Union With Christ

Wilbourne:

We may know what God has saved us from, but have we lost sight of what God has saved us for? 

Becoming a Christian is not simply coming to believe certain things about a God who remains outside of you. And being a Christian is not simply about what you do or don’t do. Christianity is a life of faith, but it’s a life of faith. You have been grafted into God’s own life, invited in to participate in the fellowship of God. 

Could anything about the Christian life be more precious than this? This is what God has saved you for—communion, relationship, and intimacy with himself. This is what Christ suffered for, “that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18). As J. I. Packer put it in his classic Knowing God: 

What will make heaven to be heaven is the presence of Jesus, and of a reconciled divine father who loves us for Jesus’ sake no less than He loves Jesus Himself. To see, and know, and love, and be loved by, the Father and the Son, in company with the rest of God’s vast family, is the whole essence of the Christian hope.… If you are a believer … this prospect satisfies you completely. 

 If the presence of Jesus is what makes heaven, heaven, and if union with Christ means that you can have the presence of Jesus dwelling within you now, then do you see what this means? Union with Christ means the reality of knowing God and living in communion with him doesn’t begin when you die. Eternal life begins in this life when Christ joins his life to yours (John 17:3). We can have fellowship with God through Christ (1 John 1:3). We can begin to experience heaven in our lives here and now.

 If you are united to Christ, you are a citizen of heaven (Phil. 3:20). Present tense. You have “every spiritual blessing” (Eph. 1:3). You participate in heavenly realities even as you walk around with both feet on the ground. Today we do this by faith in what is unseen. It requires our imagination. But one day it will be by sight, when we see him face to face (1 Cor. 13:12). 

Of all the good news the gospel brings, the greatest—and indeed the door to all the rest—is that you can be united to Christ. It’s really possible. Union with Christ is not an abstract idea. It is a powerful reality. And if Jesus has joined his life to yours, then you have been given everything you need for life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3).