CHRIST’SCOMINGGLORY— andOurs
By Merrill F. Unger, Th.D., Ph.D. Dallas (Texas) Theological Seminary
That is the note that must be sounded in our religiously bewildered and spiritually destitute world. Christ our Life! Religion is nothing if there is not a vital relation ship to the living God! How is Christ our life? 1. Christ Is Our Life Positionally. Christ Jesus, the Eternal Word, was made like us that we might be made like Him. In the incarnation the union of deity with humanity was effected that there might be the union of humanity with deity. By the Spirit’s baptiz ing work at regeneration (Rom. 6 :3 ,4 ) the believer is made one with Christ, as Christ is One with the Father. In the mind and reckoning of God, Christ and the Chris tian are eternally one. The exalted Christ now lives to bestow upon us His Own triumphant joyous holy life in all its fullness. Specifically, Christ is our life positionally: Because We Died With Him. “ For ye died” (Col. 3:3, R.V.). We died when Christ died, positionally, for when we believed we were baptized into Christ and into His death. This death in the mind and reckoning of God puts us out of correspondence with the old nature, sin, self, and all the sad state of corruption in which we were “ in Adam.” Because We Were Buried With Him. “ Buried with him in baptism” (Col. 2:12). The same spiritual baptism which places us “ in Christ,” in His death, likewise unites us with His burial. In union with His Son, God sees our old life buried out of sight. Because We Were Raised With Him. “ If ye then be risen with Christ” (Col. 3 :1 ). The “ if” does not at all imply doubt. It is the “ if” of argument, not the “ if” of conditionality. “ Since then ye are risen with Christ” is the force. The “ then” harks back to the entire doctrinal groundwork of wonderful position in Christ outlined in Colossians chapters 1 and 2, which forms the basis for the practical exhortations of the epistle—“ then” because yours is a person-to-person relationship with Christ. He
"When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:b). r I VJDAY the majority of people are accustomed to define a Christian in the vaguest and most indefi nite terms. Anyone who has an outward veneer of religion, who attends church occasionally, who is respec- taoie and outwardly moral, is automatically placed in the "Pe-is-a-Christian” category, as if no other consideration were essential. However, when we turn to the Word of God, we im- meaiately see that this conclusion is false. We discover at once that the Bible definition of a Christian is char acterized by none of the vagueness that marks the world’s confused thinking on this subject. In God’s Word the line is sharply drawn. One is or one is not a Christian. The Christian is alive; the non-Christian is dead (Eph. 2:1). The Christian is light and walks in the light (1 John 1 :7 ); the unbeliever is darkness and walks in darkness (Eph. 5:8-; 1 John 1:6). The Christian is “born of the Spirit,” born a second time; the unsaved is “ born of the flesh,” born only once. One is bound; the other is free. One is headed for Heaven; the other is bound for hell. One is destined for glory; the other is faced with everlasting contempt. There can be no middle ground. Multitudes in our spiritually shallow age who use the term “ Christian” casually, who answer “ yes” glibly to the question “ Are you a Christian ?” need to examine themselves in the light of the Word of God to determine if they are Christ’s in any vital sense. The matter is grave; Heaven or hell is in the balance. In defining a Christian, there can be no clearer em phasis than that which the Apostle stresses in the epistle to the Colossians, namely, the absolute person-to-person link between the believer and Christ. This relationship which every real Christian sustains is one in which Christ Is Our Life He wno said, “ I am the life” (John 14:6), who is “ the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25), personally en tered into the experience of the Apostle, so that Paul could say “ I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live. But Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith which is in the Son o f God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20, Greek); “ As for me, living is Christ” (Phil. 1:21, Greek). This fact of a living, resurrected Christ coming into the life was likewise the experience of Augustine. He stated, “ I will love Thee, 0 Lord, and thank Thee, and confess unto Thy name, because Thou hast put away from me these wicked and nefarious acts of mine. To Thy grace I attribute it, and to Thy mercy, that Thou hast melted away my sin as it were ice” (Confessions 2.7). J A N U A R Y , 19 5 1
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