Saturday Sermon: Union With Christ in Christian Living

One of the most foundation doctrines of the Christian life is the reality of the believer’s union with Christ. By the mysterious power of God the believer is united to Christ so that salvific works and benefits of Christ becomes possession of the believer.

I recently listened to Dr. Sinclair Ferguson message where he talks about this doctrine. I would highly recommend this message to you as either a great introduction or a great reminder about this reality.

You can get the audio here.

Christ Defines Our Existence as Believers

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Romans 6:5)

All that [Christ] accomplished for us in our human nature is, through union with him, true for us and, in a sense, of us. He died to sin once; he lives to God (6:10). He came under the dominion of sin in death, but death could not master him. He rose and broke the power of both sin and death. Now He lives forever in the resurrection life of God. The same is as true of us as if we had been with him on the cross, in the tomb and on the resurrection morning!

We miss the radical nature of Paul’s teaching here to our great loss. So startling is it that we need to find a startling manner of expressing it. For what Paul is saying is that sanctification means this: in relationship both to sin and to God, the determining factor of my existence is no longer my past. It is Christ’s past. The basic frame work of my new existence in Christ is that I have become a “dead man brought to life” and must think of myself in those terms: dead to sin and alive to God in union with Jesus Christ our Lord.

~Sinclair B. Ferguson, Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification, p. 57

Christ is Our Sanctification

Jesus is the “author” of our sanctification, in the sense that he creates it for us, but he is also its “pioneer” because he does so out of his own incarnate life, death and resurrection. He is the “pioneer” of our salvation, because as the Hero of Faith (to be distinguished from the long list of those heroes who bear witness to him [Heb 12:1]), he has endured the cross, despising its shame and the opposition of sinners, and is now seated at God’s right hand. He is the first and only fully sanctified person. He has climbed God’s holy hill with clean hands and a pure heart (Ps 24:3-6). It is as the “Lead Climber” that gives the sanctification he has won to others (Acts 5:31). As “pioneer, ” Jesus has himself gone ahead of us to open the way to the Father. By doing so, he brings to the Father in similar obedience all those who are “roped” to him by grace and faith.

Christ is our sanctification. In him it has first come to its fulfillment and consummation. He not only died for us to remove the penalty of our sin by taking it himself; he has lived, died, risen again and been exalted in order to sanctify our human nature in himself for our sake. This is the significance of his words shortly before the cross, “Sanctify [the disciples] by the truth….As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified” (Jn 17:17-19).

~Sinclair B. Ferguson, Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification, p. 49

Christianity Makes One Weak

“For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God” (2 Cor. 13:4).

The ‘super-apostles’ in Corinth despised Paul ‘weakness’ (‘his bodily presence is weak’, 2 Cor 10:10). They said he was ‘unimpressive’ (2 Cor 10:10). Paul responds by indicating that it is in his weakness that he is an analogy of Christ to men. God’s power does not necessarily destroy weakness; indeed, his saving power is expressed through the weakness of the cross.

Careful attention is required in order to feel the weight of Paul’s language here. He does not say: ‘We are weak in ourselves, but we are strong in Christ.’…Rather, Paul has a different perspective: bound by the Spirit to Christ crucified and risen, he is weak in Christ, as well as powerful in him….Paul’s weakness is not a motivation for seeking union with Christ in order that he might be strong; it is the direct consequence, implication and outworking of that very union in the Spirit.

This, then, is the way of sanctification, because it is the way of Christiformity, and ultimately the way in which the restoration to the divine glory-image is complete.

~ Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Holy Spirit, p. 170-171

Why the Virgin Birth is Important

Taken from Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Holy Spirit, p. 41-43.

5 reasons why the virgin conception-birth is important:

The action of the Holy Spirit (coupled with the absence of conception ‘by the will of man’, J. 1:13) points to the sovereign newness of the work God is accomplishing,

• While Mary is involved in the virgin conception she is completely passive in it, because it is the direct result of the mysterious action of the Holy Spirit. Here, as Barth underlined, over against the place given to Mary by the Roman Catholic theology, the active contribution of humanity in providing salvation is nullified.

The human nature which was assumed by the Son of God was created ex nihilo, but was inherited through Mary. It is our human nature, ‘addicted to so many wretchedness’, as Calvin vividly puts it. Subject to the pains and temptations of this life, his human natured needed to be acted upon by the Holy Spirit in order to be sanctified.

• Only by the work of the Spirit could the divine person of the Logos assume genuine human nature, come ‘in the likeness of sinful man’ (Rom 8:3), and yet remain ‘holy, harmless, undefiled’ (Heb. 7:26, AV), ‘the holy one’ (Lk. 1:35).

The revelation of the virgin conception by the Spirit forbids any adoptionist Christology.

• There is no room for the notion that the man Jesus of Nazareth becomes the Son of God by adoption….The modern addiction to a Christology exclusively ‘from below’ is a truncated pneumatology as well as a deformed Christology.

The conception of Jesus by the Spirit underlines both his identification with our frailty (he assumes our nature at its smallest and weakest) and his essential distinctiveness, not in relation to the reality of his humanity but in relation to his liability to guilt.

• The work of the Spirit preserves both the reality of his union with us in genuine human nature, and his freedom from the guilt and curse of Adam’s fall (Rom 5:12-21).

The conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit is the mode by which the Father’s sending of the Son is effected. As such, it underlines the principle that, in the work of redemption which Christ spearheads, each person of the Trinity is engaged.