1. In the Decree of Election and the Covenant of Grace
Rev I D MacDonald
Introduction.
The doctrine of union with Christ is one of the great mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and blessed indeed are they to whom it is given to know it spiritually and experimentally. Generally speaking, union with Christ may be defined as that close relation which exists between the Son of God as Mediator and elect sinners, whereby they are joined to Him, and become one with Him as members of His mystical body. The most frequent description of it throughout Scripture is that of marriage union. “This is a great mystery” says Paul, speaking of union between Christ and the Church as comparable to a marriage union. It is an unspeakable blessing in itself, as well as a necessary foundation for the bestowal of all the other blessings of salvation. For sinners to come into so close a relation with the Son of God that they may be described as being “in Him” and He “in them” is more than can be said of holy angels or of man in innocence.
To a great extent, the doctrine was “hid from ages and from generations” (Col 1:26) throughout the Old Testament dispensation, and only with the revelation of the gospel in New Testament light was it then “made manifest to His saints: 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). Nevertheless, early rays of this glorious doctrine shone upon the world from the very beginning. To give but one example, the great promise given to Abraham in Genesis 22:18, “And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed”, where union with Christ is revealed to be the way a sinner comes to participate in the blessings of salvation. It is not merely “by thy seed”, but “in thy seed”, meaning in union to Him, that sinners were to be blessed. The Church was later taught to sing, “Men shall be blessed in Him, and blessed all nations shall Him call” (Ps 72:17, metrical version).
Yet in comparison with the full light of the New Testament revelation, Scripture tells us that this doctrine was hidden from these ages and generations. There is very little express teaching on it in the three “Synoptic Gospels”, but floods of light shine on the doctrine in the Gospel of John, and many of the Epistles.
The purpose of this paper is to trace out four distinct phases of the formation of the union between Christ and His people, and to show their connections. Given the constraints of time, the treatment cannot but be rather superficial. The first of these is “election union”; the second is “covenantal union”; the third is “natural union”, or the union of Christ to the nature of the elect in His incarnation; and the fourth is “spiritual union”, which is the crowning aspect of the union, when the sinner is united to Christ by the Holy Spirit and faith, and the most prominent in how the doctrine is commonly perceived. John Murray emphasises these distinct phases in his treatment of the doctrine of union with Christ, and he says, “It is not simply a step in the application of redemption; when viewed, according to the teaching of Scripture in its broader aspects, it underlies every step of the application of redemption. Union with Christ is really the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation not only in its application but also in its once-for-all accomplishment in the finished work of Christ. Indeed the whole process of salvation has its origin in one phase of union with Christ, and salvation has in view the realisation of other phases of union with Christ.”2
1. Election union: union in the decree of election.
Here is the first rising of the union. It may be considered as the love of the Father choosing out a bride for Christ from among the fallen children of Adam. Election is according to grace and who can measure the love which chose sinners to salvation as the bride of Christ? The Father is said to have “chosen us in Him [that is, in Christ] before the foundation of the world”, forming what some call an “election-union” between Christ and His people. The same decree of election which chose sinners to eternal life, also chose their Redeemer who is therefore described as God’s “elect” (Is 42:1), “who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world” (1 Pet 1:20). While it is true that, in a view of the order of the decrees, the provision of a Redeemer may be viewed as distinct from, and indeed flowing from, the decree to save the elect, yet this may not preclude such a view as Thomas Goodwin expresses when he says, “As in the womb, head and members are not conceived apart, but together, as having relation to each other; so were we and Christ (as making up one mystical body to God) formed together in the eternal womb of election”.3
Yet the nature of the union formed in the decree of election is not to be stressed to the neglect of the covenant of grace, and there is much weight in Hugh Martin’s comments on this part of the subject: “It is not enough to consider this oneness [between Christ and His people] as decreed; we must consider it as specially and expressly covenanted: not merely as decreed by the sovereign authority of the Godhead, but covenanted between the eternal Father and the eternal Son”.4
The decree is not to be confounded with the covenant of grace in any aspect of theology. For persons of the Trinity to enter into covenant with each other is more than the expression of their eternal purpose in the decree. According to Thomas Halyburton, the oneness of Christ and His people in the decree, although acknowledged, infers little more “but that in time they shall be actually united”.5
1The first part of a paper given at the 2021 Theological Conference.
2Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, Banner of Truth, 1979, p 161.
3Goodwin, Works, vol 1, p 74.
4Martin, The Atonement, Edinburgh, 1877, pp 43,44.
5Halyburton, Faith and Justification, James Begg Society, 2000, p 86.
2. Covenantal (or Federal) Union: union in the covenant of grace.
This phase of union may be considered as the Son of God, the Bridegroom, approving of and receiving in love the bride which His Father chose out for Him.
(1) A representative union.
In this covenant, a distinct relation was formed between the Son of God as Mediator and elect sinners, whereby He became one with them as their Covenant Head. This union was formed by His voluntary agreement to become the Covenant Head and representative of those sinners whom the Father chose to eternal life in the decree of election. In an act of infinite love, the Son of God, in becoming the Mediator of the covenant, received this company of poor sinners to be one with Him. The federal union (as it is commonly called) formed in the covenant of grace is comparable to the union which existed in the covenant of works between Adam, as the head of that covenant, and all mankind descending from Him by ordinary generation.
This comparison of the two covenant heads is entirely Scriptural: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22); “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (Rom 5:19). The federal union may firstly be considered as a “representative union” whereby Christ represented the elect in the making of the covenant with His Father, just as the relation between Adam and all mankind in the covenant of works was by way of representation.
(2) A legal union.
But more specifically, as Christ became the Surety of those whom He represented, the nature of the federal union takes on a “legal” aspect. In this relation elect sinners were contemplated as “guilty and self-ruined debtors and criminals”, to quote John Brown of Haddington.6 In this context, John Gill writes: “In this respect Christ and they are one in the eye of the law, as the bondman [that is, the surety] and debtors are one in a legal sense; so that if one of them pays the debt [the surety is] bound for, it is the same as if the other did”.7
By virtue of this union, in law and justice, Christ and His people are viewed as one, just as surety and debtor though distinct may be thought of as one in eye of the law. One important consequence of this aspect of the union is that it forms an initial foundation for the imputation of the sins of the elect to Christ. Without this aspect, it would not have been just for God to impute their sin to Christ, nor could His subsequent sufferings and obedience have been treated in justice as performed on their behalf.
(3) The connection with the doctrine of the atonement.
Redemption cannot be considered without contemplating this prior federal union. It follows that the extent of the atonement depends upon the extent of the federal union. Christ only engaged to satisfy for the sins of the elect, so that the purchase of redemption is limited to those who were in federal union with Him. Smeaton brings this point to light in his masterly work on the atonement when he says, “I have only to advert to the unity of the Surety and of those whom He represented, to prove the extent of the atonement. It is a unity or oneness so close, that we may affirm of the second man [Christ], as well as of the first [Adam], ‘we were all that one man’. The thought that lies at the foundation of our participation of the federal blessings, is union, or oneness.”8
6The Systematic Theology of John Brown of Haddington, Christian Focus Publications and Reformation Heritage Books, 2002, p 337.
7John Gill, Body of Divinity, London, 1769, p 327.
8George Smeaton, The Atonement According to Christ and His Apostles, Sovereign Grace Publishers, p 179.