LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Union with Christ: The Implications for Biblical Counseling
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
Union with Christ: The Implications for Biblical Counseling
Counseling is about change.1 It is necessarily so because gospel ministry proclaims that in
Christ there is a future hope and a present reality of renewal.2 The concept of change is central
to the gospel, as J. Gresham Machen states: “It is inconceivable that a man should be given this
faith in Christ, that he should accept this gift which Christ offers, and still go on contentedly in
sin. For the very thing which Christ offers us is salvation from Sin—not only salvation from the
guilt of sin, but also salvation from the power of sin.”3
The counselor, as one who ministers the gospel of grace,4 endeavors to move the
counselee in a godward direction. Although all counselors take with them a culture of
information from which they draw and get basic direction,5 three fundamental assumptions
that biblical counselors must maintain are: (1) God has created each person; (2) sin has
prejudiced each person; and (3) God has made provision for each person to change. It is my
intention in this chapter to discuss a subject I consider to have utmost theological importance
and practical implications—union with Christ. It is my contention that the primary reality of
change in salvation is comprehended by union with Christ.
Beginning Assumptions about Union with Christ
Godward change, which is at once distinct and yet inseperable from initial change
wrought by union, is not an option because “real faith inevitably produces a changed life.”6 Paul
said that whom God “foreknew He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His
Son” (Rom. 8:29). Characteristically, Paul follows the great discourses of what God has
accomplished in Christ (the indicatives) with Spirit-endorsed commands (the imperatives) to
live in a “manner worthy of the calling with which [we] have been called” (Eph. 4:1). The
imperatives of Ephesians (ch. 4–6) follow the indicatives of the first three chapters of that same
epistle.7 Similarly, in Paul’s epistle to Roman believers, his magnus opus of theology, the
indicatives of chapters 1 through 11 form the foundation necessary for the imperatives of
chapters 12 through 16. To the apostle, change is an assumed experience because it is
preceded by, grounded in, and generated out of God’s objective working—what Ridderbos
terms the historical-redemptive working of God in Christ.8 Ridderbos explains that “The
imperative is grounded on the reality that has been given with the indicative, appeals to it, and
is intended to bring it to full development.”9
Although godward change is expected and grounded in the work of God in Christ, we
must hasten to add that in this life change will never be complete. In terms that at first seem a
bit surprising, Paul describes believers as those who “groan in this life while waiting eagerly for
the “adoption … the redemption of the body” (Rom. 8:23).10 The consummation of the
redemption must wait until that day when we will be fully transformed into the image of Christ
(1 John 3:2). Meanwhile, we live in the age that falls between the “already” (which has the dual
constituents of historical-redemptive and personal-appropriative) and the “not yet,” or the final
consummation that occurs when we will be ushered into the presence of Christ. Therefore, the
Christian life is lived out between the “already” and the “not yet” of redemption, it is in this
present age that we are called upon by God to be transformed (Rom. 12:2). In other words, we
are to struggle against sin in the pursuit of godward change.
Hence, it is necessary that biblical counselors be equipped with the knowledge of the
character of change (past, present, and future) in order to help counselees whose lives are
suspended between the polarities of “already” and “not yet.” At the same time, the counselee
is faced with the Bible-endorsed expectation that he or she become more like God now and yet
confronted with the ever-present, active, antagonistic principle—sin.
God entered the dimensions of time and space in the incarnation to effect change in the
environment of fallenness. Thus when we speak of change we must consider the doctrine of
union with Christ, the doctrine that encompasses the past, present, and future of a believer’s
transformation. It swallows the indicatives and the imperatives and hence provides the answers
to the how of change and the why of struggle. The counselor must know what the Bible teaches
concerning union with Christ in order to understand what changes in salvation and why
believers, who have been changed, sin. Because the counselor’s position on those two issues
will control how he or she responds to a counselee who is entangled in sin, the doctrine of
union with Christ is an essential part of the biblical counselor’s theological understanding. Out
of the counseling comprehension of the three tenses of change (past, present, and future) will
grow his or her method of counseling.
The Importance of Union with Christ
Union with Christ is at once a difficult and woefully neglected subject (the latter possibly
explained by the former). Yet Sinclair Ferguson writes that union with Christ is “a doctrine
which lies at the heart of the Christian life and is intimately related to all the other doctrines.…
Union with Christ is the foundation of all our spiritual experience and all spiritual blessings.”11
And Murray observes that “Union with Christ is really the central truth of the whole doctrine of
salvation, not only in its application but also in its once-for-all accomplishment in the finished
work of Christ.”12 In addition, the respected theologian A. W. Pink introduces his work on union
with this emphatic statement:
The present writer has not the least doubt in his mind that the subject of spiritual union is
the most important, the most profound, and yet the most blessed of any that is set forth in the
sacred Scriptures; and yet, sad to say, there is hardly any which is now more generally
neglected. The very expression “spiritual union” is unknown in most professing Christian circles,
and even where it is employed it is given such a protracted meaning as to take in only a
fragment of this precious truth. Probably its very profundity is the reason why it is so largely
ignored in this superficial age.13
Counselors must emphasize the doctrine of union with Christ because it incorporates two
key issues essential to understanding change and struggle. First, union with Christ is an all-
encompassing doctrine. “It embraces the wide span of salvation from its ultimate source in the
eternal election of God to its final fruition in the glorification of the elect.”14 Second, it is the one
doctrine that embraces the factors of what Christ has accomplished (the indicative) and what
believers are commanded to do (the imperative). Moule says that the gospel begins “in the
indicative statement of what God has done,” and before it goes on to the imperatives “to
struggle” it confronts us with the imperative “to attach oneself (be baptized! be
incorporate!).”15
Configured between what God has accomplished in Christ and what we are to do in obedience,
and possessed with a scope that extends from eternity past to eternity future, union with Christ
is an indispensable doctrine in understanding change and struggle in people’s lives.
The Representations of Union with Christ
In Scripture we find that union with Christ is taught through at least five metaphors.16
First, is the union of a building and its foundation. In Ephesians, Paul speaks of Christ as the
“comer stone.” In Christ, “the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy
temple in the Lord; in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the
Spirit” (2:21–22). Peter says that Christ is “a living stone, rejected by men, but choice and
precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual
house . . .” (1 Pet. 2:4–5). Second, union with Christ is pictured by union between man and wife.
Paul’s classic statement in Ephesians speaks to this metaphor, “For this cause a man shall leave
his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. This
mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:31–32).
Third, is the illustration of the vine and branches found in the gospel of John and again in Paul
(John 15:1–5; cf. Rom. 6:5; Col. 2:6–7). Fourth, Paul uses the metaphor of the union between
the members and head of the body. In his first epistle to the Corinthians he says that “the body
is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are
one body, so also is Christ” (1 Cor. 12:12). Fifth, and most significant, in Romans 5 and 1
Corinthians 15 Paul speaks of two corporate races under which all mankind is subsumed. One is
the race of all unregenerate persons who are in Adam. That race is under the sentence of
death. The second Adam, Christ, is the head of a second corporate race. In Romans, Paul
“points to the bond that joins all the descendants of Adam with their progenitor, as the pattern
and type of the communion between Christ and his own.”17 According to one commentator, in
chapter five of Romans Paul recollects “what we human beings are, as members of Adam’s lost
race; everything human is sunk in sin and stands under the wrath of God. But, on the other
hand, he has declared what we have become through Christ; by faith in Him we have been
delivered from the dominion of wrath and received into the kingdom of righteousness and
life.”18
Thus, just as the solidarity existing between Adam and his posterity explains how death
has passed upon all, so the solidarity between Christ and his posterity explains how the
obedience of One has been reckoned as the obedience of many. Paul is acknowledging here
what many have described as a “corporate personallty.”19 Adam and the Messiah are pictured
as the inclusive representatives of two humanities. Those who live in solidarity with the first
Adam constitute one body; those in solidarity with the one new Man constitute another. These
two bodies provide the only two solidarities that are open to mankind; in their inherent
opposition lies the clue to the character of each. The chart below gives the distinctives of
each.20
