For strictly speaking, the love with which God loves us is none other than that with which he loved his Son from the beginning, so as to make us acceptable and lovable to him in Christ. . .
we are (so far as we are concerned and apart from Christ), hated by God and he only begins to love us when we are united to the body of his beloved Son
It is an inestimable privilege of faith that we know that Christ was loved by the Father for our sake, that we may be made partakers of the same love and that for ever. . .
For as the Father cannot look upon his Son without at the same time having before his eyes his whole body, so, if we wish to be beheld in him, we must truly be his members
Calvin, Commentary on John 17:26
To be righteous
To be a new creation
To have a sure hope of our bodies being raised
To be saved from judgment
What Union with Christ isn’t
A mystical experience
A credit union
Imitation
How does Union with Christ happen?
The Holy Spirit
The Word of the Gospel
Faith
We embrace Christ, crucified for us and raised from the dead… I maintain that it is only after we obtain Christ himself that we come to share in the benefits of Christ. And I further maintain that he is obtained, not just when we believe that he was sacrificed for us, but when he dwells in us, when he is one with us, when we are members of his flesh, when, in short, we become united in one life and substance (if I may say so) with him. For Christ does not offer us only the benefit of his death and resurrection, but the self-same body in which he suffered and rose again.
Calvin, True Partaking
What does Union with Christ involve?
Repentance
Prayer
Hope
Joy
Faith, works and union with Christ
We do not, therefore, contemplate [Christ] outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ are engrafted into his body—in short, because he deigns to make us one with him.
I’m grateful to Byron Smith who made a few critical comments about a previously published version of this sermon (in five parts: #1, #2a, #2b, #3a, #3b) and helped me to speak more clearly and helpfully in this subsequent version.
