Year: 2015

Here is part 4 of an 8-part essay by Dr. Gary Deddo titled “The Christian life and our participation in Christ’s continuing ministry.” To read other parts, click on a number: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8. For all 8 parts combined in one article, click here.

Recap of part 3

In part 3 of this series we addressed several common objections to taking seriously and realistically our union with Christ: It sounds too good to be true; it seems to say we are somehow confused with Christ; there seems to be no place for us to be or to act. All of these objections are misunderstandings based on false assumptions and false logic. Now in part 4 we’ll explore more in depth what our union and communion with Christ involves.

Who We Are: Our Identity in Christ

What does our union with Christ add up to, if it is not a moral, psychological, volitional or telic union? Perhaps the best word we can use in our contemporary situation to convey who we are in Christ is to say our union with Christ determines our identity. Identity seems to be summed up in who or what gives us our meaning, our purpose, our significance, our security, our dignity and destiny. These elements are essential to who we think we are, and how we act and respond to things around us. Union with Christ means that he is the sole and ultimate source of our meaning, purpose, significance, security, dignity and destiny. Others may remind us of our identity in Christ by what they say to us and in how they treat us. We may, and indeed ought to, remind others, be signs and witnesses to who others are in Christ. But only Christ, our Creator and Redeemer, can be the source of our identity. This is why we worship God alone. We worship what gives us our ultimate identity. In this sense who or what we serve or treasure indicates our identity. We can serve/worship only one real master.

The problem is, there are many sources we may look to in order to derive or secure our identity. In our secular society none of them have to do with the God of the Bible, revealed in Jesus Christ. So we can seek to establish our identities through our work or careers, through financial success, possessions, through social approval, personal achievement, leisure activities, educational achievement, political power and influence and through relationships with family, friends, co-workers, etc. The list is endless. Representatives of these various spheres of human life often broadcast grandiose promises of giving us a more secure sense of identity if we will only fulfill certain conditions: get that degree, achieve that promotion, buy a certain thing, live a certain place, realize some potential, fall in love, fulfill a certain fantasy, etc. But these are all conditionally offered potential sources of identity. Only if and when, a, b, c, then you can gain a more secure identity, be somebody. Even more important, these things cannot give us our real identity. They are false idols and cannot provide us with any ultimate or lasting meaning, purpose, security, dignity, or destiny. They cannot tell us who we are, for they do not know, and do not care! They are not your Creator nor your Redeemer. They are no gods!

The Danger of Christ-Plus

The danger in the church, the believing community, is to acknowledge Christ, but then seek out supplemental sources of identity. That amounts to serving two masters—trying to live a Christ-plus life (Christ plus x, y, or z). But what we add on can never serve as sources of identity. They can only be spheres in which we live out our identity given to us as a free gift by the grace of God. Once we add on the plus, the plus will inevitably make itself the key and central point. A competition will be set up in which the plus element demands to take over and serves as the real ultimate source of identity.

This dynamic is addressed often in the New Testament, especially in the letter to the Galatians and in the letter to the Hebrews. Adding on something to Christ is not a neutral and safe thing. It is a danger and ultimately means Christ is not being honored as the only ultimate source of identity, is not the only object of our worship. We become at best divided in mind and heart, soul and body. As we say these days, this is not sustainable. Our union with Christ means he provides us with our true identity as a freely given gift of his grace. We are the children of God sharing in his very Sonship with the Father by the Holy Spirit.

The Christian Life as Participation in Christ’s Continuing Ministry

So then what light does our union with Christ shed on the Christian life of obedience, or our calling to ministry? I have found that the word participation, which is a translation of the biblical Greek word koinonia, is indispensable. Our obedience and our ministry can only be properly grasped as a sharing in or participating in the obedience and ministry of Jesus Christ.

But if Christian life and ministry is somehow participation, what is it that we actually get involved in? Christ has completed his once-for-all ministry. How can we get involved in that? We can’t attempt to redo what he has done. How can we participate? This line of questioning indicates that we often forget or perhaps never fully grasped the fact that the risen Christ ascended in his bodily form with his humanity, a humanity not only intact but now glorified. James Torrance used to put these questions to his classes: “When do we really see the true humanity of Christ? Was it when he was hungry? Was it when he was asleep in the boat? Or was it when he was angry in the temple? No. We see Christ’s true humanity and so ours, in his ascension. There we see our humanity sanctified and glorified in him as he takes us with him as our substitute and representative into the very presence of the Father.”

The humanity Christ assumed at conception was not cast off like the empty external fuel tank of the space shuttle, only to fall back to earth some minutes after its blastoff for outer space. No, the incarnation is permanent because, as Paul put it, the man Jesus Christ is (and remains to this day) our mediator (1 Timothy 2:5). His perfected humanity remains the only meeting place for God and humanity to meet.

But not only does his humanity abide, his ministry also continues. His gracious service did not end at the cross. Yes, the reconciling work was finished, but that reconciling work was for the sake of our living out of that recreated relationship now securely reestablished. As we see throughout the book of Hebrews, we serve a living Lord who continually intercedes for us. He remains the one true apostle, the one true leader of our worship, the one true pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Our Lord Jesus Christ remains ever vigilant, ever active. He is no retired Savior who is now unemployed.

All our responses to Christ are nothing more than following Christ in his present activity and engaging in the ministry that he is actively doing now through the Holy Spirit. When we preach the gospel, we participate in the apostolic ministry of Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit continues to bear witness to Christ and to our need for Christ. When we love a neighbor, or love an enemy, for the sake of Christ and his kingdom, we are merely catching up with God. We’re merely going to work with God. When we pray, we’re joining Christ in his faithful prayers of intercessions for us and for the world. When we worship, we are joining in with all the faithful, including those who have gone before us who are continually worshiping following the leadership of Jesus Christ, our great worship leader (leitourgos).

Even when we confess our sins, we join with Jesus himself who is the only one who truly knows the depth of sin, who is perfectly repentant and so for us received the baptism of John the Baptist. But as our great mediator who knows our weaknesses, he takes our weak faith and meager repentance and graciously makes it his own, perfects it and passes it on to the Father. On the basis of the work of Christ to save us, rescue us from sin, we are saved for participation, fellowship, communion in an ongoing relationship of wonderful exchange.

When we see our whole lives this way, we join with the apostle Paul, who proclaimed, “I live yet not I but Christ who lives in me.” That is not just a platitude that sounds nice. The whole of the Christian life is actually a participation in the life and ministry of Christ. So we can say, I pray, yet not I but Christ prays in me. I obey, yet not I but Christ obeys in me. I have faith, yet not I but Christ has faith in me. I hunger and thirst for righteousness and reconciliation, yet not I but Christ in me.

The joy, peace and love that Christ wants for us is not a joy, peace and love that are like Christ’s, that we somehow achieve with God’s help. No, by his Spirit, Christ tells us he intends to share with us his joy, his peace, his love, and his righteousness. And, from the foundations of the earth, he never thought otherwise!

Never view yourself apart from Christ, for that is not who you are.

Here is part 3 of a 8-part essay by Dr. Gary Deddo titled “The Christian life and our participation in Christ’s continuing ministry.” To read other parts, click on a number: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. For all 8 parts combined in one article, click here.

Recap of part 2

In part 2 of this series we looked at the biblical foundations and theological synthesis of the revelation of the reality of our union and communion with Jesus Christ. This reality was not a secondary matter in the New Testament nor in Christian teaching down through the ages. But because it has been somewhat forgotten, there is the need to bring it back to light. However, there are some obstacles in the way of fully appreciating the truth and reality of our union with Christ. In part 3 of this series we will consider some of those barriers.

Obstacles to grasping the reality of our union with Christ

There are significant obstacles to our even beginning to grasp the truth of our union with Christ. I’d like to give some consideration to those concerns that often have blunted if not obliterated any concerted effort to grasp this profound theological truth.

Too good to be true?

First is the sheer wonder of the profound depths of such a grace. Would God really go to such lengths, heights and depths for us? It sounds too good to be true. But when it comes to God, shouldn’t we expect the good news to sound like it is too good to be true? Is not God’s grace beyond all we can ask or imagine? Certainly this response is no reason to rule out its gracious reality.

Confusion of ourselves with Christ

Union with Christ has often been avoided because of fear that if we say we are united to him at the ontological depths of our being, we will collapse ourselves into him and confuse ourselves with him. That misunderstanding of our union with Christ is a possibility expressed not just in what we think, but reinforced by how we are taught to think. We learn that what things really are is what they are all by themselves. They are individual substances, all one stuff. So, if two things are truly united, the difference between them as well as the distinction of each must be lost. Either one thing would turn into another, or both would turn into a third thing. Following this pattern of thinking, union with Christ would mean we turn into Christ or he would turn into us, each ceasing to be what we were. The Torrances were quick to warn that it is this way of thinking about ourselves as individual substances (a way that can be traced back to Aristotle) that leads to such confusion. If we assume that we are what we are independent of anything else, then a relationship, such as union, cannot contribute in any essential way to what things actually are.

But what if Aristotle was wrong? What if the essence of being human is defined by what we are by virtue of our being in some kind of relationship with God? What if relationship is essential to human being and not optional or accidental, but constitutive—such that we would not be what we are except by virtue of the relationships in which we exist, especially in relationship to God? If that is the case, then the Triune God who has his being as Father, Son and Holy Spirit reconstitutes our humanity by forging a new relationship with fallen humanity through his Incarnation and his entire life, death, resurrection and ascension as the New Adam. In that case, Jesus Christ has become our Lord from the inside of our humanity. We are now what we are because of Whose we are.

It was the truth of our union with Christ that led the Torrances to rethink our Aristotelian ontology (the study of the nature of being itself), and conclude that being itself, divine and human, is “onto-relational.” If relationship is essential to who we are, then in union with Christ, we are really united, but remain distinctly ourselves without confusion with Christ. We are most truly ourselves when we are united to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Union is a continual relationship with Christ at the deepest levels of our being, not a confusion of ourselves with Christ.

Grasping the truth of our relationship to Christ calls for the renewing of our minds so that we begin to think differently about what makes us who we are. In the end, we even have to approach reading Scripture differently. The challenge becomes not so much taking the Bible literally, but taking it realistically. When Paul declares that we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies, we have warrant, despite our Aristotelian philosophical training, to grasp this realistically. The good new is that we as Christians are united to Christ in such a way that all that is ours is his and all that is his is ours. Paul says, “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).

What does it mean to be a Christian? It means by grace we are united to Christ as his true brothers and sisters. Nothing less. That is who we are in him.

No place for us: antinomianism?

As noted above, some people worry that any real union must confuse us with Christ. This idea can be reinforced if we feel somehow compelled to trace out a false logic—a third obstacle, which goes something like this: If who we are is who we are in Christ, and our whole salvation is complete in Christ, then there is no place for me and no significance to what I do. This is the antinomian objection, that if we are really united to Christ then there is no reason or purpose for my choices or obedience. I can do what I like.

This might be one of many possible logical implication of our union with Christ. But theology is not the result of strings of logical implications. And simple logical inferences are never necessarily true. Second, everything depends on what we mean by union. The New Testament affirms a profound union with Christ, the completed work of Christ, and the wonderful exchange and yet it also calls for our involvement, our activity, our participation. Union in the New Testament sense does not rule out response, obedience, action and decision, but includes them.

Can we make any progress in understanding how these elements fit together? I think the answer is yes, and the Torrances lead the way. Union with Christ in this realist way does not eliminate the trusting obedience of the Christian life, but actually strengthens it!

A personal union

The biblical picture points to the union of persons who remain persons. The union is a personal union, not mechanical or functional or impersonal. Such a personal unity calls for interaction, for inter-relationship. A personal unity means that neither person is lost, but the distinction of persons is maintained while the personal, deliberate and chosen interaction takes place. Unity in this frame means the establishment and fulfillment of the creature in relationship to God through the humanity of Jesus Christ, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. This union is a reflection of the Triune relationships but now mirrored in God’s relationship to us in Christ and through the Spirit. Jesus can pray to the Father in a meaningful way even though he is one in being with the Father in the Spirit. From all eternity the Son can glorify the Father and the Father glorify the Son and yet be one. It turns out that the oneness of God is a unity where relationship is intrinsic to the being of God, so that if God were not Father, Son and Spirit, God would not be God. Aristotle’s presuppositions about what things can be and how they exist are apparently incorrect. Relationship can be essential to who, at least, God is—and who we are.

A saving relationship

Within those relationships there is real interaction, personal activity. So the saving relationship of exchange into which we are taken by grace calls for interaction, inter-relationship, and responsiveness. Salvation, rather than being an impersonal steady state of being, like a statue, is a relational reality. This is what makes salvation personal and alive. Being united to Christ is not being formed into a perfect, inert statue, but more living and being in a dynamic relationship where there is intimate giving and receiving in a wonderful communion. That relationship determines the essence of who we are and who we are becoming.

Perhaps we can draw a distant comparison with marriage in answer to the question, “Why should we do anything if we are united to Christ and our whole salvation is complete in him?” Raising the question that way about our union with Christ would be like asking why two people who are married should live together, since they have entered into the state of matrimony. But isn’t marriage by definition a sharing of life together? It would make no sense and be a violation of the logic of relationship to say, “Since we’re already married, there’s no point in living together.” So too in our union with Christ. As James Torrance used to exhort us, following Calvin, union with Christ and communion or participation in Christ are twin doctrines that can never be separated and never collapsed. Our unity with Christ in a relationship of wonderful exchange is a completed gift in which we personally participate so that the truth and reality of who we are in Christ becomes more and more manifest in our lives as we grow up into him.

We live our life in union with Christ because we live and move and have our being by being in communion with Christ. It is a personal reality in which we are meant to participate. Neglecting our active participation is neglecting our present salvation established in Christ. What does it mean to be a Christian? It means living daily by the grace that we are united to Christ as his brothers and sisters. Nothing less. That is who we are in him.

Below is a video update on the recently held GCI Intern Program orientation. For additional details and pictures, click here.

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