comfort and joy in the Lord than this one of union with Christ.”[5]
And Hudson Taylor, the great 19th century missionary to China said, jubilantly:
… It is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Savior, to be a member of Christ! Think what it involves. Can Christ be rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and your left poor? Or your head be well fed while your body starves? … No more can your prayers or mine be discredited if offered in the name of Jesus (i.e., not for the sake of Jesus merely, but on the ground that we are His, His members) so long as we keep within the limits of Christ’s credit — a tolerably wide limit![6]
Not only does our union give us security and confidence, it also gives a very real power in terms of our progressive sanctification. When Romans 6:14 says, “Sin shall not have dominion over you,” we are not being given exhortation, but categorical assurance that the person “in Christ” is no longer a bondservant to sin. John Murray writes of the effect this knowledge has:
It is this abiding relationship to the death and resurrection of Christ, particularly, of course, to the latter, that constitutes the power, the dynamic, in virtue of which believers live the life of death to sin and of the newness of obedience.”[7]
Here we see that our union with Christ is necessarily tied to our sanctification; without its benefits our own attempts at holiness would be futile. In fact John Calvin strove to make it clear that the connection between being in Christ and being sanctified is so sure that we cannot have the one without the other:
Do you wish . . . to attain righteousness in Christ? You must first possess Christ; but you cannot possess him without being made partaker in his sanctification, because he cannot be divided into pieces.
1 Morey, Robert A., The Saving Work of Christ: Studies In The Atonement (Sterling, VA: Grace Abounding Ministries, Inc., 1980) 87.
2 Stott, John, Life in Christ: A Guide For Daily Living, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 2003), 37.
3 John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1955), 161.
4 Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 170.
5 Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 171.
6 Taylor, Dr. and Mrs. Howard, Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret (London: China Inland Mission, 1955), 116.
7 Murray, John, Principles of Conduct (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1957), 207. 8 Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 3.16.1.
8 Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 3.16.1.
A Thousand Times 