What is Union with Christ?

Union with Christ is at the very heart of the Christian faith, yet its meaning and implications are lost upon the vast majority of Christians today. What is union with Christ, and why does it matter in the Christian life? 

Through faith, the Holy Spirit unites us with the incarnate Son of God in his death, resurrection, and ascension, such that we who are in Christ know God as our Father. Union with Christ is thus first and foremost about knowing Christ, and with him, all his saving benefits.

Union with Christ is simultaneously profound and inexhaustible, yet extremely basic and easily understandable. On one hand, union with Christ is a profound mystery because the whole constellation of all divinely revealed Christian doctrines converge upon and inter-relate in our union with Christ: the Trinity, the person and work of Christ, the church, the sacraments, and far more! Union with Christ is described in Holy Scripture with a wide range of expressions and images, and various aspects of union with Christ have been differently emphasized throughout the history of Christian worship and witness. The Byzantine writer Nicholas Cabasilas writes in his work “On the Life in Christ” (pgs. 5–6) that our union with Christ “is closer than any other union which man can possibly imagine and does not lend itself to any exact comparisons,” and hence Scripture uses a wide range of images and metaphors to speak about union with Christ. Similarly, New Testament scholar G. K. Beale characterizes union with the risen and ascended Christ to a multi-faceted gem, composed of seemingly quite different sides that nonetheless are integrated with one another. Far, far more can be said about this endless topic than is possible in a short essay. 

Yet, on the other hand, union with Christ is so simple that even little children can understand it quite well: it is Christ, dwelling in our hearts by faith (Eph 3:17). All of the saving benefits which God objectively accomplished in Jesus Christ are subjectively applied to us as the Holy Spirit unites us with Christ through faith. Through this bond, communion, sharing, oneness, participation, and mutual indwelling of Christ being in us and us being in Christ, we know Christ and all his benefits. 

This essay will look at four aspects of our union with Christ: first, its scriptural and theological basis; second, how union with Christ is the central doctrine of salvation; third, we will explore the means of grace whereby Christ unites us with himself by his Word and Spirit in the church; and fourth, we will note only a few of the practical and pastoral implications of union with Christ for Christian living, especially in our lived experiences of suffering, virtue formation, mission, and worship.

The Scriptural and Theological Basis of Union with Christ

The Holy Spirit’s work of uniting believers with Jesus Christ presupposes two prior unions: the union of three persons in one God, the Holy Trinity; and second, the basis of our union with Christ is the union of two natures, truly human and truly divine, in the one person of Jesus Christ in his incarnation. 

The Christian faith gives astonished and delighted testimony to the God of the gospel. God is the one who lives and loves in freedom, and Christian faith contemplates God, and all else in relation to God. Before ever worlds were made, the Father and the Son relate to one another as “Father” and “Son,” and the Holy Spirit is from the Father as the bond of love in an eternal communion of unapproachable majesty, blessedness, and the glorious splendor of undivided light. 

Not out of any deficiency or want in God, but out of the overflowing fullness and joy of God’s life as Trinity, God relates outwardly to creatures in his works from creation to salvation to the consummation of all things. With respect to God’s work of creation, our union with Christ rests on humanity having been created as creatures who are compatible with God. There is a difference between God the Creator and all else which is his creation; God alone is infinite and unchanging and eternal, and all else is finite, ever-changing, and temporal. So, while God’s intention is for humanity to become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4), that never means we transgress the Creator-creature distinction. Yet, there is a compatibility whereby humans can have union and communion with God because we are created in the image and likeness of God, and the archetypal image of the invisible God, after which we were fashioned, is Jesus Christ (Gen 1:26–27; Col 1:15).

The one God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, quintessentially and definitively revealed himself in the fullness of time when the eternal Son of God took to himself a truly human nature. This is the desire of nations, the mystery which angels long to look into, which we marvel over and celebrate with wonder at Christmas, that Jesus Christ is truly divine and truly human. Because God became man in Jesus Christ, now we in him can become participants in God’s life and perfections. The renewal of the whole cosmos and redemption of individual sinners was accomplished in the humiliation and exaltation of Jesus Christ. After rising from the dead, Jesus lifted up his hands and bestowed a blessing upon his people, and while he was blessing them he was taken up into heaven (Lk 24:50–51). Having obtained salvation, he now bestows it upon his people in benediction, as the Holy Spirit in the new covenant was poured out at Pentecost to create a communion of saints (Acts 1–2). Christ is now at the right hand of God in heaven, “he is not here; he is risen” (Matt 28:6). But Christ becomes our contemporary and we become contemporaries with him, as the Spirit joins us with Christ as co-participants in dying and rising with Christ (Gal 2:20, 6:14; Rom 6:1–4; Col 2:13–15, 3:1–4). The Father’s sending of the Son and the Holy Spirit is thus how God’s good creation, ruined by sin, is redeemed and transformed to become the kingdom of God that shares in God’s life. All the fullness of deity dwells in Christ bodily, and He as risen and ascended Lord is reconciling all things to himself through the blood of Christ as his Holy Spirit heralds his saving word throughout the world (Col 1:18–23, 3:1, 1:8).

Hence, the Trinity and incarnation are integral to how creatures can enter into a saving relationship with the God of the gospel: the Holy Spirit unites us with Christ, the God-man, sent by the Father. Further, there is no competition for prominence between being Trinity-centered or Christ-centered, for these inter-related foci are concentric circles. When we rightly so “fix our eyes on Jesus” (Heb 12:2) and devote rapt attention to the person and work of Christ, we will continually rediscover afresh just how profoundly Jesus’ own center is the glory of the Father in the Holy Spirit. Once our focus is there, we will be driven back to Christ as we discover how the Father and Spirit glorify the Son.

Union with Christ as the Key to How Redemption is Accomplished and Applied

Union with Christ describes the focus of the gospel on what God has objectively accomplished in Jesus Christ and subjectively applies to us as the Spirit unites us with Christ through faith. The gospel is Son-centered; “the gospel of God,” promised beforehand in the Scriptures of the Old Testament,” is first and foremost “concerning his Son” (Rom 1:1–3). The gospel is not mainly about us, or the benefits that Christ has given us. The gospel is not good advice about what we should do; it is good news about Jesus and what he has done. The gospel is not something we do; it is a heralding of what God has singularly accomplished in Jesus Christ. It is about Jesus Christ, first and foremost, and when we apprehend Christ, we share in him and all his saving benefits. 

When you say the Apostles’ creed and the Nicene creed, you will notice that particular outward works of God towards creation are appropriated by various members of the Trinity. Though, as one God, the three persons always work together, in the first article of the creed the work of creation is especially appropriated by the Father, though the Son and the Spirit are involved. The second article of the creed is devoted the person and work of the Son of God. The third article of the creed might seem to end with confessing simply that “we believe in the Holy Spirit,” before a list of random-seeming things such as the church, baptism, forgiveness, and the resurrection of the dead follow. However, we should understand that implicit within the creed is a vision of how union with Christ explains redemption, accomplished and applied. The incarnate career of the Son of God accomplished an objective salvation to renew all things, and the Holy Spirit unites us with the Son such that we are vindicated with him, joined with the communion of saints in the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church, we are raised with him, and share in Christ’s everlasting life. It is not spelled out in either creed that the Spirit unites us with Christ through faith such that we share in his distinct but inseparable saving benefits, but that is nonetheless the key to the logic of confessing our faith in the words of the creed. 

A real redemption was accomplished when the eternal Son of God, who had taken to himself a truly human nature, was “delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25). The Son was not an unwilling victim; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit always work together inseparably in all their works from creation to providence, from salvation to consummation. The Son willingly laid down his life, the Father and the Spirit were integral to his resurrection (Jn 10:18; Rom 8:11). 

Thus, when God forgives sinners and declares they are righteous, it is not a legal fiction; a real sentence was carried out upon our sin, since “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom 8:3). Thereby, the saving righteousness of God is revealed in at least two ways. First, in the same way that a just judge cannot minimize or overlook real evil, God is shown to be “just” in Christ’s shed blood and death; second, God is shown to be “the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” as God gives the gift of his saving righteousness to those who are united with Christ (Rom 3:26). Yet, God’s objective accomplishment of salvation entailed far more than the death of Christ. Jesus, by his resurrection from the dead, was “vindicated” by the Holy Spirit (1 Tim 3:16; Rom 1:4).

Further, after his humiliation and exaltation by rising from the dead, the Son ascended into heaven. There, he is both the offering and the great high priest; rather than continuing to stand at the altar and offer repeated sacrifices, Christ sat down after making a perfect, once-for-all-time offering of his crucified and risen flesh-and-blood in the heavenly Holy of Holies. Now we, with him, can draw by faith to the throne of grace (Heb 10:11–16; 4:12). Christ does not merely save us by dying in our place for our sins, taking upon himself the just punishment we deserved — though he does. Further, Christ in his own person embodied the ends for which humanity was created. He is the first of a newly restored humanity, the second and Last Adam. Humanity’s prophetic, priestly, and royal vocation to tend and cultivate the garden-temple of God’s cosmos is fulfilled in Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension.

Now all that is Christ’s becomes ours. An especially clear passage of Scripture on this principle is 1 Corinthians 1:30–31, namely, “because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’” 

Hence, in adoption, by sending the Spirit into our hearts, we become children who share in the Son’s address to God as ‘Abba, father’! As adopted sons, we have both the relational benefits of being in God’s family, and the legal benefits of being heirs of all that is Christ’s. In justification, we who had exchanged the truth about God for a lie in our idolatry and lawless transgression are declared righteous by being in the crucified and risen Messiah, because we share in his vindication; we are not only “justified by his blood” but also “saved by his life,” whereby Christ’s own vindication and triumph has put an end to our enmity and hostility, reconciling us to the God who justifies the ungodly in Christ (Rom 4:5, 5:9–11; Col 1:19–23).

Hence, all other means of appraising our worth are called into question, because the righteousness of God is appropriated as the Spirit unites us with Christ by faith, such that we have fellowship with Christ in his sufferings and participate in his resurrection (Phil 3:1–11). We are justified by faith because through faith we are joined with Christ, such that our sin was co-crucified with him and now Christ lives in us, as we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us (Gal 2:15, 19–20). Notably, whatever all justification entails, it precludes boasting in anything other means of regarding ourselves as worthy than the cross of Christ by which we were co-crucified with Christ, since now his new creation has come (Gal 6:14–15; 1 Cor 1:31). In sanctification, God’s grace does not create licentiousness to continue in sin, but rather we were buried with Christ through baptism and raised with him to walk in newness of life; whereas we were once incapable of responding to God, now through our union with Christ we are no longer agents and servants of the powers of sin and death, but we are agents and servants of righteousness (Rom 6:1–19). 

In glorification, humanity is restored and created towards those ends for which we were created in the image and likeness of God, namely to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Our glorification is already secured in Christ as the firstfruits of what is to come, although we are not yet glorified like Christ with bodies no longer subject to decay, but at the resurrection of the dead we will become like Christ’s risen and glorified body (Phil 3:19–21, Rom 8:30). Hence, we are even now “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17). In election, we who deserved to be rejected are the chosen and Beloved of God, because we are in the elected and rejected Lord Jesus Christ (Eph 1:3–11). In regeneration, we who were dead are made alive together with Christ by his grace (Eph 2:1–10). There are further saving benefits of Christ we might enumerate; for example, we who were foolish and darkened now are united with Christ, who is wisdom itself, and whose Spirit enlightens our hearts to behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 3:17–4:6; 1 Cor 1:30; Eph 1:18). 

Thus, in the gospel, Christ became for us several saving realities, and being ‘in him’ we come to appropriate his distinct but inseparable benefits. That is the key to avoiding innumerable problems. Foregrounding union with Christ as the central doctrine of salvation helps us coherently explain how Christ can simultaneously say to us “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” but also “deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me” (Matt 11:28; Lk 9:23). For example, this helps us avoid thinking we can become lax about sin since justification is a gift of mercy to the undeserving. Why? The only way we appropriate forgiveness is through union with Christ, and Christ is one whole person, whom we cannot tear him apart. We cannot be united with only one part of Christ, such as the part of Christ that forgives us, without also being united with the whole of Christ, who also calls us to be conformed to his image in obedience and raised us to walk in newness of life (Rom 6:1–4).

Simultaneously, having a clear grasp of union with Christ can help us avoid the grave problems that emerge when we fail to distinguish between his saving benefits, such as collapsing justification into a summons to transformed living that makes our right standing before God depend upon our moral performance, which would be far from ‘good news’ to all who know themselves to be sinners. Justification as our legal status before God, is not a matter of our striving to become more righteous, but a gift received by faith alone, even though the faith that receives Christ and all his benefits will never be alone, but we also by the Spirit must grow in our sanctification, becoming conformed to the image of Christ in holiness.

The Means of Grace Whereby Christ Unites us with Himself in the Church 

The triune God uses the ordinary means of grace in the church to unite us with Christ, principally, the word of God and the holy sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist.

The word of God is alive. Far from an inert artifact from ancient history, the word of God is “living and active”; it is sharper than a two edged sword, piercing us to expose the thoughts and intensions of our hearts, it slays and makes alives (Heb 4:12). Like a surgeon’s scalpel, the word of God cuts but only in order to heal. Upon saying farwell to the Ephesian elders, Paul commended them to “God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). God does everything by his explosive, lively, unsettling, life-giving Word. At creation, by his word all things were made, speaking creation into existence out of nothing; in salvation, by his word God gives life to the dead. In the fulness of time, his word became flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus Christ, who is Immanuel, “God with us,” and his Spirit now works his word in to our hearts such that we pray back to God his words of praise, both in the very breath in our longs and in the words of the Psalms (Rom 4:17; Jn 1:14; Matt 1:23; Rom 15:6). 

But it is particularly through the word of God that we become united with Jesus Christ. We receive the Holy Spirit “by hearing with faith” (Gal 3:2, 5). The word of God, which is our very life as his covenant people, is not a hidden or esoteric mystery which we must go on a quest to ascertain, or which only an enlightened visionary can reach (Deut 32:47; 30:11–14). God in his kind condescension has brought his word near to us in Christ’s death and resurrection; it is now in our hearts, because “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). The word of God is a key means whereby the Holy Spirit unites us with Christ, since “in him [Christ] you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Eph 1:13–14). Hence, in his 1517 lectures on Hebrews, Martin Luther hyperbolically captured how “if you were to ask a Christian what his task is and by what he is worthy of the name of Christian, there could be no other response than hearing the Word of God, that is, faith. Ears are the only organs of the Christian” (LW 29:224).

Jesus especially promised to work through his word. Through the public proclamation of the word of God in the church’s assembled worship, and through the private ministry of the word in the best and worst moments of life, Christ is reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor 5:16–21). The assault of grace upon the old age liberates us to enter with Christ into the new creation through his powerful, lively, precious, life-giving word (Psa 119:25; 2 Cor 5:17).

The word of God creates the church by uniting her with Christ. Crucially, God not merely uses his word to personally unite individuals with Christ, and it is not merely the case that individuals who are in Christ happen to also become joined with one another at church. The church is created by the word which God uses to unite us with Christ, and the church is the context wherein individuals become personally united with Christ as Christ in the church works through his word and sacraments.

A wide array of beautiful metaphors are used in Holy Scripture for the union between Christ and the church: marriage between a husband and wife is a great mystery which signifies the union between Christ and the church (Eph 5:22–31). Not only are our minds or spirits united with Christ, but life in the body is inexorably transformed when we are no longer our own but become “one” with the Lord; the intimacy of the one-flesh union between a husband and wife, wherein the two become “one,” is analogous to how the church is united with Christ, such that it is like we are dragging Christ himself into sin when we misuse our bodies (1 Cor 6:12–20). The union between Christ and the church is like a body composed of significantly varying members (1 Cor 12:12–31; Rom 12:4–8). 

The Holy Spirit indwells the bodies of those who are in Christ similarly to how the one God of Israel dwelt in the temple (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19). The church’s union with Christ is also analogous to the wandering people of God in the wilderness; our forerunner has already burst ahead to enter into God’s heavenly rest by his ascension as prophet, priest, and king, and soon he will take us to himself so that we can enter into his promised rest (Heb 3–4; 12:1–2). The church’s union with Christ is also analogous to how a royal figure embodies a whole people; Jesus, specifically as “Christ,” that is, “the Messiah” or “the anointed one,” is the church’s Savior King who shares in his triumph and reign through the way of the cross now, and glory later (2 Tim 2:12; Rom 6:5–14; 2 Cor 1:20–22).

Jesus himself likened the church’s union with Himself to the relationship between a vine and its branches (Jn 15:1–11). Branches that are fruitless are taken a way, and those that do bear fruit are pruned, disrupting our expectations for instant gratification. But we have no life apart from him, and in the inexpressible glory of his kindness, he invites us: “abide in me, and I in you” (Jn 15:4). What that entails is eminently simple: letting the word of Christ abide in us (Jn 15:7), keeping his commandments, and thus abiding in his love (Jn 15:9–10).

As the church’s one foundation, Christ works not only through his Word but also through what St. Augustine called the ‘visible words’ of the holy sacraments. The sacraments which our Lord Jesus Christ himself instituted are not only a sign of profession or of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves, but they are “certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God’s good will towards us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our Faith in him” (Article XXVIII, 2019 BCP 781). Throughout the whole of covenant history in both the Old and New Testaments, God uses physical, material, tangible signs in order to signify and seal the promises of the gospel (Rom 4:11). Through baptism, we are buried with Christ (Rom 6:4); through the washing of regeneration, Christ is at work (Tit 3:5); and as a means of grace God uses baptism to save us (1 Pet 3:21), even though “the efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered” (WCF 28.6).

In the Eucharist, we have koinonia, that is “participation” or “sharing” or “fellowship with” the body and blood Christ (1 Cor 10:16). Our Lord Jesus Christ himself said “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him,” and hence Christ uses the sacrament of Holy Communion, which Jesus called his body and blood of the new covenant, to unite us with himself (John 6:56), through the life-giving Holy Spirit (Jn 6:63). The Heidelberg Catechism explains what it means to eat Christ’s flesh and to drink his blood in terms of both believing the word of the gospel where Christ’s death and resurrection save us from our sins, but it is also “to be united more and more to his sacred body through the Holy Spirit, who lives both in Christ and in us,” since we remain on earth while Christ is ascended into heaven as our prophet, priest, and king (Heidelberg Catechism Q&A #76). As Fred Sanders put it, “Baptism shows our being in Christ; the Lord’s Supper shows Christ being in us” (Union with Christ and the Life of Faith, 124).

Finally, Christ promised to unite us with himself through prayer. We do need a mediator between humanity and God, and we have the singular, only sufficient one in the God-man, Jesus Christ himself (1 Tim 2:5). There is a poverty to our prayer; we do not know how to pray as we ought. Yet, the triune God works within us to make our prayers effective as God speaks to God through God. The Holy Spirit intercedes within us and our risen and ascended Lord Jesus also intercedes for us (Rom 8:26, 34). Hence, we can find mercy and grace to help in time of need, because we have a great high priest in heaven (Heb 4:14–16). Further, especially when we pray God’s word back to God, we are participating in Jesus’ own prayers since he is both the singer and the subject of the Psalms (Heb 2:12; Rom 15:3). Both personal, private devotion, and especially corporate or common prayer with others are means Christ uses to commune with and build up his people. 

Hence, the outward and ordinary means whereby Christ unites us with himself are the word of God, the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, and prayer. As Robert Letham captures:

Salvation is our being united with Christ; the Father unites us to the incarnate Sno, who effects our salvation, by the Holy Spirit. This is one movement of God’s grace, for all three persons work in harmony and indivisible unity. The means the Spirit uses, from our side, is faith. This is because our salvation is the result of grace, something achieved for us, not anything we ourselves could do. It therefore comes to us from outside ourselves. However, saving fatih does not occur in a vacuum. We are brought to salvation in the context of the church. There is an outward side to what happens within. Union with Christ comes to external expression in baptism, as we are united with Christ’s church… and union with Christ is to be cultivated, developed, nourished. To that end, the Father has appointed that our union with the Son be matured by the Holy Spirit through the means he has appointed for that purpose… the preaching of the Word, the sacraments, and prayer… transformation in union with Christ occurs through the means of grace, until the church is entirely conformed to Christ, when it sees him as he is and is like him in glory."

The Pastoral and Practical Significance of Union with Christ: Suffering, Ethics, Mission, Liturgy

Finally, union with Christ practically and pastorally transforms practical Christian living, especially our lived experiences of suffering, virtue formation, mission, and worship.

Suffering, in a modern and secular imagination, is either a necessary means whereby higher forms evolve from lower means (per Hegel and Darwin), or it is an utterly meaningless and randomized fate of the unfortunate, to which we can either respond by ordering our interior lives towards virtue (Neo-Stoicism) or by acquiring as much pleasure and material comfort as possible. 

Suffering indeed can feel meaningless (Ecc 1:2). We live and die amidst heartache within, and horrors without. There is hidden, psychological agony that we struggle to understand ourselves let alone articulate to others. Then, our bodies betray us, loved ones suffer, and there is the wreckage of history and unspeakable atrocities past and present that leave us speechless. 

Amidst it all, a Christian’s imagination of suffering will be gripped by our union with Christ. Her hope will be anchored to the one who endured not only unspeakable pain and shame, but real, cursed, godforsakenness; he entered the depths of an abyss and a shadowy darkness which none can fathom — yet did so in order to overcome the present evil age, as the first herald of the new creation, who lays his right hand upon us and says “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Rev 1:17–18). Despite it all, we therefore become enable to say, with St. Paul:

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Christians worship a God who is praised in Holy Scripture as the God of all consolation, even as he calls us to participate not only in the comfort which Christ alone can provide but also to suffer:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. (2 Corinthians 1:3–7)

Christian ministry specifically takes on new meaning when it is understood in light of our union with Christ, since it is fleshing out Christ’s otherwise hidden afflictions (Col 1:24). We not merely teach and warn in order to present people mature in Christ; it is actually Christ himself who is at work within us (Col 1:24–25). Christ is the one who makes an appeal through us, as we herald his sacred and imperishable gospel of reconciliation to the whole cosmos (2 Cor 5:19). God is the one who “in Christ” leads us in triumphal procession, and God is the one who “through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere,” as the fragrance of Christ is the aroma of life to those who are being saved and of death to those who are perishing (2 Cor 2:14–17). 

Union with Christ is not the kind of thing one grasps and then moves on from; it is an infinite, inexhaustible well that is the key to the whole of the Christian life. It is an unshakeable anchor of hope in our suffering and an unquenchable fire that fuels worship, mission, striving after holiness, and growth in practices that forge virtue for all who can say “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).