UNION WITH CHRIST IN HIS RESURRECTION

By: James S. Stewart

Only those who through Christ have entered into a vital relationship to God are really "alive." Existence outside of Christ is not worthy of the name at all; for as compared with a soul that has seen everything in heaven and earth transfigured by a personal experience of redemption and has begun to live daily in the romance and wonder and thrilling stimulus of Jesus' fellowship, the man who lives for the world and the flesh and has no knowledge of God is virtually dead. He does not know it; he thinks he is "seeing life"; he cannot guess the glory he is missing, nor realize the utter bankruptcy and wretchedness of everything in which he has put his trust.

Paul saw with piercing clearness that his life into possession of which souls entered by conversion was nothing else than the life of Christ Himself. He shared His very being with them. "Christ, who is our life: (Col. 3:4), cries the Apostle. He speaks of "the life of Jesus being made manifest in our body" (II Cor. 4:10,11)

This life which flows from Christ into man is something totally different from anything experienced on the merely natural plane. It is different, not only in degree, but also in kind. It is a new quality of life, a supernatural quality. As Paul puts it elsewhere, "There is a new creation" ­ not just an intensification of powers already possessed, but the sudden emergence of an entiely new and original element ­ "whenever a man comes to be in Christ" (II Cor. 5:17 - Moffatt).

The Christian begins to live in the sphere of the post-resurrection life of Jesus. "Ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead" (Col. 2:13). His life is yours, Paul means. You do not need to wait "until the day break and the shadows flee away" before beginning to live eternally. In union with Christ, that glorious privilege is yours here and now. Risen with Him, you have passed out of relation to sin, out of the hampering limitations of this present order, out of the domain of the world and the flesh, into the realm of the Spirit, and into life that is life indeed. "Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:4). "Reckon yourselves alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6:11).

From: A Man in Christ: The Vital Elements of Paul's Religion. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House. Pgs. 192-194.