Union with Christ in His Life, Death, & Glory

The first clause of the answer to Q. 1 is the comfort stated: What is your only comfort in life and death? “That both in Soul and Body, whether I live or die, I am not mine own, but belong wholly unto my most faithful Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ…” That is the comfort. Another term we might use to describe the core of this statement is union with Christ. The doctrine of union with Christ is a key pillar of the gospel. A child often feels comforted by their nearness to parents. So too, the child of God feels most at home and most at peace when they are united with and brought near to God through their Savior. Union with Christ can be compared with marriage, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh (Gen. 2:24).” When two people get married, what the husband has becomes also the wife’s. So too, when Christ unites Himself with His church, what is His becomes hers (Eph. 5:25).

Union with Christ consists in three things: (1) Our identification with His life; (2) our identification with His death; (3) our identification with His glory—

His life. When we say we are in union with Christ, we proclaim not only a likeness to Him in His life, in the sense that we imitate Him as Christians; but we say that He lived His life for us. Paul says, “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life (Rom. 5:10).” Why is this important? It is important because Christ’s perfect life of obedience to the law of God was not only for Himself, but also for His people. When we are united to Christ, His life becomes our life. His righteousness is freely imputed to us. What He was on earth, we are also in the eyes of the Father. “But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption… (1 Cor. 1:30).”

His death. We are united with Christ in His death. If we are His bride, what’s His is ours. “Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations… (Col. 2:20).” And, “For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3).” In 2 Corinthians 4:10, Paul says he’s “always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus…” And Romans 14:8 says, “For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” As the Catechism says, “I am not my own.”

His glory. In Romans 6:4, Paul, using baptism, paints a beautiful picture of this union with Christ, which reaches its zenith in a resurrection like His, “Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” In Colossians 2:12, Paul says, “you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.” In Ephesians 2:16, Paul says we are “raised… up together… in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” We are not our own, but belong to Jesus. Marriage provides yet another real-life example of this, “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does (1 Cor. 7:4).” Using temple language, Paul says, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own (1 Cor. 6:19)?” What Christ has, so too do we have in Him. We are “one flesh” with Him as His bride, His church, and this is why we can be called His very own body.

Paul implies the husband and wife are one body as well, “So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church (Eph. 5:28-29).” This is union with Christ, that, as His church, we are married to Him and are one flesh with Him. And in these three key ways we are especially united to Him: (1) In His life; (2) His death; and (3) His resurrected and ascended glory.