A quick read of the Apostle Paul’s letters reveals that his favorite expression to describe believers is not “Christians.” Instead, it’s a little two-word phrase: “in Christ.” A follower of Jesus is someone who is “in Christ.” To grasp what God is telling us, we need to take a brief detour and outline the basics of the biblical doctrine of union with Christ.

All Christians want to know how the past resurrection of Christ and our future resurrection in union with Him shape our everyday lives. We will never see how the resurrection changes our lives until we understand that all change happens by the power of the Holy Spirit. One of our greatest privileges as Christians is being indwelled by the third person of the Trinity. Therefore, the resurrection life is the Spirit-filled life (Acts 2:4; Rom. 8:4–7; Eph. 5:18).

This Spirit-filled life cannot be considered apart from another biblical doctrine: union with Christ. A quick read of the Apostle Paul’s letters reveals that his favorite expression to describe believers is not “Christians.” Instead, it’s a little two-word phrase: “in Christ.” A follower of Jesus is someone who is “in Christ.” To grasp what God is telling us, we need to take a brief detour and outline the basics of the biblical doctrine of union with Christ. Though this doctrine had fallen on hard times in evangelicalism, theologians and authors are paying more attention to it than they have at any time in recent memory. Despite renewed interest, it is still too often misunderstood. I certainly don’t promise to clear up all the confusion, but I want to sketch the doctrine’s basic contours and its relationship to the resurrection.

At the most basic level, union with Christ means that by faith alone, Christ is now our representative, whereas Adam was previously our representative. As many authors have put it, union with Christ means that what is true of Jesus is now true of us (in a creaturely way, of course) by faith alone. We are born united to Adam, meaning we are born guilty and sinful (Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:12–21). Adam’s sin was imputed, or counted, to us. As a result of his first transgression, every aspect of our humanity is fallen.

Central to the good news is the reversal of this situation. As one church father put it, “Where Adam failed, Christ prevailed.” Christ obeyed the law perfectly in our place (Rom. 5:12–21; 2 Cor. 5:17–21), and His obedience is imputed to us when we are united to Him by faith alone. So, the moment you put your faith in Jesus, God sees you through Christ. His account, as it were, is counted as yours.

This inseparable link between union with Christ and the resurrection is why Paul can write things like this: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5). How could we be united to Christ’s death and resurrection when we weren’t alive two thousand years ago? Because faith links us to Christ’s death and resurrection. Faith makes what He did true for us. Union with Christ teaches us that, in an important sense, we are already resurrected with Christ. That’s Paul’s point in Romans 6:5. Certainly, we are not resurrected bodily yet. But we have been raised, by union with Christ, to new life in Him (John 5:24–25; Col. 3:5).

Therefore, union with Christ changes our perspective on this life entirely. As one author explains, because of this union, we live from heaven to earth, not from earth to heaven, so to speak. This scholar is simply following Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 2:6, where he tells us that God “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Given the resurrection of Jesus, our position in the here and now is changed at the most fundamental level. This “positional reality,” as we’ll call it, has sweeping implications for all of life. Not only does union with Christ help us understand the resurrection, but it explains why this life is so hard.

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