Dimensions of Our Union

Coming up next on Renewing Your Mind our union with Christ, if I'm united to Christ how it transforms the way I live my Christian life because what I'm bound to him.

I don't seven bot blondes when I fail him on therein lies the shame of my soon but also therein lies one of the great motives for me living a life of absolute faithfulness to him living our lives in Christ encompasses every aspect of who we are in what we do. Our series this week on Renewing Your Mind is union with Christ teacher Dr. Sinclair Ferguson as we continue today. Dr. Ferguson will help you see the dimensions of our union with Christ in full and rich relationship with Christ really is no way of telling for our son started to think just a little in the study about the die mentions of our union with Christ.

I want us to think about various passages, but in a way we could some the sump and Paul's words in second Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17 if you become a Christian in roughly the same generation as I did then. This would've been one of the very first verses you would've been encouraged to memorize and appears in different translations in different ways. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation on PSI new creature and I will comment later on, on that particular kind of translation.

What does it mean to be in Christ, if you think about the way in which we are taught the blessings of the gospel justification on adoption and sanctification would often talk those blessings. Those slowly came to us in the kind of straight line. Sometimes it's been called the Golden chain God's election leads to our regeneration leads to our coming to faith and convulsion leads to our justification leads to our sanctification leads to our perseverance leads to our experience of glory on wheat we think about these different aspects of our salvation.

Belonging to a straight line being linked together in the chain on that can be a very helpful way for us to think about the blessings of the gospel. We often speak about this golden Chilean but is however, sometimes a liability to that because if you think about it. That is something missing. When I say election regeneration convulsion justification adoption perseverance and glory. What is missing. While I haven't mentioned the Lord Jesus Christ and so sometimes when Christians think this way but is a tendency for them to divorce the blessings of the gospel from the person who is the gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ.

But what Paul does here in second Corinthians chapter 5 is really essentially say to us, but once you are in Christ all of these blessings are already viewers. They don't follow one another as link symmetry and they are all yours. They may be experienced progressively but they are actually all yours already, even glorification. In a sense is viewers already because you remember how he says in second Corinthians 3 that we are being transformed from 1° of glory to another. We sometimes seen heaven came down and glory filled my soul and it's this perspective that we are thinking about in these studies, but when we are in Jesus Christ in and with Jesus Christ.

All the blessings of the gospel are ours.

I think this may be one of the reasons why the New Testament writers use the illustration of marriage. If you asked a sensible married man. What do you love most about your wife if you said her beauty or her cooking on her skills at golf that he would be missing the main point wouldn't take what output of right-thinking married man most enjoys about his wife is that he's married to her and being moderate to have all of these die mentions of her life become his and of course the other way around. And it's this way when we come into the gospel when we come into understanding, but we are in Christ united to Christ we we realize that we will not looking outside of Christ for the blessings of God's grace. All of those blessings are ours in Christ, he is the center of everything, so we never lose their central focus on the person of the Lord Jesus and the truth of the matter is that evangelical Christians have often done by you will you will often find listening on the radio or watching television that you're being offered. Blessings very frequently.

You are not being offered. Christ himself on this is the big point for the apostle Paul L union with Christ is the reality that under guards.

All of these last and if we are to have them. We must have Christ if we are to enjoy them. We must know that they are all following in Jesus Christ because we have been united to him by the ministry of the Holy Spirit and by our response of trusting in him and through faith, getting into heaven. This was a huge reality for Paul. He illustrates it in a very dramatic way and a passage that I have always found this is a passage difficult to read in the assembly of God's people because it says such shocking things I'm thinking about what Paul says to the Corinthians.

When you remember the Corinthian some of them were going to prostitutes and this is you need to understand this because you are bound to the Lord Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.

You cannot leave Jesus Christ out of the brothel when you go into it and you see the pressure he is placing upon you sink them if you really united to Christ.

Don't you see what you are doing. You can never be separated from Christ, you cannot live in this part of your life united to Christ and then conveniently be disunited from Christ and then again be united to Christ. What you're actually doing. Think of it this way. He says what you're actually doing when you send in this way is essentially saying to Jesus, Jesus with because you are with me and I'm united to you and you can see that the power of the illustration, but he uses indicates for us to put up put up powerful reality versus in my life. If I'm united to Christ how it transforms the way I live my Christian life because not unbundled to him. I don't seven about blonde when I fail him on therein lies the shame of my soon but also therein lies one of the great motives for me living a life of absolute faithfulness to him. No, let's think together a little about just how big this union is when you become a Christian, but was the was the big motive in your mind. If you if you went through a real transition. Some of you perhaps have never known a day when you you didn't know the Lord Jesus. Some of us have gone through fairly dramatic transitions that we come to Christ. Why did people say we should come to Christ well for many of us it was it was to get rid of the pardon of the guilt of arson, but then thought that we discover we discover that coming to Christ was a much bigger thing than we ever imagine. Here some of us would be in Christians 2340, perhaps 50 years or more and we are still discovering that is more here than I ever imagined. Why is this well first of all, because our union with Christ. Remember, we thought about this right of the beginning is rooted in God's eternal purposes.

We are assist Paul in Ephesians 1 chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world that we might be for the praise of his glory and for the praise of his glorious grace business on the line for us. It underlines photos L union with Christ which we experience through faith is not. First of all grounded on my face and this is a tremendous encouragement to us. Our faith falters, but that doesn't mean our union with Christ falters because our union with Christ is grounded in God's eternal purpose under see this opens up for us not only security it opens up for his doxology doesn't to think that from before the foundation of the world he'd set his heart upon me that whenever he whenever he saw the coming work of the Lord Jesus Christ in some way beyond my imagination. He saw that I was united to Jesus Christ that he is, he would never think of Jesus Christ without thinking of me and he would never think of me without thinking that one belongs to my son, Jesus Christ. So that is a dimension of our union that is rooted and grounded in God's eternal purpose in God's eternal love.

But secondly, there's another dimension toward union with Christ and noticed that it's it's grounded in Christ's incarnation suggests that God has this idea that we are united to Christ.

It is that he sent his son into the world and our flash and blood in the larger that his son might be bonded to sinners. This is the meaning of the incarnation.

This is why Jesus took our flash and this is emphasized by Paul again and again that God did what the law could not do because of the weakness of our flash. So he sent his son into our flash in order to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves and to buying does to himself in order that Tesla New Testament says he might be the fee regardless of our salvation, but in our flash. He would do what we have failed to do in order that follows and then enters he might do all that would be needed for our salvation. Jesus came into the world, the son of God took our flesh to bind himself to us to be flesh of our flesh to be born of our bowling and of course, the New Testament teaches.

This is such a real thing in my sometimes if I'm reading Luke chapter 2 to a congregation and come to those words at Leanne Jesus 12 years old and he is lost in the temple and then he comes home and then Luke summarizes Jesus from the age of 12 to the age of 30.

We know nothing whatsoever about Jesus between the ages of 12 and sought to accept this, but he grew in stature, or you would expect that he grew in favor with man, you would expect not that there is something that many Christians wouldn't expect. He grew in favor with God and I sometimes say if the Jesus you believe in, was not capable of drawing in favor with God. You do not believe in the Jesus of the Gospels, but I find many Christians do not believe it was possible for Jesus to grow in favor with God.

But Luke tells us he grew in favor with God. He was more in favor with God. When he was 15 when he was when he was 12 he was noted favor with God and notified Jonathan but he was when he was a 12-year-old in the temple. She was most in favor with God and he cried out on the cross, my God, why have you forsaken me.

That was the point at which he was most in favor with God. How do I know that because Jesus himself told us the reason the father loves is because I lay down my life for the sheep. I sometimes think if there was any moment in the history of the life of Jesus. When the father was quietly singing my Jesus, I love the I know that our mind if ever I left the my Jesus 'tis not is at the very moment when, because of his obedience to his heavenly father. He was bearing the Roth of God upon his soul becoming obedient to death, even the death of the cross and all of this underlines for.

Of course, how deeply the Lord Jesus united himself to us in order that he might live our life and truly die – and then there's the risen Savior bring us into a living union with himself.

It is, it is marvelous to think you know this is something that Bialik Christians wrestled with for almost the first 500 years of the church's history. How do we accurately describe the Lord Jesus Christ so that we understand how amazing it is that we are united to this Savior who really is able to save to the uttermost. All those who come to God through him, and it's because not only did God and his purposes. Unite us through some produce and united himself to our flash that is no moment of our lives no experience let we can have, but we can say to Jesus. While this is something you don't understand.

Of course he did not experience identically what we experience, but in everything he experienced team when thousands far deeper than we ever experience binding to himself out humanity so that he might be a faithful and merciful high priest.

We do not have a high priest to who is completely unable to understand what it's like for us because he was tempted in all points like as we are. So, my friends, we mustn't think of union with Christ as a theological idea must learn to think of union to Christ as where marriage to him. We live with him he knows us pass is been there. He understands and living.

Therefore, in communion with the one to whom we are united is surely the highest privilege we could ever have in this world so union's crisis grounded in God's eternal election. It's grounded in Christ's incarnation, but it's also grounded in our bonding of ourselves to him in faith on his very interesting thing in the New Testament I think is a very striking thing, but the New Testament surveys the whole of our lives in all those little details and says we experience these things in Christ, so it's in Christ that we are free from our bondage in certain is in Christ, that we live to the praise of God's glory is in Christ, that we might really it's in Christ that we welcome one another is in Christ, that we speak of wisdom is in Christ, that we shall die is the dead in Christ who will rise. Our bodies have become members of Christ says the New Testament and undergo during all this, as I say is language that is completely unique. Apparently it does not occur anywhere else in ancient Greek. The apostle Paul speaks not just about believing in Christ are believing on Christ, but believing into Christ to situation the verb to believe piece into Christ and apparently that is no other example in all the literature of antiquity of one person believing into another person, and Paul may have invented this use of language to indicate to us that yes we do believe on Christ, we do believe about Christ, but actually real faith that says into Christ brings us into union and communion with the Lord Jesus Christ so that we become one with him were not confused with him. We are always ourselves that we become one with him in the same sense, or perhaps more accurately, to say in a sense analogous to the way in which a man and a woman become one flesh. There are still two different people, but that is this mystery about which the New Testament speaks and remember how Paul puts in Ephesians 5, after all this wonderful teaching about the relationship between a husband and wife he comes out with this amazing statement.

I'm actually speaking here about Christ and his church that is this analogy between marriage and union with Christ.

Now we tend to think this way union with Christ is like marriage call thinks the other way around marriage.

He says his light union with Christ. The big thing is this marvelous union that believers have with the Lord Jesus, and as we'll see, he goes on in different places to explore. The die mentions of this union, how empowerment is how wonderful it is. But here's how he puts it in second Corinthians 517 if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

All I think more accurately translated if any, in Christ, new creation. I don't think Paul is saying if viewed in Christ. You are a new creation or a new creature that may be true, I don't think it's the truth of this text.

I think the truth of this text is when you're in Christ you have taken us that into a new world order altogether, with everything is different.

The people of often said to Mabel, you've lived in Scotland you've lived in the United States was the difference. My standard answer. Everything, absolutely everything is just that bit different and is not true about what it means to be a Christian and to be united to the Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn't it doesn't just about are some things you no longer do.

Although that may be true, are some things that you do that may be true, it is absolutely everything is transform.

I remember a Cy Young start when I first came across this.

First, because it struck me as being so illuminating of my experience in becoming a Christian number him that we used to sing these words and that something lives in every few but Christ the size of never seen my thoughts exactly what is to the I'm seeing this world through different ways.

I didn't understand then what I think I've begun to understand the reason I understand this world through different eyes is actually because I belong to another world altogether because if anyone is in Christ, new creation. John Calvin puts this wonderfully in his institutes of the Christian religion when he says, as long as Christ remains outside of us and we are separated from him all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value to us because he came to share with us what he is received from the father in order that it might become ours and that he might dwell with us and within us next Dr. Sinclair Ferguson explaining what it means to be in Christ all this week on Renewing Your Mind work during portions of Dr. Ferguson's teaching series union with Christ in 12 messages.

He explains what it means to be a new creation how believers are crucified with Christ. What it means to be baptized into Christ and how were hidden in Christ will be encouraged and challenged by this in-depth study were making it available exclusively here on Renewing Your Mind this week. You can reserve a copy with a donation of any about the leader ministries because with your gift at 800-435-4343.

You can also find us online at Renewing Your Mind.the phrase in Christ is used throughout the New Testament were thankful for Dr. Ferguson's messages this week as he helps us understand what it means, how it strengthens our assurance that the one who lived and died for us will never leave us nor forsake us in other times when we study our Bibles and we run across a phrase like in Christ, and we may not quite understand what it means any time that happens to you. We hope you'll take advantage of our online service called ask Ligon near train staff members are available 24 hours a day, Monday through Saturday to answer your biblical or theological questions quick and easy. Just go to ask.Ligon near.org that's ask.Ligon near.org tomorrow.

Dr. Ferguson shows us how all of mankind is united either to Adam or Christ.

It's an important distinction will dig into it. Thursday here on Renewing Your Mind