Union with Christ is a glorious concept, but what does it actually mean? We often use the terminology of being “in Christ” or “united to Christ,” while barely understanding the depths of its implications. In Union with Christ, Rankin Wilbourne surveys the topic in a way that will enlighten your heart and make it soar.
Here are 10 favorite quotes:
Christ dwelling in us by his Spirit is a guarantee that we can and will change. We are adopted in God’s family, and not in name only. The Spirit in us now guides and forms us more and more into the family likeness. The same Christ who overcame every temptation and was perfectly obedient—that Jesus is in you now. (52, 53)
The remedy to our deepest wound and the antidote to Satan’s most venomous lie is a sure and certain confidence in the goodness of God toward us. (64)
Union with Christ displaces us from the center of our own lives. It tells us we can discover who God created us to be only through living in vital union with his Son. It tells us the work of Christ for us cannot be separated from the person of Christ in us. (72)
The same Spirit who inspired the words of Scripture long ago now lives in you and speaks through these same words and illuminates them as you read today. The one spoken of on the pages is the same one who speaks through them. So you can come to the Bible expecting to hear from and commune with the one who stands at the center of it: Christ. Union with Christ is how the Bible becomes a burning bush out of which God speaks. (92)
In Christ, you are accepted. But that acceptance no longer has to be earned or maintained; it is granted by grace and guaranteed in Christ. This doesn’t mean you stop working, but it does mean you now work in a totally new way. You no longer work for approval; you work from approval. (143)
If you are in Christ, your life and your story become enfolded by another story, Another’s story. You don’t have to discover or craft, create or achieve, invent or reinvent your own identity. Your identity is found not deep within yourself but outside of yourself. Your self-understanding becomes inseparable from who God says you are in Christ. (145)
Not only does God call you toward the glorious horizon of being conformed into the image of his Son, but he also has in mind specific manifestations that this image will take in you. Isn’t that encouraging? That you can reflect his image to the world in ways that no one else can? He not only made you as you, but he also planned good things for you to do. (163)
No relationship can cure our loneliness but the one we were made for, the one that is more central, more defining, and closer to you than any other relationship you could ever have: your relationship with Christ. Jesus offers you what no other partner could: unwavering and eternal fidelity—no sickness, not even death, will part you. (207)
Our union with Christ is fixed and unalterable. It does not rise and fall with our faith or the quality of our lives, with what we’ve done or failed to do. Our union with Christ is as certain as Christ’s irrevocable love, which does not wax or wane. It is as sure as Christ’s grip in our lives and his promise that nothing can snatch us from his hand. (245)
In the courtroom of our conscience, when the voice of our own heart rises up to condemn us (1 John 3:20), the Spirit of God bears witness with ours that we are God’s children (Rom. 8:16) and gives us, beyond what words alone could, certainty of our salvation by pointing us back to our Savior (John 16:14). The Spirit subjectively assures us of what is objectively true. What blessed assurance! (279)