Alive to God in Christ Jesus (Union With Christ Pt. 2)

In the introduction to this series on union with Christ, we examined the covenantal structure of God’s dealing with humanity and humanity’s standing before God. There are two options: either we are “in Adam”, represented by him and inheriting his guilt and condemnation, or we are “in Christ”, united to Him as a covenantal representative and endowed with His righteousness and blessings.

The New Testament speaks often of union with Christ in a variety of ways. One which we will examine in this article is the implication of our union with Christ in our sanctification.

Perhaps the passage where this is most clearly laid out is Romans 6. It appropriately follows immediately on the heels of Romans 5:12-21, which lay out the covenantal contrast between union with Adam and union with Christ.

Paul begins with a challenging question: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” He has just finished saying that “as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom. 5:21) So the question Paul wants to address is, does this grace give us license to sin more since grace will overcome our sin?

The Holy Spirit, writing through the Apostle Paul, is adamant that grace does not lead to license for sin. But it is not a law-based legalism. The Christian life should not be characterized by sin but neither should it be characterized by moralism or legalism.

Paul does not say, “By no means! We still need to strive to obey the Law!” Nor does he say, “By no means! Jesus would be mad with you if you sinned, therefore don’t sin!” He denies the license to sin but he does not do so on the basis of the necessity of law-keeping or even the displeasure of the Father. Now, it is true that God is grieved by our sin but our quest for God’s approval should not be the motivation to fight sin. God’s approval and love was securely won for us by Christ’s atonement and nothing we do can add or subtract from that.

Instead, Paul goes on, “By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” To Paul, living in licentiousness is completely unnatural for Christians who have been objectively united to Christ in His death and resurrection. How can we do so?

Paul connects the denial of sinful license with union with Christ in His death and resurrection:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 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. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

Romans 6:3-6

I’ve highlighted the references to union with Christ in the passage above. It’s clearly a central theme of Paul’s argument. Sinclair Ferguson writes, “All that he [Christ] has accomplished for us in our human nature is, through union with him, true for us and, in a sense, of us.”¹ Christ’s death is our death (to sin, see Rom. 6:9-10). Christ’s resurrection is our resurrection, in one sense spiritual (Rom. 6:4) and in another sense physical (1 Cor. 15:22-23). Ferguson goes on to note that the truth of Christ’s death and resurrection are “true of us as if we had been with him on the cross, in the tomb and on the resurrection morning!”²

Through union with Christ, His death is our death and His resurrection is our resurrection. Our baptism symbolizes our burial with Him and our rising to new life. The Apostle John uses the language of “new birth” to describe this phenomenon but the idea is very much the same. As Christians, we have died to our self which was in Adam and have been “born again” to new life in a new human race represented by our covenant head: Jesus Christ.

The implication for our sanctifying fight against sin is clear from vv. 7-11:

For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Romans 6:7-11

Ferguson writes, “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.” [emphasis original]³

Paul nails down his theology of sanctification through union with Christ in v. 11: So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Throughout the rest of Romans 6, Paul will use the analogy of slavery to sin and slavery to God to illustrate the Christian’s new relationship to both. In v. 20 he says that when the Roman Christians were slaves of sin (apart from Christ) they were free in regard to righteousness. The implication of this verse when compared with Romans 6:18 is that now Christians are free in regard to sin and slaves instead to righteousness.

This lines up well with John’s affirmation in 1 John 5:3 that our love for God is known through our obedience to His commands and His commandments are not burdensome. It is natural for God’s born-again children to desire to do the will of their Father. The 18th century hymnodist and poet, William Cowper, expressed this in his hymn Love Constraining to Obedience:

How long beneath the Law I lay
In bondage and distress;
I toiled the precept to obey,
But toiled without success.

Then, to abstain from outward sin
Was more than I could do;
Now, if I feel its power within,
I feel I hate it too.

Then all my servile works were done
A righteousness to raise;
Now, freely chosen in the Son,
I freely choose His ways.

To see the law by Christ fulfilled
And hear His pardoning voice,
Changes a slave into a child,
And duty into choice.⁴ [emphasis added]

Our adoption as sons of God has freed our hearts from sin and from the slavish obligations of the Law. We are indeed freed by grace but this grace not only frees us from obligation but also frees our hearts to desire and do the will of our Father. This is the glorious teaching of Romans 6.

Our union with Christ is key to understand if we are make spiritual progress in our journey of sanctification. It is not a matter of behavior-modification. It is not a matter, primarily or solely, of disciplining ourselves and white-knuckling against sin. (Although discipline is required in sanctification.) It is primarily a matter of understanding our new nature in Christ. This understanding comes to us in progressions. It is not an overnight fix. It is not an effortless matter of “claiming who we are” in Christ. It is an ever-deepening personal knowledge of Christ and an ever-deepening and ever-broadening understanding of the teaching of the Bible on our union with Christ and the implications in our lives now.

Footnotes

¹ Sinclair B. Ferguson, “The Reformed View” in Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification, ed. Donald L. Alexander; (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), p. 57.

² Ibid, p. 57.

³ Ibid, p. 57.

⁴ These are stanzas 2-4 and 6.