Redemption Accomplished and Applied: Union with Christ

I’m participating in Tim Challies’ Reading the Classics Together program. The book is Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray, and this week’s reading is the ninth chapter of Part 2: The Order of Application. You can read Tim’s summary here.

The subject of this chapter is the believer’s union with Christ. You’ll not find union with Christ in most orders of salvation, but  John Murray includes it—and I’m glad—in his discussion of the application of redemption.

Union with Christ, he says, is unlike the phases in the application of redemption already discussed in this book because “in its broader aspects it underlies every step in the application of redemption.” What’s more, union with Christ extends beyond the application of redemption.

• Eternal election is “in Christ”, so at the very beginning of salvation, we find union with Christ.
• When he died on the cross and rose again, Christ was united with his people. “In the Beloved” we have redemption.
• New creation is “in Christ Jesus.” It is through union with Christ that we are created anew.
• Our new life continues through union with Christ, in the “fellowship of Jesus’ resurrection.”
• Believers die in Christ. Death is real, but “the separated elements of the person are still united to Christ.”
• Believers will be resurrected and glorified in Christ.

There you have it: Union with Christ comes from eternity past and reaches its full purpose in the consummation. It runs from “no beginning” to “no end.” There is, for the believer, no way to think “of the past, present, or future apart from union with Christ.” It is, as you can see, a comprehensive matter.

Yet there is a specific time in our lives when we become, by our effectual calling, actual partakers of our union with Christ. Until that time, scripture says we are “without Christ” and “children of wrath.”

What is the nature of the union with Christ in which we come to partake?

• It is spiritual, not as some sort of airy-fairy thing, but as something worked and maintained by the Holy Spirit. Christ “dwells in us by the Spirit.” Murray writes that “it is a union of an intensely spiritual character consonant with the nature and work of the Holy Spirit so that in a real way surpassing our power of analysis Christ dwells in his people and his people dwell in him.”
• It is mystical. This word, of course, must be understood in a scriptural way. It “is mystical because it is a mystery.” All the varied illustrations in scripture used to picture this relationship should tell us that this union is something not exactly like anything else. It is communion with Christ and like no communion among men. Our faith “must have the passion and warmth of love and communion because communion with God is the crown and apex of true religion.”

Yes, “[u]nion with Christ is the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation.” We are elected in Christ; redeemed in Christ; called, regenerated, justified, adopted, and sanctified in Christ. “There is no truth, therefore, more suited to impart confidence and strength, comfort and joy in the Lord than this one of union with Christ.”

And there is still one more important thing about union with Christ. It brings us not only into communion with Christ, but through him to communion with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Or maybe it is better to say, as Murray does, that union with Christ “draws along with it” union with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Here is mysticism on the highest plane. It is not the mysticism of vague unintelligible feeling or rapture…. It is faith solidly founded on the revelation deposited for us in the Scripture and it is actively receiving that revelation by the inward witness of the Holy Spirit. But it is also faith that stirs the deepest springs of emotion in the raptures of holy love and joy.