WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE IN UNION WITH CHRIST?

A Born Again Believer’s Statement of Faith

I believe the Bible to be the inspired, only infallible, authoritative Word of God. I

affirm that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son, and the

Holy Spirit and is perfect in all his ways. I believe the Second Person of the Godhead

(the Lord Jesus Christ) created all things that have been made in six days and rested on

the seventh day. I affirm that Jesus created every human being in Adam on the sixth

day as the seed of Adam, free from the disease of sin, in right standing with God his

Creator. I assert that Adam and his seed fell from this state of sinlessness and

fellowship with God to a state of sinfulness and separation from God. Adam’s condition

is a permanent and humanly irreversible consequence for his disobedience in eating

from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I further assert that outside of the

divine intervention of the Triune Godhead Adam and his seed are dead in sin and

incapable of savingly initiating the process of his redemption. These realities are why

there is a need for the second or new birth.

I believe God the Father must initiate Adam’s restoration to fellowship with

himself by first choosing (in Christ) those to whom he will show mercy, and (in and

through/by Christ) providing the sacrifice his righteousness demands. Scripture

declares that although God himself never sinned, he would one day become the offerer

and offering for the sins of those to whom faith would be gifted, as an act of his

sovereign grace alone. God the Father prepared a body for the Second Person of the

Godhead, and at his incarnation, he was given the name Jesus because he was going

to save his people from their sins. It was in this state that God the Father gave to the

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Son all those he chose in Christ before the foundation of the world, by making them one

in his body as the spiritual seed of Jesus. Jesus is the Messiah and the Second Adam.

Moreover, even as Adam and his seed fell from a state of sinlessness and

fellowship with God to a state of sinfulness and loss of fellowship with God, even so in

Jesus the Second Adam, God the Father has initiated and completed the process of

redemption by pouring out his wrath upon his Son. Salvation is a finished work.

Although the Second Person of the Godhead was not guilty of transgressions of his own

doing, the God-man Jesus the Messiah was accounted guilty because of those whom

the Father placed in union with him. Jesus became guilty because we were guilty in

Adam, and when God put us in Christ at his incarnation, we became one with Jesus.

By faith, I believe that Jesus became sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made

the righteousness of God in him. Therefore salvation is literally in his body. I believe

that God the Father gave me to Jesus as a gift according to his good pleasure and will

to the praise of his glory.

Furthermore, I believe that while I was in union with Christ, he lived a perfect life

in keeping with God the Father’s law, that I, in Adam, and through wicked works failed to

keep. I believe that God the Father poured out his wrath on Jesus because I was in

union with Christ making him guilty. I affirm when Jesus died, I died with him. I believe

the Father accepted Jesus’ sacrifice and as proof, he raised him from the dead. I

believe I rose from the dead when Jesus rose from the dead being united to his body.

The Scriptures teach that while I was yet a sinner, Jesus died for me. God will bring his

elect to faith at the time he ordained each one to be born. I believe what Jesus said:

“You must be born again.”

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 I was unaware of this earlier in my life, but because I was a son, when it pleased

the Father to call me by his Gospel, sending the Spirit of his Son into my heart that I

may cry Abba Father, to reveal his Son in me, my eyes were opened. God gave me

eyes to see and ears to hear. Now I also with Paul am not ashamed of the Gospel of

Jesus Christ. Because the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that

believes, I believe that God the Father has ordained the foolishness of preaching to

save those that are dead in sin and lost in Adam. All those who have been appointed

eternal life will come to repentance as a sovereign act of the Holy Spirit, by grace

through faith in Jesus, by way of the Gospel-that record God has left concerning his

Son. He that has the Son has life because those that have the Son are of the Seed of

the Second Adam - the Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally, I believe that Jesus Christ was declared to be the Son of God with power

because God the Father resurrected him three days later after he died. I confess that

Jesus was seen by his 12 disciples, 500 people, and other saints before he ascended

back to heaven to sit on the right hand of God the Father. Jesus now has a name that

is above any other name and every knee will bow and confess that he is Lord to the

glory of God the Father. The Lord Jesus is seated at the right hand of God the Father.

Jesus is sitting because after he had borne the sins of his people, (those that were in

union with him when he accomplished God’s work of redemption) there remains no

more sacrifice for sins for them. Jesus made one sacrifice for sins because he perfectly

fulfilled the righteous requirements of God the Father’s law. Jesus is God’s appointed

high priest-the effectual mediator between elect personages and God, and the perfect

offering, that is the offering all previous sacrifices and offerings pointed. God’s work of

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salvation is complete in him. I confess that I am complete in him. I confess that God the

Son not only saves from the penalty of sin but the power of sin. The Scriptures and

Christian experience have persuaded me that the indwelling Holy Spirit sanctifies his

people through a holy lifestyle of principled obedience to Christ and subjection to God’s

Word. Although we are not perfect, we long to be now what we will be in the future,

perfect like Jesus. The Holy Spirit has implanted in our hearts fundamental submission

to God the Father, as manifested through our submission to his Son. Sin shall not have

dominion over us any longer because we are not under the law but grace. The

Scriptures teach that this is the lifestyle of those whom God the Father saves by grace

through faith in Jesus Christ by the Spirit of God until he comes again. I also affirm that

Jesus will one day return to gather his people unto himself, that where he is, we shall

also be. Even so, come Lord Jesus!