Union with Christ - Part 1

Well, good morning, and thank you, and greetings from Leru, the Leru Baptist Church. I will remind you if you or I'll remind you if you met me last time or tell you for the first time if you haven't that my name is Michael Coghlan and I'm from a fellow fire church pastors Tim Pasma and Andrew Beebe who particularly love you and give you their greetings and I know they've both ministered here this year as well and I have brother Jake with me from the church and I'm going to And then the guy next to Jake, not to embarrass him, that's my new friend Kyle, who I actually just met today as well, and he's from this area. And I told him, why don't you come up to this church and meet me today?

And so make sure you welcome Kyle. He's a Toledo guy that you guys can reach out to. If you turn in your Bible to 1 Corinthians chapter 3, quick note on the fact that I just gave you a greeting and you gave me a greeting, We're going to discuss the doctrine titled Union with Christ today. And one of the implications of that, and the one that I actually want to spend the most time on, is that because we are in union with Christ, we are also in union with every other believer who is in union with Christ.

It's one of the reasons we'll take communion together. You don't take communion at home. I hope not. If you do, I think you're doing it wrong. You take communion with the church. And we commune together with Christ and with one another.

And one of the things that is often overlooked, maybe from a standpoint of emphasis, is when you read the New Testament, something you'll notice, almost without fail, At the beginning and end of nearly every letter is the greetings. And Paul actually commands us to greet one another. In fact, you may be commanded to greet one another more than any other one another we're given in Scripture.

Not that it's necessarily more important, but maybe it's one of the things we're reminded of so often because we would be apt to forget it. And so I'm happy to be a repentant greeter. I am one of those people who it did not come naturally to me. And even as a Christian, I had to get to a point where I realized I need to simply pause and greet people when I encounter them.

And I need to be willing to interrupt whatever I'm doing to greet someone as they're leaving the room. And so I address you as somebody who has repented of failing to do that as I ought. In 1 Corinthians 3, I want you to go to the first verse, and then we'll skip a bunch to look at the last verse just for the reading. I'm reading from the Berean Standard Bible, so it may read slightly different from whatever one you're reading.

Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly, as infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. In fact, you are still not ready, for you are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and dissension among you, are you not worldly? Are you not walking in the way of man? And then turn to the end of the chapter, verse 21.

Therefore, stop boasting in men. All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, that's Peter, or the world or life or death or the present or the future. All of them belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. Let's pray. Father, we ask your assistance. Please, as I open the word today and as the people listen, I pray for you to give me unction from your Holy Spirit to teach as I ought to teach and that the listeners would participate in the way that they ought as well, diligently searching your word.

And may you bless not only the reading but the preaching of your word this morning. In Christ's name I pray. Amen. In the London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter 27, there is an entire chapter dedicated to the communion we have with Christ and with one another. And the beginning of the first paragraph reads this way in reference to the doctrine of the union we have with Christ.

All saints that are united to Jesus Christ, their head, by his spirit and faith, although they are not made thereby one person with him, have fellowship in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory. That is the beginning of that chapter's first paragraph referencing that we are united to Christ. And so some would say that union with Christ is in fact the gospel.

It is just another way of describing exactly what happens when a man or woman is born again and is brought in Christ If being hidden from the wrath of God is to flee to the refuge that God has provided which is Christ then union with Christ is simply another way of stating that you are now hidden from his wrath because of the work that Christ did. So we all in this room ought to know, and if you don't know, I'm going to tell you then for the first time, that Jesus Christ came into the world born of a virgin, so he did not inherit original sin from Adam like we all did. He lived the perfect life that you and I could not live, even as a little child.

He then suffered, died, and was buried, and he rose again on the third day to defeat death once and for all. And that is the very simplest form of what we call the gospel. The truth that Jesus Christ has destroyed the works of the devil, that he is the serpent-crushing seed of the woman Eve, who was promised right after Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, that would once come and be a real descendant of Eve, who would crush Satan and defeat death once and for all.

And so the question is, if Jesus died on the cross, and God was reconciling the world to himself through that death on the cross, how do you have that applied to you? Because unless you're a universalist, that's a person that thinks everyone goes to heaven. A universalist is someone who thinks it's a universal salvation, Meaning that Jesus died, therefore everybody goes to heaven, it doesn't really matter what they do.

And I've actually met people who believe that. There's universalists who are, they're all non-Christian, but there's universalists who are non-Christian, they just think everybody just goes to the happy place. But there's also what you could call Christian universalists, in the general term meaning Christian, Who believe that because Jesus died, they really believe the man Jesus came and died.

And they just think it applies to everyone universally. Well, according to the Baptist Catechism, which I encourage you to study these documents, even if they're not exactly what you hold to as an individual or even a church, they're good historic documents. The Baptist Catechism question 33 says, How doth the Spirit, that is the Spirit of God, apply to us the redemption purchased by Christ?

So Christ purchased redemption, and the answer is that the Spirit applyeth to us the redemption purchased by Christ by working faith in us. So you must have faith in Christ. It says, and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling. So that is a historic document that's saying what I already shared with you, that union with Christ is another way of stating that we are now put into Christ in such a way that we are hidden from the wrath of God.

The wrath that was deserved by us is now taken by Jesus on the cross on behalf of you. It was imputed to him. Your sin was imputed to him. He was credited with your sin on the cross if you have made in union with Christ. And so you are not one person with him. We read that in the confession.

But you are so connected to him that you share in his graces, sufferings, death, and resurrection, and glory. So how close is this union? We're so closely related to Christ that what is said to be his is yours, and what is said to be yours is his. So in the sense where you have committed countless sins in your life, and you will commit countless more as you still suffer in the flesh for the rest of this time, it can be said that Jesus Christ suffered for those sins.

You realize that, right? There is not a single sin that you did commit or will commit that Jesus did not pay for perfectly on the cross. One of the reasons we're so excited to have an infinitely omniscient God is that we know that whatever will surprise us tomorrow will not surprise him. And although your own sinfulness may surprise you at times, if we had a healthier view of our own pride, we wouldn't be so shocked when we sin and surprise ourselves.

But your own sinfulness will surprise you at times. There will come a time in your life, most likely, if it hasn't already come, where you will do something that you think, I thought I'd never do that again. Or I thought that wasn't a sin I was capable of. And there will be a lack of assurance that can come to the Christian's heart. We can be afraid, maybe I'm not a Christian, or maybe God doesn't love me if I could do something that I realize is so vile.

Whereas while that's occurring, God is in heaven already knowing it was going to occur, and already having decided to justify you by faith in Christ before you even committed whatever it may be. For some of you, maybe you won't ever commit something that we think of as an atrocity, but as you grow in your Christian life, Sometimes the sins that you once thought were little sins start to feel really big to you You start to feel the distance between you and your creator by doing things a decade or two decades or three decades after you been saved that when you were a new Christian you would have thought it was a pretty good day. I can say that for myself.

There are times today that I am convicted of sin And I find it to be so vile, and I can look back and realize there was a day I wouldn't have recognized that that behavior was sinful. So how close are you to Christ? I wanted to come up with an analogy, partially so I could say all analogies break down somewhere. So, when I'm comparing a Christian's union with Christ to anything else in the created world, I want you to understand that it will not be a perfect analogy.

Just so that you understand that. But, I want you to imagine when you're driving down the street and you see the goose, and you've got the mother goose and she's walking across the street and there's the five little geese that are following her. And if you willed to do so, you could run over the geese that are behind the mother and you could kill them with your car.

And it would have no effect on the mother whatsoever. That is nothing like union with Christ. The analogy that I think is closer would be a pregnant woman. So if you imagine a pregnant woman, she has a baby in her body that's connected to her. And if anything should happen to that mother, if you hit the mother with a car and killed her, The baby would most certainly die.

But you cannot really get to the baby without also getting to the mother. Now the analogy breaks down because the mother is eventually separated from her baby. But it's the idea that they're so closely connected, and the life of the mother is sustaining the life of the child to such a degree that if anything should happen to that mother, the child would suffer greatly.

And our union with Christ is similar in the sense that you are so closely connected to Jesus Christ and his life that, for example, for God to stop loving you would mean that God would have to first stop loving his son. For God to take away your inheritance would mean that he would have to take away your inheritance that is stored up for you in heaven from his son. So the idea is that you are utterly secure because of the concept or the doctrine of union with Christ.

So union with Christ should be the balm that heals the Christian who suffers from a lack of assurance. Because your assurance that you are loved by God, saved by God, headed to heaven, most certainly going to be glorified, is assured because you've been united to Christ, not because you think you're a good person now. In Acts chapter 9, you may recall when the Apostle Paul was on the road to Damascus.

In Acts chapter 9, he's breathing out threats. Verse 1, Meanwhile Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord. Therefore, he approached the high priest and requested letters to the synagogues in Damascus so that if he found any men or women belonging to the way, that means Christians, he could bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem.

And so he's persecuting Christians. He's going to take them by force. He's going to put them in prison. Some would die. I remember a couple chapters earlier, Stevens killed basically for preaching the gospel to people about Jesus Christ. And as Saul drew near to Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.

He fell to the ground and he heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? This is the Lord Jesus Christ calling down from heaven. He's in heaven. He's ascended. He's raised from the grave. He's not on earth anymore.

And Saul is simply beating up other people. He's beating up other creatures. He's imprisoning humans. And Jesus so closely identifies with these unnamed people in His church that He accuses Saul of persecuting Him. Do you understand that? He doesn't say, why are you persecuting my children?

Why are you persecuting my people? Why are you persecuting my creation? Why are you persecuting my church? He could have used a bunch of words there. He says, why are you persecuting me? That is how close Jesus identifies with his church.

And that is who you are, as the text says in 1 Corinthians 3, 23. And you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God. This is why we can say nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Even in our death, we're not separated from God. Certainly we understand that our souls go to be with God and we await the redemption of the body. But listen to Baptist Catechism question 40.

What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death It says the souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness Well that great That sounds great And do immediately pass into glory. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. This is our hope. But listen to this. And their bodies, the bodies of believers, being still united to Christ, Do rest in their graves till the resurrection.

You're one person. You have a soul and a body. Your body's important. Some of us have a bit of a Gnostic view of our own body at times. Because we live in a body that's still dealing with the effects of sin, sometimes we want to throw the whole thing away. You know you're going to have a body forever, right?

It's going to be resurrected. And you're going to be given a perfect body that you won't be frustrated with anymore. You're going to be given a perfect body that won't draw you to things that are contrary to the will of God. And you'll use it to glorify God for all eternity. And if you die before Christ returns, your soul will be with Christ, and we will take care of your body on earth the way that God has, I think, given us to do that.

There are some ways that are, I think, more biblical than others. Your pastors can explain that to you if they want. But ultimately, God's going to take your body that was on earth, No matter what has happened to it physically with molecules and all the things that happened, he is going to recreate a new body for you in the resurrection. And it's going to be a wonderful, glorious body.

And it is still united to Christ. You are that closely related to him. In 2 Peter 1, 4, you don't have to turn there. But this is where Peter says you've been made partakers of the divine nature. And I don't know what that means. And I'm okay with that.

David said he doesn't occupy himself with things too wonderful or too lofty for him. And I'm no better than David. So I'm okay with some mystery. I have a God who is infinitely better, infinitely bigger, infinitely more mysterious than I could ever imagine. And so I'm not going to plumb the depths of who he is, and I'm not even going to plumb the depths of the book he gave me to study.

I won't understand it all. But I'll tell you this. He says that we will be partakers of the divine nature. And he doesn't promise that to any other creature. He doesn't promise it to angels. This is something unique to those who have union with Christ.

So God loves you. You're safe. Everything that is his is yours. He withheld nothing. Romans 8. Turn to Romans 8 with me.

We're going to do a couple of verses in there. Romans 8.32, just to emphasize this point. He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, freely give us all things? It's a rhetorical question that Paul asks. He's not actually asking for an answer. He's saying there is absolutely no way possible that God will withhold anything good from His people.

This is also the concept in the late part of Psalm 84. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk with Him righteously. You have everything because you are united to Christ. You're not the one that united yourself to Christ. The Holy Spirit applied his redemption to you and united you to him. And neither you nor any power on earth nor any principality or power of darkness or spiritual force in the heavenly places can separate you.

Because God's callings are irrevocable. So be comforted by that. If we go back a little bit in Romans 8, back to verse 14, I'll give you a little preacher note here. Greg asked me if I would preach again in September. It's remarkable when you're asked to preach a second time anywhere, because not everybody gets that opportunity. Sometimes the preacher's not so good or he doesn't preach the truth well.

Sometimes the congregation doesn't like what they hear and the guy actually preached the truth. So when you get both going where the man hopefully is preaching the truth and you're a culture that wants to hear the truth, a church that desires the truth, maybe we can get more than one. And the beauty that I have just realized is that my sermon for September is finished because I'm not going to get to part two of this one.

Thank you for chuckling because it is a little bit funny, but it was moderately, I'll tell you this much, I've been doing it long enough that it's moderately predictable to me that that would occur. I also have been doing it long enough that I know you're not supposed to give a commentary on the whole thought process, but I did it anyway, and that's okay. Okay, but let's look at Romans 8 and let's dive into this idea that we're in union with Christ and we're going to talk about how that relates to our relationship to God primarily.

It has a ton of implications and applications to your relationship, particularly with one another. A local church, and even also with those in the universal church, all the believers in the whole world. There's a way that you're supposed to treat each other in the church that you're in, and in all the churches, as the result of this. And you can hear that in September, Lord willing, when I return.

So let's focus on our relationship to God. Romans 8, verse 14. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery that returns you to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption to sonship, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. And if we are children, then we are heirs, Heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him.

First of all, you have a father. You have a father in heaven. For some people that's remarkable and mind-blowing because you did not have an earthly father. Or you had an earthly father who was so despicable that when you first heard you could have a heavenly father, you only pictured your poor earthly father and thought, well, I don't want another one.

It's actually a stumbling block for many when you give the gospel to them is their earthly father has so utterly failed to image God that they don't like the idea of a father. For some of you, you had good fathers. Some of you had great fathers. I trust that the Spirit of God can apply the text to each of you as necessary for your own situation to know that having a Father in Heaven and the love of a Father in Heaven in particular is a gift.

And if you are one of the people who, in a sense, is afraid of a father because of your earthly situation, I just want you to know that God is nothing like your earthly father. And if you had a great father on earth, God is still way better than he is. But thank God if your father imaged his heavenly father well for you. And thank your Father and honor Him for that.

Turn to Hebrews 12, just a quick bit about the love of the Father. Hebrews is largely a book about... I'm going to insert the word suffering there. But if anybody's studied Hebrews, Hebrews is about a lot of things. You could put a lot of words there and then you could go through and say, oh, here's this theme. Hebrews is a great book.

It's largely about suffering. These Christians were going to have to suffer persecution. And they were going to have to choose whether they were going to follow the way of Jesus Christ or stick with some old ways. But in Hebrews 12, after describing the suffering of many at the end of chapter 11, the author writes, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Now listen, for who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. The author says, consider him who endured such hostility from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. So the whole basis of you enduring through difficulty is to keep your eyes focused on Jesus.

Jesus, and the fact that you share in his sufferings. It's not spelled out that way here, but this is another sense where you're sharing with Christ's suffering so that you may be glorified with him. And he says, in your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. You don't hate your sin enough. That's what he's telling you.

You hate it enough to complain about it You hate it enough to ask God to do something about it But you don hate it enough to actually just fight it Maybe even to the point of shedding your own blood somehow. Not as a sacrifice, not as a discipline or a punishment, but somehow find a way to cut yourself off from the sin that so easily entangles. And then he says, you've forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons.

And now, we see God as Father. My son, do not take lightly the discipline of the Lord, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and He chastises every son He receives. So now the natural question that should occur in your mind is, well, how does He do that? Do I wake up in the morning and I throw my Bible in the air and I catch it and then point to a verse and whatever that verse says, that's the rebuke he has for me?

Is that how God wants us to study his word? Do I get a horoscope? Do I go to a church that has a continuationist prophet who will tell me what God has for me that day? Something outside of scripture? There's a lot of ways people have that they try to listen to the voice of God. And I'm pretty sure I'm in a fellowship where we believe that God is speaking to us through his word.

What I mean by that is I know I'm in a fellowship that teaches that. I'm not always sure if everybody agrees with all the details of it. But we believe God speaks through His Word, and He tells us the things that we need to know for wisdom and godliness through His Word. So we have to study His Word so we have it in our heart. David said, I've stored up Your Word in my heart that I might not sin against Thee.

So the question is, how do we know when God's disciplining us? There's not a Bible verse that says, hey, Jeremiah, you're being disciplined right now. Right? Driving to work one day and somebody cuts you off and all of a sudden you get behind the train. All these things can happen in your life. There's no Bible verses that specify all those details.

God gave us what he found sufficient for us. The fact that we don't find it sufficient is a defect in us, not in His Word. But listen to God's explanation now. After saying, the Lord disciplines the one He loves, He chastises every son He receives, He says, endure suffering as discipline. God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?

Effectively, God is saying, every affliction you experience in life, treat it as a discipline from a father who loves you. A father who loves you so much that rather than just look away When you're going wayward like so many of us will do, rather than be cowardly and not want to confront our child's sin, rather than be passive and just leave things alone so we can say, peace, peace, when there is no peace, a father who will do everything necessary to conform you to the image of Jesus Christ, the one to whom you're united already. Everything that you experience is given by God for your good.

Romans 8.28 So you're pouring your Cheerios and some spill on the floor. You start to get frustrated. See it as a way God's disciplining you for godliness. He's teaching you something. Something more serious happens. It's actually a really, really bad thing.

And you find yourself getting angry, find yourself frustrated, find yourself anxious, impatient, feeling malice in your heart towards somebody that you ought not. God is disciplining you through the affliction. And oftentimes, even when you're right about the thing. I've been right a lot about disagreements with my boys. They're little boys. They're wrong a ton.

I've been right about the substance of the argument, about what happened, about what they should have done, what they should have done different, what they didn't do that they were commanded to do. And I have been wrong about my response to what's happened all too often. So God disciplines me. But he doesn hang up a sign that says hey this is discipline Remember this is discipline this time He just allows it to unfold and he trusts that you are studying his word Maybe not the best choice of words.

He doesn't trust you, but he expects you to be studying his word, to be communing with the saints, attending the weekly gatherings of the church. And although I'd say they're not obligatory, when your church offers additional gatherings, you should be trying to be in fellowship at those gatherings as well. You should be participating in the giving, listening to the preaching, praying for the preaching.

I'll tell you what, we complain more about the preachers than we pray for them. Maybe you don't. A lot of people do. God has given us the banner, endure suffering as discipline. When it becomes difficult, recognize that Jesus suffered more than you ever will because he deserved none of the suffering that he got. And that he did that so that you might despise the shame and look forward to the glory that God has for you because nothing you're going to suffer in this life compares to the glory that he has prepared.

So back to Romans 8. You share in the fatherly love that Jesus has. You have not received a spirit of slavery, verse 15, that returns you to fear, but you receive the spirit of adoption to sonship, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we're God's children. Embed that in your mind, you've been adopted by God. And then it says, and if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs with God, Heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.

If indeed we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him. His suffering is yours in the subsequent glory. So this is what the prophets of old searched and inquired carefully. So 1 Peter says, they searched and inquired carefully because they were trying to figure out who's the man who's going to suffer and be glorified. They understood the Old Testament to always be predicting suffering than glory for Christ.

You will not escape suffering in this world. In this world you will have tribulation. But take heart, Jesus has overcome the world. And just as certainly as you will suffer in this world, you will be glorified. And this is why Christians ought to be different sufferers than the world. And you've seen it.

You've seen it in this church. I know you have. And I know you've seen it a lot more than I know about. And we've seen it in our church, and we've seen it in the church all around the world. We suffer different, and we grieve different, and we don't do it in a sense that we're bragging about ourselves, but in a sense we're boasting about our Lord when we suffer different.

We are proclaiming to a watching world that there is something absolutely different about the foundation of what we believe than everything that they're staking their lives on. And some of you know people who have come to Christ as the result of observing another Christian suffering. A Christian suffers a horrible thing like the loss of a child. A spouse dies younger than expected.

An accident happens. And their parents are gone suddenly, instead of after a time of old age. There's cancer diagnosis, there's sickness. We suffer, and then we glorify God by praising Him and worshiping Him through the suffering. And yes, there are people who have come to Christ because they've watched that, and God has used that to draw them. And so we suffer as though we have hope.

So next you should turn from sin. Turn back to Romans 6. As a result of union with Christ, remember you are Christ's and Christ's and Christ is God's. And in the context of 1 Corinthians 3, I think Paul is trying to point out that there shouldn't be rivalries and dissensions and jealousy among them. That's why I read the first four verses of that chapter and then the last few.

But now that we know we're suffering with Christ, now that we know we're united to Christ in His suffering and His glory, We have the presence of the Spirit in our life. Christ has no fellowship with sin. Sin is, as R.C. Sproul put it, cosmic treason against God, the Creator. And so you as a Christian are commanded to turn from your sin as the result of being united to Christ God has done this for you He has redeemed you.

He has transferred you from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his marvelous Son. He has given you a new heart. He has made you born again, as John 3 talks about. He's commanded you to follow him rather than the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who is at work in the sons of disobedience. You're not a son of disobedience anymore. Stop acting like one.

Look at Romans 6. What shall we say in response to everything that he just talked about in Romans 4 and 5 about it being faith and it's not about our works? He says, shall we continue in sin so that grace may increase? Certainly not. And Paul, in Pauline fashion, asks a rhetorical question. How can we who died to sin live in it any longer?

How can you? It's unfathomable to us that we would see somebody who was a homeless man brought into a mansion and said, you know what, why don't you just come live with us And you can eat at my table every day. And then if you imagine this homeless guy brought into a nice house, maybe he's brought into a king's house. And the king says, you know, I'll just make you my son.

You can have everything that's all my sons. And when you wake up in the morning, come down to this table and eat this breakfast with us of delicacies that only the king gets. And it's like you walked into the room and you're looking for the guy and he's out in the trash bin still, dumpster diving for food Because that's what he's used to. It makes no sense to us that someone would do something like that.

If you were offered a really nice meal, even just once at a nice restaurant, not even as a son, that you would just dumpster dive outside the restaurant. And every time you go back to sin, it's what you're doing. But it's actually more foolish and worse. Paul says, aren't you aware, in verse 3, that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death. You were buried with him. You have fellowship in his death. You have union with Christ. What is his is yours. What can be said about him can be said about you.

It's always qualified by the sense that it's because of Him. You know you're called a saint. You're not called a saint because you're good. You understand me, right? You're called a saint because Jesus Christ is holy. And you've been baptized into Him.

We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, That we too may walk in newness of life. Beloved, God has something way better for you than your flesh wants right now. God has something way better for you than the God of this world, Satan, promises you.

And God has not only told you in his word what is good for you, but he has effectually changed your heart and desires so that you would at least part of you desire the good while still having to battle with that part of you that still desires what is not good for you. And so you are united to Christ. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God and submit your body and your soul to sin.

Don't enslave yourself again to the old taskmaster that hated you, but submit yourself joyfully to the King of Righteousness who only desires what is good for you. So in conclusion, Enjoy your union with Christ because it was God who effected it for you. It cannot be severed. It should give you hope in the midst of your suffering, and it should even give you hope and motivation in the midst of the difficulty you face in battling your own sin.

Father, please help us to heed your word today. May it dwell in our hearts richly. And we ask for the Holy Spirit's power in our lives that we might desire to enjoy our union with Christ more in all its benefits. And it's in Christ's name I pray. Amen.