I’m looking forward to next week and the Desiring God conference in Minneapolis, the theme of which is our union with Christ. Continue reading . . .

I’m looking forward to next week and the Desiring God conference in Minneapolis, the theme of which is our union with Christ. Why should this topic awaken such anticipation and joy in my heart? Because, as J. I. Packer, says, it is “the taproot of our entire salvation.” He explains:

“But the taproot of our entire salvation, and the true NT frame for cataloging its ingredients, is our union with Christ himself by the Holy Spirit. That is, to be more precise, our implantation, symbolized by the under-and-up-from-under of water baptism, into the twin realities of Christ’s own dying and rising (see Rom 6:1-11; Col 2:9-12). In this union we have a salvation that is not only positional through the cross in the terms just stated, and relational through our sustained faith-communion with our Lord, but is also transformational through the regenerating and indwelling Spirit, who stirs and motivates and empowers us to express our new hearts’ desires in new habits of action and reaction constituting Christlike character (‘the fruit of the Spirit’ in Gal 5:22-23)” (“The Atonement in the Life of the Christian,” in The Glory of the Atonement, 417).