With You God is Well Pleased

In Ephesians 1:3-14 Paul repeatedly says that believers are ‘”in Christ” or “in him.” We are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. We are chosen in him to be holy and blameless and are predestined for adoption. In him we have redemption, forgiveness, and have had grace lavished upon us. We have hope in Christ. And, in him we have heard the gospel, believed, and been sealed with the Holy Spirit.

It is all in him!

This passage teaches us, among many other things, the doctrine of Union with Christ. If you are a believer then you are united with Jesus. You are united with him in his death and resurrection. It is in union with him that he takes every bad and sinful about you onto himself and gives you every good and righteous thing about him. Whatever is true about Jesus has become true about you.

In his classic little book on salvation Redemption Accomplished and Applied, the Scottish theologian John Murray wrote, “Union with Christ is really the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation.” J. Todd Billings, in his book Union with Christ, wrote “Union with Christ is a central New Testament description of Christian identity.” Henri Nouwen framed the idea of Union with Christ as being home. Because we are united with Christ, because everything that is true of Jesus is true of us we find our true home in communion God in the same way that the Son was at home in perfect communion with the Father and the Spirit.

Timothy Keller said that because we are united with him, Jesus made it clear that the same voice he heard in the Jordan River and on Mt. Tabor can be heard by us.

In May 2016 I was teaching my first class for MINTS Seminary-in-Prison. This was in Dade Correctional Institution near Miami. I had twelve students in that class, and I was, at that point, still a little nervous about going deep inside a prison, behind fences and razor wire and locked doors, spending two hours at a time in a classroom with prisoners.

 The course was on Romans. When I got to chapter 5, I showed the students that sin came to the world through the one man Adam, and death came to all people through that sin (verse 12). We all, in union with Adam were dead in our sins. But the great news of the gospel is that also through one man, through Jesus Christ, we can receive “the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness” (verse 17). I then talked about Union with Christ, and told them that, as believers everything true about Jesus is true about them. And so, I said, “When Jesus came up out of the Jordan River at his baptism, when Jesus was transfigured on Mt. Tabor, and the Father said of him, ‘This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased,’ that is exactly what God says of you today. You are the beloved son of God and with you he is well pleased.”

 It was then that I noticed tears running down the cheeks of some of the students. After class one of them, a man that, with his appearance could have been cast by Hollywood in a prison movie—bald, bulging muscles, tattoos everywhere—came up and told me with eyes still moist, “That is the first time in my life that anyone has ever said they were pleased with me. Is it true? Is God pleased with me?”

“Yes, it’s true,” I said. “Because of Jesus, because of what he has done for you, because he has united you with himself in his death and resurrection, then yes, God is well pleased with you.”

One of the biggest smiles I’ve even seen broke out on his face and was still there when the officer led the students back to their cells. That was when I knew that I was called to prison ministry.

It is not only prisoners that struggle with the idea that because of Union with Christ God is well pleased with them. Nouwen wrote many of spend our lives looking for home. We will know that we are home when we know, really know, that in the center of our being we can hear the voice of God say, “You are my beloved. With you I am well pleased.”

My prayer for you today is that God will give you the grace to hear his voice and that you will really know, “You are his beloved. With you he is well pleased.”

Much love,

Barry