Called Saints, Part Two

James Fowler, in an article titled "Union With Christ," poignantly describes where our holiness comes from:

"Christians are designated by character traits that can only be understood as a result of our union of being with Christ, and are not contingent on our doing. The Christian is identified as 'holy and blameless' (Col. 1:22). The Christian is also called 'righteous.' 'Through the obedience of the One (Christ) the many (Christians) are made righteous' (Rom. 5:19). 'We become the righteousness of God in Christ (in union with Christ)' (II Cor. 5:21). 'Christ Jesus has become to us righteousness' (I Cor. 1:30). Despite the protestations of the reformers that Christians are only 'declared righteous' in a legal and juridical pronouncement from the divine Judge, the scriptural record indicates that we are 'made righteous.' In fact, Christians 'are perfect' (Phil. 3:15), 'perfected' (Heb. 10:14) and regarded as 'the spirits of righteous men made perfect' (Heb. 12:23).

"Christians need to realize that 'in Christ' (in union with Christ) they are acceptable to God. 'Christ accepted us to the glory of God' (Rom. 15:7). 'There is, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (in union with Christ Jesus)' (Rom. 8:1). The world employs an abundance of self-talk about self-image, self-worth, self-value, self-concept, etc., but the Christian can have an assurance of a secure identity that is far greater that the criteria that the world relies on. The Christian can have a 'positive personal concept' of who he is 'in Christ' (in union with Christ). . . .

"It is so important for Christians to be aware that their union-identity, individually and collectively, is a result of a real 'union with Christ.' The Christian life is not a charade of play-acting or role-playing, trying to live like Jesus and love like Jesus. The Christian is so spiritually united with Christ, as a Christ-one deriving being and identity from Christ, that it can be said, 'There is no explanation for me apart from Him. . . .'

"We are forced to observe distinction, though, in the recognition that the Christian is not any of these things 'in and of himself,' i.e. intrinsically, inherently, self-existently, or self-generatively. Our union of identity is 'in Christ' (in union with Christ). It is a derived identity, derived from our 'union with Christ.' We are holy ones because the Holy One, Jesus Christ, lives in us (Acts 3:14; 4:27,30). We are righteous ones because the Righteous One, Jesus Christ, lives in us (Acts 3:14; 7:52). We are perfect ones because the Perfect One, Jesus Christ, lives in us (Heb. 7:28).

"Distinction must be noted in the Christian’s derivation from Christ to be who we are, and do what we do. God created us as derivative creatures. As derivative man, we always derive from another, a spirit source beyond ourselves. We are not the quality, the virtue, the character, the identity, the action in ourselves. We are not gods, and never become gods or God. There is always the distinction of the divine Supplier and the human receiver or deriver. The basic human function is derivation, dependency, receptivity, i.e. faith. We are responsible choosers, and faith is a choice to receive from, depend on, and derive from another.

"Deriving our life, being, and identity from 'union with Christ' does not mean that we are 'no longer human,' as some have claimed. It does not mean that we are no longer a distinct individual with a particular personality. Though identity is formed in our spirit by 'union with Christ,' we retain individuality within the function of our soul. There is always a distinct 'me' that relates to and derives from 'He'; even though there is no explanation for 'me' apart from 'He.'

"Modern evangelicalism has not placed much emphasis on 'being,' much less 'union of being in Christ.' American evangelicalism, in particular, has emphasized pragmatic productivity in precepts, procedures and programs for 'doing' God’s work. Success in the accomplishment of 'doing' has become the basis for significance and identity.

"The distinction of Christ and the Christian has been pushed to the extreme of an objectified and separated concept of the Christian’s relationship with Christ. The vast majority of those who call themselves 'Christians' today are essentially deistic in their understanding of God. God is a detached and separated deity. 'God is up in heaven, and I am down here on earth.' In addition, this disjoined deity is regarded as an offended deity who is angry and judgmental about the sinfulness of man. God is viewed as opposed to and against man. Jesus is likewise regarded as far removed in His transcendence, seated at the right hand of God the Father. There is very little sense of the immanence or internal presence of Jesus in the Christ, much less any sense of 'union with Christ.' Jesus is usually considered to be interceding for Christians, acting as the legal advocate who is trying to convince the Father to accept us. Such an outlook severs the essential unity of the Trinity.

"This detachment of God and man has been fostered by a theological paradigm that has over-objectified the Person and work of Jesus Christ. Their perspective is that Jesus died vicariously in our place on the cross, and then went to heaven before the Father to convince Him to impute certain benefits to those who would assent to His redemptive efficacy. On the basis of Christ’s substitutional work, God is then alleged to be willing to grant a new standing, a new status, a new position to those who identify with Jesus, and He will declare them righteous.

"Instead of an indwelling presence of the Spirit of Christ allowing for a new spiritual identity, evangelicalism has offered identification with the historical and theological Jesus, and more tangibly with the church organization. The one who would become a Christian is encouraged to walk the aisle, raise their hand, and join the group. They must assent to the veracity of the historical and theological Jesus, go to catechism, agree with the creed, and sign the 'statement of faith.' Having thus become a 'member,' they must consent to serve on a committee that promotes what the church is 'doing.' This offers no real indwelling union-identity with the living Lord Jesus, but only a social association in alliance with Jesus. One’s casual 'personal relationship' with Jesus is assumed because they now have the 'wet passport' of a baptismal certificate. The new church member is assured that they have received a static deposit of impersonal 'eternal life' which will serve as a 'ticket to heaven' for future union and intimacy with God. Their only sense of identity is that they are identified and denominated as a Methodist, a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, a Baptist, etc., or polarized as a Calvinist or Arminian, a fundamentalist or a charismatic, a dispensationalist or a covenantist, a liberal or a conservative, mainline or non-denominational. There is no sense of a spiritual union-identity with the living Lord, only a sense of identification with a belief-system cause or an institutional entity.

"In like manner, instead of an awareness of 'union with Christ' as 'partakers of the divine nature' (II Pet. 1:4), evangelicalism has fostered the double-minded duality of the Christian having two internal natures that are in conflict. This is illustrated by the hypothetical presence of a 'black dog' and a 'white dog' dwelling within the Christian, and these are involved in a life and death struggle to determine who will win. This produces a schizophrenic understanding of identity that results in a paranoid uncertainty of whether one is being motivated by 'self' or Jesus. 'Is this me, or is this Jesus?' The confused Christian can then engage in the 'denial' of being able to win the behavioral battle, and resign themselves to antinomian sinfulness. Alternatively, they may conscientiously have doubts about their salvation that are relieved through periodical emotional and ecstatic religious experiences or ritual observances.

"When evangelicals do attempt to consider who they are, they usually develop a negative sense of 'self' that is self-denigrating and self-deprecating. Their self-talk goes something like this: 'Jesus died for such a worm as me. I am nothing. I am just a sinner saved by grace. I am still a dirty old man inside. If you knew the real me, you would not want anything to do with me. Neither would Jesus. So, what I have to do in order to be what God wants me to be is to engage in self-denial and suppression of the real "me" and my sin. I have to put myself down in self-surrender and brokenness. I have to "die to self" in masochistic self-crucifixion. Basically I am bad, evil, and sinful, but "praise the Lord," my past is forgiven, the future is assured, even though the present is the "pits".'

"If that is all the typical evangelical Christian knows, and a 'deeper life' teacher comes to explain that you as a Christian have 'Christ in you, the hope of glory,' that is 'good news' indeed. It’s almost like being 'born again' again! And if someone comes to tell you that 'Christ in you' means that you are 'one spirit' with Jesus, and that you have a new spiritual identity in 'union with Christ' – WOW – a whole new world of life and freedom opens up in understanding our union identity of being by the indwelling Jesus. In my own personal experience, it was the writings of W. Ian Thomas who first introduced me to the awareness of the indwelling Spirit of Christ, and it was Norman P. Grubb who filled out the dialectic understanding of an identity-union with Christ.

". . . When the very Being of the Triune God has joined Himself to a receptive individual to become the basis of that person’s Christian identity of 'being,' then He must be allowed to act as the God that He is in that Christian’s behavior. In other words, it is imperative that the Christian behave like who he has become 'in Christ' (in union with Christ). This Christian behavior, however, is not a self-produced, self-generated, self-actuated activity whereby a Christian strives to succeed at the project of Christian living in accord with some proceduralized 'how-to' formulas for doing what God expects. Just as our 'union of being' was divinely initiated, the 'union of doing' is also divinely actuated by the grace of God.

"You cannot live the Christian life. I cannot live the Christian life. The Christian life is impossible, if conceived as the actions that a Christian must self-generate to 'live like Jesus' and 'love like Jesus.' But God is not interested in our 'works' by which we might try to 'measure up' and please Him (cf. Isa. 64:6; Phil. 3:8). It was not our 'works' which effected our 'union of being' with Christ (Eph. 2:9; Rom. 3:28), and it will not be our 'works' that facilitate the doing of Christian living. The only One who can live the Christian life is Jesus. He lived out the divine life perfectly in history, and now He wants to live out His life in, as, and through us. All 'good works' in the Christian life are the outworking of His life and character. 'We are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them' (Eph. 2:10). God 'equips us in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ' (Heb. 13:21).

"The Christian life is the 'supplied life.' The active provision for living the Christian life is supplied by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. The Christian, therefore, lacks nothing required to be and do all that God desires in him. Some have labeled this as 'triumphalism,' going so far as to declare that, 'It is too good to be true.' On the contrary, God revealed Himself to Paul, saying, 'My grace is sufficient for you' (II Cor. 12:9), and Paul asserted, 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me' (Phil. 4:13). When Paul wrote, 'God is able to make all grace abound to you, that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed' (II Cor. 9:8), his statement was valid not only for Christian giving, but for the entirety of Christian living as well. We have what is required to live the Christian life in the 'union of doing' with the living Lord Jesus.

". . . 'It is no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me' (Gal. 2:20), Paul explained to the Galatians. It is not just that 'Christ resides as an occupant in me,' but that 'Christ lives in me, as the dynamic expression of His life,' that Paul is proclaiming. 'Having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life' (Rom. 5:10), Paul wrote to the Romans, and this 'saving life of Christ' is the means by which we are 'made safe' from dysfunction in order to function as God intends, 'reigning in life through Jesus Christ' (Rom. 5:17). The very 'life of Jesus is manifested in our mortal bodies' (II Cor. 4:10,11), because we have 'the treasure (which is Christ) in these earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God, and not of ourselves' (II Cor. 4:7). The living Lord Jesus is the dynamic of our 'union of doing' in the Christian life.

". . . It is not necessary or advisable for the Christian to attempt to analyze or evaluate how the Triune God is expressing His life in the 'union of doing.' Believing that we have a 'union of being' with Christ, the Christian can spontaneously behave like who he has become as a Christ-one. That is part of the 'freedom for which Christ has set us free' (Gal. 5:1). We are free to be and do whatever Christ wants to be and do in, as, and through us.

". . . God created humans as choosing creatures, and since our humanness is not displaced or dissolved when we are joined in 'union of being' with Christ as Christians, the Christian remains responsible for his choices. If we view our responsibility as the 'response-ability' to make behavioral choices of faith that allow Christ to live His life and energize the 'union of doing' in our behavioral expression, we can avoid falling into a ‘works' oriented system of religion performance.

". . . What is the Christian’s responsibility? To 'abide in Christ' (Jn. 15:5-7). What does it mean to 'abide?' The word means 'to reside, to settle in, to make yourself at home.' The Christian is to make himself at home in Christ (in union with Christ), to settle in and live there. That does not involve any 'works' of performance, but it does involve a responsible decision of abiding faith. In his first epistle John wrote, 'If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father' (I Jn. 2:24).

"The response-ability of the Christian is the choice of faith. Faith is not just believing or assenting to correct data. Nor is faith the conjuring up of enough trust to rely on Christ. Faith is a constant choosing of receptivity to God’s activity, a continuous availability to God’s ability. As noted earlier, our 'union of being' is a derived identity, and in the 'union of doing' we continue our human function of derivative, dependent, and contingent faith. Paul explained to the Colossians, 'As you received Christ Jesus the Lord (by faith), so walk in Him, . . . established in your faith' (Col. 2:6,7). The Christian life is lived only by the grace-dynamic of God’s action received by faith. Paul’s references to the 'obedience of faith' (Rom. 1:5; 16:26) seem to indicate that Christian obedience is comprised of faith. Christian obedience is not to be viewed within the legal paradigm of strenuous striving to keep the rules and regulations of the Law, but is simply to be understood as 'listening under' (Greek word hupakouo) God to ascertain the next situation where one can be receptive to His activity in and through us.

". . . What about all of the imperative action-commands that are stated throughout the New Testament? Someone counted more than one thousand (1000) imperative verbs in the New Testament. The distinction between Christ and the Christian seems to loom so large when we consider the concept of 'commandments.' Didn’t Jesus say, 'He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me' (Jn. 14:21)? Yes, but Jesus did not command anything that He is not willing to keep and perform in our 'union of doing.' He is the dynamic of all of His own demands. . . Christ does not ask anything of us that he is not willing to fulfill in our 'union of doing.'

". . . As we spontaneously allow Jesus Christ to re-present His life in us, He will inevitably manifest His character and His ministry in the 'union of doing' that we call the 'Christian life.' In other words, Christ will be and do what he desires to uniquely be and do in each of us.

"The divine character of Christ is expressed as the 'fruit of the Spirit.' 'The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and godly control of oneself' (Gal. 5:22,23). These always come in one cluster, for together they are the character of Christ, and should not be severed from one another for independent acquisition or development. When a Christian says, 'What I need is more patience . . . or more kindness, . . .' one might respond, 'Do you not have Christ? He is our patience. He is our kindness. He is our joy. He is our peace. Etc.' We do not need something more than Jesus. He is everything to us in the Christian life. Our only need and response-ability is to allow Him to experientially express Himself in the 'union of doing.' As we 'abide' and 'make ourselves at home' in Christ, we 'bear much fruit' (Jn. 15:5). Notice, the verse does not say, 'we produce much fruit,' but rather, that we 'bear' the 'fruit of goodness and righteousness' (Phil. 1:11; Heb. 12:11) and 'truth' (Eph. 5:9), and in so doing we 'walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, pleasing Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work' (Col. 1:10).

". . . Christian ministry is the outflow and overflow of Jesus’ actions for others in the Christian 'union of doing.' Barnabas and Paul returned to Jerusalem to report what 'God had done through them among the Gentiles' (Acts 15:12). To the Romans, Paul explained, 'I do not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me . . . in the power of the Spirit' (Rom. 15:18,19). In his epistle to the Ephesians, he writes, 'I was made a minister, according to the gift of God’s grace which was given to me according to the working of His power' (Eph. 3:7). In the context of ministry giftedness, Peter exhorts Christians, 'whoever serves, let him do so by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ' (I Pet. 4:10,11).

". . . Trying to 'be like Jesus' in a conformational Christlikeness that imitates Jesus’ example is a common theme in popular evangelical teaching. It is not copycat imitation of Jesus that God desires, but that the 'life of Jesus might be manifested in our mortal bodies' (II Cor. 4:10) -– manifestation, rather than imitation! The issue is not 'what would Jesus do,' but 'wanting/watching what Jesus does.' Calls for commitment, consecration, and dedication are laced throughout most contemporary exhortations in the churches today. It is not personal commitment to performance that God desires of Christians, but that they might 'submit themselves to God' (James 4:7) and thus to all that He is committed to be and do in, as, and through them. Seeking to discover and do the 'will of God,' is another performance pursuit of popular religion, as they fail to understand that the 'will of God' is always Jesus -– His life lived out in His people in every situation.

". . . The freedom (Gal. 5:1,13) and liberty (II Cor. 3:17) of spontaneous expression of Christ’s life and action are quenched in the performance expectations that produce fear, insecurity, paranoia, and resignation. Never sure that they have done enough for Jesus, work-oriented Christians are always fearful (cf. I Jn. 4:18) that their performance is inadequate. 'Not that we are adequate to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is of God' (II Cor. 3:5). Despite the 'once saved, always saved' eternal security doctrines in some evangelical churches, the majority of Christians experience an inevitable insecurity about the performance of their behavior and service, which often leads to doubts concerning their regeneration. Some Christians become paranoid about what they are supposed to do, engaging in an equivocating questioning, 'Is it me, or is it Jesus, that wants to do this?' Others just resign themselves to misrepresentation, declaring, 'I can’t help but sin. I’m only human,' effectively denying their union of being and doing in Christ.

"Genuine Christians, however, cannot sin with indifference or impunity. The living Christ within them will not let them get away with it. Granted, there are those who engage in the hypocrisy of attempting to impress others of their 'spirituality,' but most performance-oriented Christians are seeking to repress or suppress their sin inclinations and propensities by pushing them below the surface of their behavioral 'acting out.' Many obsess in a sin-consciousness that focuses more on their sinfulness than on the living Christ whom they have received (cf. Heb. 12:2). Via navel-gazing introspection, these Christians seek to assess their progress of performance as gauged by the religious standards of spiritual success, but they continue to be overwhelmed by guilt, shame, and condemnation for their sin. In many churches, they repeatedly run to the so-called 'altar' to confess their sins, and seek God’s forgiveness for a failure to perform what God never expected them to perform in the first place. God’s desire is simply that the Christian be receptive and available to spontaneously express the character of Christ.

"The institutional church, meanwhile, is guilty of keeping Christians on the treadmill of do-right religion. Guilt and condemnation are intense psychological motivators that keep people involved and attending the church services, where they continue to confess their sins, plead for God’s forgiveness and help in prayer, and give generously to 'the Lord’s work.' In return, they experience an emotional and sensate ecstasy, which they call 'worship,' which temporarily masks the sin-consciousness of their inadequate performance, and induces them to dedicate and commit themselves to better performance. A cyclical pattern of mutually self-serving activity, indeed!

". . . The dynamic of the dialectic balance of 'union with Christ' will always be impossible to 'pin down' in a system of thought, for Jesus Christ lives in each Christian as the unique and novel expression of Himself. We must allow Him to so live in the 'union of being' and the 'union of doing' of our 'union with Christ.'"