What Union with Christ does NOT mean

• Ø Our union with Christ does not mean that we are invulnerable to the attack of Satan.
• Ø It does not mean that unbelievers cannot persecute and even kill us.
• Ø Union with Christ does not guarantee a life free from confusion, frustration, and pain.
• Ø Union with Christ does not mean we are guaranteed health and wealth.
• Ø Union with Christ does not lead to sinless perfection in this life.

However, because of our union with Christ we can rest assured that no attack of the enemy, no physical disease or spiritual failure, no sin that we commit, nor anything else in the wide range of human experience can separate us from the Lord in whom we live, and breathe, and have our being.

In addition:

• Ø It is not a merging of the Son of God with the children of God, such that before the union there were two and after there is only one.
• Ø It is not the absorption of the children of God into the Son of God.
• Ø It is not the loss of our individuality or distinctive identity as children of God.
• Ø It is not the loss of Christ’s distinctive identity as the Lord and Savior of believers.
• Ø Although we are “one” with Christ, we are still distinct created entities. In other words, there is no mixture of natures (ours with his).
• Ø Union with Christ is not deification, as if we in some sense cease to be human and become God. We remain finite creatures, and he remains infinite creator.
• Ø Although we become “like” Christ, we are not “Christ.”
• Ø Union with Christ does not necessarily entail a subjective, emotional reaction or feeling, though it may.
• Ø Union with Christ is mystical in nature, but not so as to blur the distinction between Creator and creature.
• Ø Union with Christ is not primarily “moral” in nature, as if it consists solely, or even primarily, in a transformation of our behavior to be “like” Christ.
• Ø Union with Christ does not entail a transformation in the character and personality of Christ, but does mean that we experience a progressive change from one stage of glory to another.
• Ø Although the moral and spiritual qualities of Christ are infused into us by virtue of our union with him, our moral failures and faults are not infused into him. However, the latter are “imputed” or “reckoned” to him on the cross.

Richard Gaffin summarizes well:

“This union is so central, so pivotal, that without it the saving work of Christ, the once-for-all redemption he has accomplished, ‘remains useless and of no value.’ Union is the all-or-nothing reality on which everything depends in the application of salvation. I must have Christ or I have nothing – that underlies and gives rise to everything else. Without union, the benefits that flow from it are otherwise nonexistent or irrelevant.

This union, further, is not partial union, as if one can share in some benefits without others. Unless I share in all of his benefits, I share in none of them. If I do not have the whole Christ, I have no Christ. Or, as Calvin puts it memorably elsewhere, Christ ‘cannot be divided into pieces.’” (“The Work of Christ Applied,” in Christian Dogmatics, edited by Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016], 284-85).

To be continued . . .