To understand our justification, we need to understand Christ’s resurrection and our union with him; to understand Christ’s resurrection, we need to understand his justification and our justification; and to understand our union with Christ, we need to understand his resurrection and our justification.

A Brief Explanation and Preliminary Defense

Scripture clearly says that Christians are united to Christ, but it is not intuitively obvious what this means. Union with Christ is a vague term. How is one united to Christ? The answers differ. Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox alike profess union with Christ while embracing soteriologies quite different from one another. And over the past century, prominent theologians have developed a variety of models to explain the nature of the union.¹

When we examine Scripture, we find no discussion of union with Christ in the abstract. Instead, we learn what it means to be united to Christ as we read in Scripture about a range of events and blessings, such as Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection (e.g., Rom. 6:3–5; Col. 2:11–12); baptism and the Lord’s Supper (e.g., Rom. 6:3–4; 1 Cor. 10:16–17); the new covenant (e.g., Gal. 3:25–29); the outpouring of the Spirit (e.g., 1 Cor. 6:15–19); or calling (e.g., Phil. 3:14), justification (e.g., Rom. 8:1; Gal. 2:17), adoption (e.g., Rom. 8:15–17), and sanctification (e.g., Rom. 6:4; 1 Cor. 1:4–5). This observation helps to explain why different theological traditions can affirm union with Christ while attaching different meanings to it: since they have different theologies of the atonement, the sacraments, and the application of salvation, their theologies of union take on diverse hues.

Already, therefore, we confront a compelling reason to be cautious about making union with Christ a controlling concept. It is impossible to know what it means in the abstract. A bundle of other important biblical concepts give union with Christ its substantive meaning. One of these concepts is justification. Thus, a proper doctrine of justification (although obviously not only the doctrine of justification) helps us understand what it means to be united to Christ.

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