Meditation on the Text of the Week

One With Christ

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him.
Romans 6:8

Our Saviour and His works are not a smörgåsbord. We do not get to “slice and dice” His commands and deeds, according to our fancies and appetites and predilections. Unfortunately there are many outside the Church, and within the Church—professing Christians—who have fallen into this snare.

That Unbelievers would do so is expected. For them, Jesus is an inferior, a mere servant in their household, if you will. They are not accountable to Him, but He must account to them. Therefore, they will pick and choose what they like about Him, rejecting that which does not “fit” their preconceptions or prejudices. How often have we heard, “Jesus was a great teacher, but . . .” and then comes mention of the the places at which His teaching was allegedly flawed, extreme, provincial, primitive, naïve, idealistic—all the reasons, in other words, why His teaching can be disregarded. Or Jesus was a great prophet, or a great leader, or an inspiring ethical and holy man, or the first socialist. All of this involves the blighted attempt to distort the Christ and His commandments so that He becomes a tool to burnish Unbelieving cant.

From Unbelievers, who are born in hatred of the Christ and His atonement, we expect nothing less, until their hearts are subdued and eyes opened by God Himself. But Christians have also fallen into the error of attempting to “slice and dice” the Son of God. They would have Christ's atonement that their sins may be forgiven. But, they would eschew His lordship over every area of their lives. They would embrace His death, but not His resurrection. Or, His resurrection, but not His death. The Scriptures, however, will have none of it. Either you are united to Christ by faith or you are not. If one is united to Christ, one is united to all of Him, and all of His works—or not at all. This is how Paul argues in Romans 6, declaiming the idea of Christ as a smörgåsbord.

The general context of Romans 6 is Paul's answering a hypothetical objector at his elbow. The objection (actually voiced against the apostle) was that the Gospel of free grace would actually encourage people to live in sin. If they were justified fully through faith in Christ alone, then surely people would be suborned to live as libertines. Sin copiously, because salvation is assured. (We note in passing that some things never change. This was one of the major objections raised against Luther's proclamation of the Gospel of free grace in his generation.)

Paul counters the objection by making us think far more carefully about what faith in Christ really means. Spirit-borne and generated faith means belief in all about Him. It means believing in all His redemptive work, not part of it. It means being united with Him in His death; if I believe that Christ died for my sin, I must also, therefore, believe that I died. Once I was united to Adam. In Adam's sin in the Garden, I sinned. In Adam's death, I died. Now, by faith, I am united no longer to Adam, but to Christ, Adam's replacement (I Corinthians 15:22; Romans 5:12—19). I am united, by faith, to Christ's death to sin. He who has died is acquitted from sin (Romans 6:7).

But, by the same token, by faith in Christ I am also united to His resurrection. He lives in new life, triumphant over all sin. The believer cannot be united to Christ's death without also being united to His resurrection. The federal headship of Christ applies to both. So, I can live in new resurrected life. By faith I can expect and experience the death of sin in my existence and increasing holiness of life. So, says, Paul every believer is to consider himself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11).

But, Paul could have gone on. Being united to Christ means sharing not just in His death (so that we all die to sin and its power), and His resurrection (so that we can live in a new life to God): it also means that we are united to His ascension, so that in Him we are lifted up into the very presence of God, able to appear constantly before His very face (Colossians 3: 1,2; Hebrews 12: 22—24). It also means that we are united to His enthronement and session, so that we bear and exercise His authority, as His vice-gerents in this world. In His kingship, we must consider ourselves as kings, exercising His authority upon the earth—and so forth. If we have died with Christ we now reign with Him in this world.

The Scriptures do not tease all of this out, but they give us sanction and warrant to undertake the task. This is what Paul prays might happen for the Ephesian Christians: that the eyes of their heart might be opened and enlightened, so that they might comprehend the hope of their calling and what are the actual riches of His inheritance in the saints, and so forth (Ephesians 1:18—23).

It remains one of the great tasks and challenges for every generation of Christians and the Church: to reflect carefully and deeply and trace out all the implications for us of what it means to be united to Christ—to all of Him, to all of His redemptive works, triumphs, and glories. The implications are so deep and so vast, that no one generation of Believers can comprehend it all. But God has willed and commanded that our eyes be opened to understand more, and yet more—that we might worship and work aright.