Union With Christ

CONTENTS

Foreword

Part 1: The Christ With Whom We Are United
1. Our Changeless Jesus Christ
2. The Lamb of God Come

Part 2: Old Testament Theology on Union With Christ
3. The Psalm of Union

Part 3: New Testament Theology on Union With Christ
4. Union and the Covenant
5. Union and Election
6. Union With Christ’s Death
7. Union and a New Creation
8. Union and Marriage

Part 4: Historical Theology on Union With Christ
9. “Christ Is Made Ours:” Calvin’s Doctrine of Union With Christ

Appendix
About the British Reformed Fellowship

---

Foreword

Union with our Lord Jesus Christ, the subject of this book, is a profound and beautiful biblical truth that exalts the Triune God and comforts believers. Heinrich Heppe explains its nature and significance in continental European Reformed theology:

According to its real nature the calling of the elect is thus an insitio in Christum or unio cum Christo, a real, wholesale, spiritual and indissoluble union of the person of the elect with the divine-human … Redeemer, so that for the former the latter is … the same as soul is for body. The implanting of the elect into Christ is thus the beginning of all appropriation of salvation, of all fellowship in salvation (gratia) and in glory (gloria). At the root of the whole doctrine of the appropriation of salvation lies the doctrine of insitio or insertio in Christum, through which we live in him and he is us. So the dogmaticians discuss it with special emphasis.¹

Turning to the British Isles, English Presbyterian preacher John Flavel (1628-1691) marvels at our unio cum Christo:

How transcendently glorious is the advancement of believers, by their union with the Lord of glory? This also is an admirable and astonishing mystery; it is the highest dignity of which our nature is capable, to be hypostatically united; and the greatest glory of which our persons are capable is to be mystically united to this Lord of glory; to be bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. O what is this! Christian, does thou know and believe all this, and thy heart not burn within thee in love to Christ?²

This book consists of the speeches and sermons at the 16th British Reformed Fellowship (BRF) Family Conference held in Castlewellan Castle, County Down, Northern Ireland on “Union With Christ” (9-16 July, 2022). Though all the addresses have been reworked somewhat for publication in written form, one of them has been extensively developed: “Christ Is Made Ours:” Calvin’s Doctrine of Union.

The chapters of this book are not in the order in which they were originally spoken. Here we have adopted a logical approach by starting with the Saviour to whom we are united (part 1), before proceeding chronologically with the Old Testament (part 2) and the New Testament (part 3) on unio cum Christo, and concluding with (some) historical theology on our glorious theme (part 4).

The two main authors of this book are both from the United States of America. This is the eighth and last BRF book co-authored by David J. Engelsma, an emeritus theological professor, who has been of immense help in so many ways to the British Reformed Fellowship right from its beginning in 1990. Contributing to his first BRF book is Brian L. Huizinga, a former pastor of Hope Protestant Reformed Church in Redlands, California, who is now Professor of Dogmatics and Old Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary in Wyoming, Michigan. These two men are responsible for Parts 1 and 3 of this book, consisting of the two Lord’s day sermons and five main lectures. Angus Stewart, the minister of the Covenant Protestant Reformed Church (CPRC) in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, has written chapters 3 and 9 (parts 2 and 4).

The Lord Jesus Himself illustrated our mystical union with Him as being like that of branches in a vine (John 15:1-8). Thus the front cover of this book is a lovely photograph of a vineyard.

Union with Christ is the eighth BRF book and a worthy addition to our growing collection: Keeping God’s Covenant (2006), The Five Points of Calvinism (2008), The Work of the Holy Spirit (2010), The Reformed Worldview (2012), Ye Are My Witnesses (2014), Be Ye Holy (2016) and Behold, I Come Quickly (2018).³

Our hope and prayer is that this book will serve to spread the spiritual understanding, benefit and enjoyment of union with the Lord Jesus to readers near and far, “to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).

Rev. Angus Stewart
BRF Chairman

___________________________

¹ Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, rev. & ed. Ernst Bizer, trans. G. T. Thompson (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, repr. 1978), p. 511.

² Quoted in J. Stephen Yuille, The Inner Sanctum of Puritan Piety: John Flavel’s Doctrine of Mystical Union with Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2007), p. 4. For more on orthodox Protestant teaching on union with Christ, especially in seventeenth-century England and Wales, see R. Tudur Jones, “Union with Christ: The Existential Nerve of Puritan Piety,” Tyndale Bulletin 41:2 (1990), pp. 186-208.

³ All eight of these books, plus many others by their authors, as well as other fine Reformed literature and box sets of CDs and DVDs, are available from the Covenant Protestant Reformed Church (CPRC) Bookstore (www.cprc.co.uk). Other works by Profs. Engelsma and Huizinga are published by, and available from, the Reformed Free Publishing Association (RFPA) in Jenison, Michigan, USA (www.rfpa.org).