Union with Christ III: The Origin of Our Union

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and with me again is A .C. Floyd, and we are looking at the doctrine of union with Christ. This is our third episode, and if you were with us for the first two, then you know that union with Christ is considered by many theologians, and I think we would agree, that it is the heart of Paul's theology in the New Testament.

If that's true, then it's central not only to the life of Paul as a believer, it's central to the life of the young churches in the New Testament, and it's central to the life of every believer today.

When we think of the application of redemption, how does all that God has in His good purposes graciously chosen for the believer, how does that reach us? And at the hub of this wheel of grace, where every spoke is some aspect of the glory, of the riches of this God's grace, every spoke is connected in some way to this union with Christ.

It is in Him that all of it comes to us. And we talked about this, the nature of it, some metaphors, it's mysterious, but the Bible gives us a number of metaphors that help us to understand the different aspects, different, you know, emphases of this.

So A .C., run us through those. Yeah, some of the metaphors we looked at last time were Christ as the chief cornerstone, and His people as the stones. We looked at Christ as a husband, and we are His bride, or His wife.

He's the head, and we're the body. He's the vine, and we're the branches. So all these various pictures of union, whether it's vital or, you know, governmental, loving, enduring union. Well, let's look at today, the origin of this union.

And if you've ever read John Murray's little book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, which is just the gold standard for the gospel, the doctrines of the gospel being explained in a short version. It's not simplistic, certainly, but I think it's very manageable.

Murray points out when he gets to union with Christ, he saves it to the end of the book, but he points out that this is not something that's tacked on at the end. It doesn't just come, you know, at some point in the Christian life.

It's not just an afterthought. It is actually at the very beginning, and at the end, and it's in everything in between. And so we're going to talk about the origins of this great reality of our union with Christ, and His union with His people.

And for that, we need to go back to the book of Ephesians. AC, why don't you read us verse three and four, where in the first chapter, Paul's going to tell us about, he's just going to hint at all the privileges that the believer has, the fullness of that grace through Christ, in Christ.

And having mentioned that in verse three, the first thing he tells us about is the origin of that. And then what follows is just one stage after the next of, you know, wave after wave of God's undeserved love, and each aspect is in Christ.

Yeah, the apostle Paul writes in Ephesians chapter one, verses three and four, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.

So, a number of things are obvious here. It is a passage that describes the activity of God in eternity or in the everlasting past. And so, there's certainly a great deal of mystery, but what has God explained for us?

And He is the perfect teacher. So, what He's given us is what we need. So, a number of things are obvious. All spiritual provision is located in Christ. And so, it is only received by union with Christ.

All spiritual provision originates in the sovereign choice of God to save sinners, to choose men and women and children who are His enemies for life, for rescue. Third, the choice to save people occurs prior to their creation, to the creation of anything.

And fourth, the manner of salvation, which is chosen by God, is that they would be chosen and saved by virtue of union with Christ. So, the Father contemplates a people as yet to be created. He contemplates them as united to the Son and the Son as entrusted with them, united to them.

Now, that's a mystery. And so, you know, sometimes at church, when we hit kind of the deep end of the pool in the sermon, we'll say things like, well, I do. I say, well, now we have to put our thinking caps on today.

All right, we can't be lazy. We're not just, you know, warming our hearts. We're going to have to really think here. So, not long ago, I think it was last month on my birthday, a lady in our church who has a great sense of humor gave me this.

And I thought it was a tea cozy. You know, have you ever seen a British tea cozy? You just put it over the pot and they all look like old lady stuff. All right, well, this actually is my thinking cap.

So, it is a brain that, there you go. So, there I have my thinking cap on or my shower cap, whichever one you think it is. It's hideous. And I want to thank Bambi Petty for this. And I hope that one day someone gives her something so special.

All right. So, we want to put our thinking cap on, the real thinking cap. It's, there's always a danger that, you know, kind of creeps up in evangelical churches. And that is that, you know, if this is a book that God gave us and it is, and if God has given us his spirit to help us to understand and to teach us, and he has, then the truths that God gives us, they're going to be, they're all going to just be sitting on the surface, like chunks of gold, you know, right on the surface of the earth.

And you don't have to work for it. You don't have to do any, you know, real labor of brain. You don't have to go back and forth in the Bible, comparing passage to passage. It should just be obvious. And that really, that lazy and misguided approach to scripture oftentimes kind of produces a wrong way of interpreting the Bible, a wrong hermeneutic.

And that is, you say, well, this is what the Bible says. It's clear as day. It's right here in black and white. So, that's what it means. Well, yes, but have you compared it to the other things that God says about the same topic?

Because you need to get the full picture. And God has given us a complete book, and he expects us to study the entire book as we're trying to understand some particular jewel. So, we don't want to be lazy thinkers.

We have the help of the spirit, but there are things that require a lot of work. One of these is this great doctrine of election, or the choice of God, the good pleasure, the kind pleasure of God to save from his enemies, a people for his son, and the choice of the son for those people.

I think we could compare it to a mountain like Everest, which is so high that the tip will always be covered in cloud. So, nobody's going to ever be able to say, okay, I wrote a book or I read a book that explains it fully.

I understand every aspect of the eternal choices of God, the determinations of God, the mercies of God, and how that interplays with every response of humanity. Well, we're not going to get there. We will not be able to exhaustively explain it.

But, how we approach what God has revealed will impact the benefit or the lack of benefit that we receive from it. In other words, if we approach it from a wrong angle, then we tend to walk away without the sweet benefits that Paul means for the Ephesians to have.

One wrong approach is, I want to prove all the Armenians wrong, so I have my favorite texts. As a young believer, I believed that God was sovereign, but I did not study the particular passages that explained how God's sovereignty works itself out, because all the Calvinists I were a bit bitter and grumpy and dry.

Maybe they seemed loveless to me. And so, all they wanted to talk about was a certain set of passages, Ephesians 1 being a chief one. And I thought, if that's all in the Bible that speaks of your favorite doctrine, then I'm not interested in your favorite doctrine.

That's not all that speak of the love of God that predates creation. And we want to make sure that we're not coming to it to prove other people wrong. But how am I to live on these truths? And what does it have to do with union with Christ?

So, let's look at this theme of God's choice of the believer in Christ and connect it with union with Christ and see what we come out with. Well, one thing we notice, and I do want to quote Calvin in spite of some people being angry about it.

I was reading a book by Robert Lethem, and he mentions that John Calvin emphasized that election can only be understood in light of this union with Christ. So, the sinner being the object of God's undeserved love can never be understood if you don't understand that it is in Christ that that choice is made.

It is by virtue of union with Christ that that sinner will enjoy those privileges and not isolated from Christ. Sovereignty is not enough. There must be the union. So, God chooses in eternity past to show love to the undeserving, but he does it in the person of Christ, and that changes how we approach it.

One thing that Calvin mentioned was it gives us a guide for understanding God's loving choice of the sinner if we can understand God's loving choice of the Savior, because when Ephesians 1 says we are chosen in him, in Christ, then obviously it's clear that the Father has chosen the Son also, and the choice of the Son, in a sense, logically predates, at least logically, the choice of the Son must come before the choice of a people who will be their mediator, and the Father in eternity looks at the Son, if we could say it in a very human way, and delights to set the Son apart for the task of our mediator, our representative, and the Son delights to embrace that task for love of the Father.

And so, there is the choice of Christ. Isaiah talks about it in Isaiah 42, the song of the coming of the Messiah, the servant of the Lord. The Father is there saying about the coming Messiah, behold my chosen one, my elect one.

He is the elect one. So, let's think about how the Bible describes the election of the elect one, and see if that guides us in understanding how he has chosen to save his enemies in Christ. So, AC, you've got your Bible there, and in 1 Peter chapter 1, we see a description of God's choosing of the Son.

You want to read that for us? I do. For he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God.

Okay, so there's the reality. He, Jesus, was foreknown by the Father when? Before the foundation of the world. Now, read us Romans 8, 29, and 30. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren.

And these whom he predestined, he also called. And these whom he called, he also justified. And these whom he justified, he also glorified. All right, and so Romans 29 and 30, often described as a golden chain of redemption.

You know, these links have a particular order, and they cannot be understood in isolation from each other. So, all that God foreknew, he predestined for what? Predestined for conformity to Christ. And those that had been predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ, he calls them in time.

The gospel goes forth. Their hearts respond. And those that he calls in this wonderful way, he justifies. They embrace Christ. They are declared right, made right, or constituted righteous by the righteousness of Christ being placed upon their account, and their sin placed upon Christ's account in this wonderful union with Christ.

And those that are justified or declared right, he also will glorify. And so, there's no break in that. The these, the word these that you read, and these whom he, he also, and these whom he, he also.

It's the same group of people. It's not most of, and it's not, you know, others that weren't included at the beginning. So, it's a wonderful, mysterious description of the foundation of our hope, the love of God that predated any of our response to him.

Well, when we look at the word foreknowledge, I think, AC, we were talking before the podcast, you've heard the same thing I've heard, and that when talking about God foreknowing and then predestining to be conformed to the image of Christ, what's the common interpretation of that word that you grew up with?

I grew up hearing pastors and laypeople alike saying that God looked through the corridors of time and he saw that we would believe. And it was because that he saw that we believe, would believe that he chose us in Christ.

Yeah. So, the theological Latin term is prescience, pre-science, pre-knowledge. God knowing ahead of time, what he sees in future, in the future, then that causes him to make choices in the, in eternity or in the everlasting past, which then, of course, lead to what we see in the future, to what he sees.

So, that is based on the word foreknowledge, which I would say it certainly seems to make sense if all you had is the English word foreknowledge. But there are some things in scripture that make that an impossible interpretation.

You have to then bend other texts in order to make it work, though it at surface, I think at the surface reading, it certainly looks like. Well, there are a couple of things. First of all, one is the word foreknow, to know beforehand.

The word for knowing here, gnosis, is often the word used for a relational knowledge. So, not just a factual knowledge, a conceptual knowledge, a theoretical knowledge, but actual relational knowledge.

And so, in that light, the word could be translated, those whom God relationally knew beforehand, or those whom God initiated a relationship with. He set his affections relationally upon a people before they were even created.

I think foreknowledge is the word that in these categories of words like elect, chose, predestined, I think foreknowledge is the sweetest of them, because you avoid that air of maybe absolute choices of a sovereign God, which then translate into a fatalistic feeling.

Foreknowledge, to initiate the relationship, to initiate the relational knowledge beforehand, to set things in motion, which will lead to us knowing him, and him knowing us as our father, and him knowing us as his children.

Those things, that knowledge, surely it expresses love in a way that election, predestination, may not always carry those ideas in our mind. Other than the Greek word, though, there is a stronger argument, because sometimes foreknowledge can be used of knowing ahead of time, and it doesn't always have to carry the emphasis of relational knowledge, though that is the word for a relational knowledge.

The other argument that I think is stronger is that if we see how God foreknew the son, then it gives us a guide for understanding how he has foreknown his enemies in a way that leads to their rescue.

Let's think again about 1 Peter 1, verse 20, for he, Christ, for he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

So, there's the description, Christ is foreknown, same word that Paul uses in Romans 8, whom he foreknew. Do we believe that Peter is saying, listen, your hope is solid, because God looked down through the corridors of time, and being a timeless being, he could see ahead of time that the God-man would be obedient and faithful, even to the point of death.

So, in eternity past, he chooses the son for the task, having looked down through time and seeing, you know what, because of what I see, of the way that you will behave, I think you're a trustworthy choice as the mediator.

Well, is that what that means? No. No. And the King James translates it differently than the more modern translations, because it's trying to drive home the application of that word, that in that context, it cannot mean that God just saw ahead of time.

So, the King James translates it foreordained, whom he foreordained. The son was ordained, or, you know, determinatively known. The son is known, the son is lovingly chosen for the task of Redeemer. And that's why he came.

He came as a result of the father's ordaining him as the Redeemer, or choosing him. Not the opposite. The father did not choose him because he saw how the son would behave. So, the father's choice of the son as our mediator, he was foreknown, or foreordained, or lovingly set apart as our Redeemer.

In eternity past, this occurred solely because of the good pleasure of the father. Now we come to Romans 8. Those whom he foreknew. Can we say, well, that's, it's impossible that that means that he made determining choices that led to, you know, that led to faith and repentance, that led to a life walking with him, that ultimately leads to glorification in Christ.

Why can't we take that word and say that it applies here in the same way? Those whom he ordained to life, those whom he loved, foreloved. He loved them beforehand in a way that had a determinative impact.

Look at some other passages that describe the way God made choices with regard to a son. Luke 22, 22. Read that for us, AC. For indeed, the son of man is going as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.

So there, the son of man is going to be betrayed. That is by the determination of God, and that occurred long before creation. Acts 2, verse 23. This man, being delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death.

Okay, so the famous sermon by Peter, Jews, you handed the Messiah over to be put to death by the godless Romans. Yes, but above all of these human choices, which doesn't make them unimportant or, you know, not guilty, above all of that is the great plan of God that through his predetermined plan and foreknowledge, God sets apart the son for this cross.

Acts 4, verse 27 and 28. For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.

So again, we find Christ being, enduring the cross, but that is not a mistake. It's not something that went wrong. It is happening according to God's purpose, which predestined this to occur. Peter speaks similarly of believers.

First Peter 1 -2. You who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood. So again, we have the same concept.

God knowing beforehand what does it mean? You who are chose according to just God knew that you would be the kind of person that would be so faithful that you could be saved. Therefore, your future faithfulness is the cause of God's past choices.

That's one view. Or God's loving you beforehand, initiating a relationship before creation, is the reason that you are chosen and set apart by the Spirit and live obediently, sprinkled by Christ's blood.

Well, there are a number of implications if we look at this. One is that prescience can't be the emphasis in Romans 8, 29 and 30. God doesn't just know ahead of time that you will choose him. When we look at scripture, it turns everything on its head.

If God knows ahead of time that you're the kind of person that is willing to be saved by him, and therefore in eternity past, he chooses you in Christ. You know, think of Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 and 10. By grace you've been saved through faith, that not of yourselves.

Even faith is not something you can boast of. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, not something God saw in the past that you in the future would do, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we would walk in them.

So it is the work of God in eternity past, preparing beforehand a life of peace with him, a life that results in obedience. That's the reason we walk obediently. How could 2 Timothy 1, 9 be true if God seeing ahead of time is what caused him to make his choices?

Listen to what Paul writes to the young pastor. God, who has saved us and called us with holy calling, not according to our works, not according to anything in us, works, responses, you know, obedience, faith, repentance, all of this is important, but it's not the basis of calling us, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.

All right, so I think we've said enough on that. There's a lot more that could be said. And of course, you know, it's like we said, there's a sense in which the mountain peak is in the clouds, no matter how much we think about it.

But let's go into some perhaps practical implications. And one I think is that when we consider the father choosing the son as our mediator and choosing us in by virtue of union with Christ, so choosing us together with Christ as a people who will be in Christ and in Christ, we're chosen for life.

One implication is that every single thing that Jesus will have to do to accomplish the father's plans of redemption, those are also included in that choice. So the humiliation of union with our humanity, the rejection that he received constantly on earth to be a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, the cross, the abandonment by the father on the cross, so that not the father's, you know, comforting love, but the infinite wrath of God would be poured out upon the God man, but also the resurrection, the victory, the ascension, the enthronement, you know, the ultimate consummation, calling all his people together and the glorification and the, you know, and the new heavens and new earth and all that's described there, all of that is also chosen.

Christ, you are chosen for all of these things. And in eternity past, you know, the son embraces every aspect of that. But think of that. That means that we are chosen in Christ for every aspect of grace.

So everything that Paul mentions in Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 2 and Ephesians 3, and everything the Bible mentions from Genesis to Revelation, that God has provided for a people in this new covenant, the fullness of which makes the old covenant just become insignificant and passing away.

All of that is chosen for you when God chose you in Christ. And when you embrace that Christ in faith, then that actually becomes our, you know, day-by-day experience. Everything we read in Ephesians 1 is just, you know, the stages of grace, the wave after wave of kindness, it reaches us always by union with Christ.

Yeah. So by faith, we're united to this person, this Christ, and it's through union with him that we really get to explore this territory known as in Christ. And we get to, like you talk about this doctrine being the central hub of Christianity, we get to look at every little spoke, and we talk about it in different ways, like it's a diamond.

We get to turn that diamond and look at every facet of this person, this Christ. So as we look at each spoke, as we look at each facet, we grow to be more and more enamored with him, more and more obsessed with him.

Like Wesley said, Christ becomes our magnificent obsession. So he becomes more and more, as Peter says, precious to us. He becomes more weighty. He's like this mountain, this Everest before us that we look at and our jaw drops.

We're in awe of him. And as he is that Everest, he also gives us the spirit to climb Everest and to go from one elevation, one level to the next, to see him more clearly, to be drawn in love more closely to him.

So we embrace all that he is, not just the salvation that he provides. We delight in his person, not just the privileges and the gifts that he gives. We glory in his person, or as Paul said elsewhere, we boast in him.

And through that, we just grab our Bibles, we ransack it, we study it, we meditate on all that it says. And through that, that's just the instrument to take us to him, to really cling to him with a white knuckle grip, not because we're afraid that he'll drop us, but because we never want to let go of this person.

Yeah, it's just such a different result when we come to the great truths of the gospel. If it is the person in whom we are, that is the focus. And the different aspects of redemption are simply, you know, they're expressions of that person and his work.

So when I think of, you know, the call, well, we can talk about the effectual call versus the common call of common grace. Well, that's one way you could discuss it, or you could think of the call, the effectual call.

All that is, is a shepherd that leaves the 99 and searches for the one, you know, and you still have the effectual call, but it's a person's voice, not a category or a concept that fits logically with the rest of redemption.

And other people disagree with, and you agree with, and you argue with, it is, it's his voice. So instead of effectual call, we could say the shepherd's voice, you know, what about, you know, what about atonement?

It is his blood. It is his rightness that makes me just. So when I talk about justification by faith alone, and I'm ready to argue with people that say, well, yeah, that's how it starts, but later you have to add your own good works to stay justified.

Like John Wesley believed, you know, we don't argue necessarily. We don't, we don't focus only on the imputed righteousness. No, no, this is a transaction where my unrighteousness was placed on his account and his righteousness on mine.

We look and we say, don't you understand justification? It's being in the right one. It's being married to the, to the prince that gives us such privileges that makes us a kingdom and priests. It is the fullness, the infiniteness of him.

That means that the provision of the new covenant will never run dry. You know, it is the love of this Christ that means that I'm given a comforter who will strengthen me. You know, it's the faithfulness of Jesus, not just the preservation of the saint.

So all these doctrines can be discussed accurately, so to speak, apart from a person, or they can all be discussed in light of the person. And it is in union with this person, like a branch to a vine, like a wife to a husband, like the bricks mortar to the cornerstone, like the body to a head.

This person is the focus and the aspects of redemption are simply different reflections of his perfection. And I love him, not just his gifts. Two totally different lives result, you know, and you can tell when you walk into a church, think of a reformed church, you walk into a reformed Baptist church and you know, the 1689 is embraced and the, you know, the regulative principle is enforced and we agree with those things and catechism is used and all these good tools, but you can tell if the people have fallen in love with the theological concepts and they have forgotten that every one of these are vitally connected to and found only in a person.

And then you walk into a church where it's the person, but they believe the truth about the person. So they believe the truth about the gospel and two very different flavors, you know, result. And it's not just agreeing with that that makes us Christ-like.

It is, as you said, it is a day by day, morning by morning preoccupation with the father's favorite. And we are, we are captivated with one who is altogether lovely and chief among 10 ,000. And as we are captivated with that, you already mentioned, you know, referring to second Corinthians three, we are transformed from glory into glory.

And that will include every ethical change and every doctrinal growth and, you know, accuracy and appreciation. So with Christ at the center, we'll pick up next week with this wonderful theme of union with Christ.