One of the great privileges of my life is being married to my bride, Ariel. Sometimes I find myself reflecting on how great our wedding day was. The ceremony took place in an elegant chapel that cornered a wide-open, rustic ranch. Roaming the field was, you guessed it, a longhorn. It can’t get more Texas than that, right? We catered in mexican food for dinner, a personal favorite of mine. The dance floor was energetic and filled with all of the people we love. Finally, to end the event, our family and friends lined the exit with sparklers as we made our way to the getaway car, sailing into the Dallas night with our new life ahead of us. Indeed, our wedding day was, as they say, a memory of a lifetime.
And yet when I reflect on what I treasure most from that evening, none of what I just mentioned makes the list. As thankful as I am for a beautiful venue, delicious food, and the opportunity to see family and friends, these are not the features that my heart is drawn to. For us, the most beautiful moment of the night was our vow exchange. We decided to write our own, detailing the personal ways that we would commit to each other during our lifetime. We have nothing against traditional vows. In fact, we did both! However, we wrote ours because we wanted to be as specific as possible when detailing our commitment. We each wanted to outline how the gospel would specifically empower our devotion to the other person. And that really is the beauty of the exchange — two Christians giving themselves to one another as a response to the Lord first giving Himself to them. In this way, the marital vow is the commitment that colorizes what is actually happening in a ceremony: covenantal union between a man and a woman.
This leads to another important point: enveloped in this promise of commitment is also the pursuit of communion. The pronouncement of husband and wife is also the commencement of two people sharing their lives together. Indeed, to commune is to share. To commune is to enjoy relationship. So, a wedding day is beautiful not only because there are two Christ followers uniting to one another, but it is in this very commitment they look to one another with inexpressible excitement that they get to do life together! This joy can be manifested in a number of ways, but I’ll just say from my own life: I love spending time with my wife! I love talking to her, hearing about her day, taking walks and sharing meals together. I’m united to Ariel in marriage, but I also get to commune with Ariel for as long as the Lord allows. What a joy!
Why do I bring this up? Well, I think this is a framework for understanding the great joy we having of communing with Christ. When I use the phrase, abide in Christ, what typically comes to your mind? For some, you might immediately think of actions you must do: prayer, reading the Bible, fasting, evangelizing. For you, to commune with, or abide in, Christ is fundamentally an act you must perform. Abiding is primarily viewed as activity. For others, abiding in Christ brings up warm feelings of intimacy and connection. But is that what it means to abide in Christ? Is communing with Jesus merely about doing certain things or experiencing certain emotions?
What I would I like to contend is that communion with Jesus is more fundamental than an act though, eventually, it will involve actions. And it is deeper than human emotion though, certainly, emotion is involved at some point. To truly understand what it means to commune with Christ we must first understand one of the most important doctrines of the Christian faith: our union with Christ.
Sinclair Ferguson says, “Our union with Christ is the source of all spiritual fruitfulness in our lives.” In other words, before we can wrap our minds around things like reading the Bible, praying, and evangelizing, our spiritual activity, we must first recognize who we are as Christ followers at a fundamental level. Pauls writes in Colossians 3:3, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Romans 6:3–4 he adds, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” In other words, Paul is highlighting an existential transformation that took place in the lives of these believers: through faith in Christ their old, sinful man has died and they have been made new in Christ. At another point, Paul describes them as “new creation” (see 2 Cor 5:17). But notice the key phrase: in/into Christ. What is the source of their spiritual transformation? It’s being united to Christ. Indeed, their union with Christ has completely changed everything.
And yet nowhere in the New Testament do we see that this transformation leads to stagnant living. Actually, Paul says a couple of verses prior in Romans 6, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” In other words, if you are united to Christ, and thus a new creation, why would you think that it is okay to live according to your former way of life? Logically, that makes no sense. Biblically, that is impossible. New creations live new lives. Truly, Paul summarizes this well, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil 3:8). As one who had been united to Christ, Paul simply wanted more of Him. Because of his union with the Lord Jesus, all he could think about was greater communion for the rest of his days.
This is where the doctrine of union with Christ creates and conducts our communion with Christ. Union with Christ creates our communion in that it would not be possible had the Lord not accomplished salvation in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. We could not experience the joy of relationship if we were not first brought into saving relationship by God’s grace. But it also conducts our abiding. What do I mean by that? It means that this doctrine frames the way we understand all of our Christian actions. First, our Christian efforts are an overflow of our union with Christ. We cannot conjure up Christlikeness. We do not have that power reservoir in ourselves. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we could ever produce spiritual fruit in our lives (see Gal 5:16–26). Second, our union with Christ points all of our efforts — reading Scripture, praying, sharing our faith — toward this primary goal: knowing Christ (Phil 3:8). Every step of obedience, every activity, is an overflow of who we already are in Christ and an intentional channel to know Christ more intimately. What a gift it is to commune with our Lord!
In closing, this brings me to the image that I began with: marriage. In marriage we see a commitment, symbolized by marital vows in a ceremony, but also a sneak peak at the lifelong communion a husband and wife get to joyfully share in. And yet this human union symbolizes something far greater and more glorious that we have in the gospel: union with our Lord. Through faith in Christ, our old man has died and the new man has been born. It is in this moment that a fundamental transformation has taken place and a door has been opened for intimate communion with our Savior. Would we be a people who, like Paul, in all of our Christian efforts — Bible reading, prayer, evangelism, Sunday worship — exclaim with great joy, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
