LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
The Consequences of Union with Christ
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
10/2022
The Consequences of Union with Christ
The Bible speaks of wonderful consequences of union with Christ. Yet I have noted how
many who write about this union seem to drift in the wrong direction because they fail to
maintain the distinction between the consequences of union and the essence of union.21 Thus,
rather than addressing what union is, they merely address what it produces. Albeit, while we
are seeking to understand the meaning of union, it is important to acknowledge the normal
consequences that result from it. We will not venture to examine all of these consequences,
but will include three here that relate to our pursuit of the essence of change wrought in
salvation.
Justification
The first consequence of union we will consider is justification. Ridderbos defines
justification as that which “man requires in order to go free in the judgment of God and to
know himself discharged from the divine sentence.”22 Paul puts it this way: “All those who
believe … [are] being justified as a gift by his [God’s] grace (Rom. 3:22–24); again, Paul says, “A
man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law” (Rom. 3:28). A classic text of justification
is Romans 1:17 where Paul writes, “The righteousness of God [is] revealed from faith to faith: as
it is written, those who are by faith, just, shall live” (author’s translation). God declares the
believer to be justified because He imputes (Rom. 3:28; 4:11ff) righteousness to the believer.
“The underlying assumption of these passages is that Christ himself is the righteousness and
that, by union with him or by some kind of relationship which we come to sustain to him, we
gain property in that righteousness which he is.”23 It is important to note that the biblical
doctrine of justification does not require a belief in the change of regeneration as being
substantive or constitutional in nature.
New Life
In union with Christ, God restores us to relationship with Himself through the objective
reality of justification. But salvation “does not consist only in a new relationship, but that a
restoration of the whole of life in the most inclusive sense of the word results from it and has
been given with it.”24 Thus Paul speaks of the righteousness of God accomplished in Christ as a
“justification of life” (Rom. 5:18). To Paul, the two realms of existence (the realm of death and
the realm of life) are at once decisive and self-evident. That is, the good news of the Gospel
resides in the declaration of life brought from death. In 2 Timothy 1:10 Paul says that Christ has
vanquished death and brought life and incorruptibility to light “through the gospel.” Because of
its life-giving power, Paul calls the gospel the “word of life” (Phil. 2:16). Elsewhere, Paul can
actually speak of the gospel as an “aroma of life and death” (2 Cor. 2:14–16).25 The irreducible
element of gospel proclamation is that it is the declaration of life in Christ.
In union with Christ believers have been taken up into the new life context of Christ. The
concept of newness in Paul’s writings is critical for an adequate understanding of the essence of
change and must be contemplated in distinction to what was old. In Ephesians 4:23–24, the
“old man” (ho palaios anthrōpos) is a view of the whole self in its fallenness.26 Thus, the old
man is the autonomous man under sin. The theological significance of Paul’s contrast and
comparison of the new and old man is poignantly expressed in the following discussion:
Paul is seeking to express [i.e. speaking of the antithesis in 1 Cor. 5:6–8] the incompatibility
between the previous life in sin and newly begun Christian life.… The thought is even more
sharply put in the contrast between the old man and the new, Rom. 6:6; Col. 3:9; Eph. 4:2.… In
Rom. 6 Paul says that he who is baptised is baptised into Christ’s death. The service of sin is no
longer possible.”27
The new life context of the new man and the old life context of the old man are mutually
exclusive—they cannot coexist. Furthermore, the change from old man to new man is an
instantaneous work of the Holy Spirit: “In Titus 3:5 the Holy Spirit is revealed as the agent who
effects this amazing change in a person. Apparently, here the continuing process of the Spirit’s
work is not primarily in mind, but the instantaneous change which takes place at conversion.
(Note the aorist tense: ‘He saved us.’)”28 In the life context of the new man, the Holy Spirit
rules. “The Spirit is not only the one under whose dominion the church may live, but he also
enters into the actual existence of believers.”29 Even though progress is not in view in Titus 3:5,
we must hasten to say that the work of the Spirit within the realm of new life marks the
inception of renewing.30 New life is a radical and instantaneous transformation, not of
substance but from one life context to another.
The Spirit
The person who is united with Christ is also “in the Spirit” (Rom. 8:9). “To be ‘in the Spirit’
means to be in the realm that the Spirit created, where the Spirit blesses and gives new life.”31
The reality of that indwelling is first christological not anthropological. That is, the Spirit
indwells Christ (1 Cor. 12:13), and by virtue of union with Christ those who believe participate in
the Spirit. It follows then that one who is joined to Christ is joined to the Spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). On
the subject of the primacy of Christ in relation to the Spirit’s indwelling, Ridderbos makes this
statement:
The thought is not that the Spirit first shows himself to individual believers, brings them
together into one whole, and thus constitutes the body of Christ. For in this way participation in
Christ would follow upon sharing in the Spirit, whereas the church has been given precisely with
Christ as the second Adam. The sequence is accordingly the reverse: those who by virtue of the
corporate bond have been united with Christ as the second Adam, have died and been buried
with him, may know themselves to be dead to sin and live to God, may also know themselves to
be “in the Spirit.” They are, because included in this new life-context, no longer in the flesh, but
in the Spirit (Rom. 8:9).32
The Spirit indwells Christ and His Body, the Church. The ministry of Christ and the Spirit are
so conjoined that being in Christ is described as being in the Spirit, and conversely, being in the
Spirit is tantamount to being in Christ In fact, and notably, all the expressions and realities of
new life are attributed to the Spirit as well as to Christ. Newness of life, which is after the
pattern of Christ’s resurrection, coalesces into the “newness of the Spirit” (Rom. 7:6). Thus, new
life is said to be a gift of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:6), and the corresponding and progressing change
generating from new life is at once the ministry of Christ and the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18).
In Galatians 5:25 Paul says that “if we live by the Spirit (indicative) we will also walk by the
Spirit (imperative). Union then, with its central characte
ristic of corporateness, pictures the Spirit indwelling the Church (Christ’s Body), and as
members of that new realm of existence we have been translated from the dominion of sin
(which has been broken) into the dominion of Christ (which has been inaugurated, Col. 1:13).
Thus, Spirit indwelling is not anthropological (spatial) but christological (corporate).33 Therefore,
the plural pronouns of 1 Corinthians 3:16 are not many individuals but, rather, are Pauline
expressions of the corporate nature of the body of Christ—in which the Spirit dwells and in
which we are incorporated through union.34
Synopsis
The union of the believer with Christ includes the christological blessings of justification,
new life, and indwelling. Based on those foundational realities the believer receives further
enjoyments from life in Christ. In order to understand the essence of the change that occurs in
salvation, we suggest that incorporation, not alteration, is the best description of this change.
The realities of justification, new life, and indwelling do not necessitate belief in a change in
man’s essence because the Bible does not teach that they accomplish such change. People are
declared—not made—righteous. In new life, a person is part of the new humanity in which
Christ is the head. That person is joined to Christ, and because the Spirit indwells Christ, that
person participates in Christ’s gift to the Church, the Holy Spirit.
