United With Christ

“Submerge yourself in this truth. Let it wash over you. The divine Son, through whom all things were made (Col. 1:16), who “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3), the one without whose constant care and guidance all of molecular reality would fall apart (Col. 1:17), is the one with whom you have been united. Through no activity of your own, but by the sheer and mighty grace of God, you have been enveloped in the triumphant and tender ruler of the cosmos.

Therefore: nothing can touch you that does not touch him. To get to you, every pain, every assault, every disappointment has to go through him. You are shielded by invincible love. Everything that washes into your life, no matter how hard, comes from and through the tender care of the friend of sinners. He himself feels your anguish even more deeply than you do, because you’re one with him; and he mediates everything hard in your life through his love for you, because you’re one with him.

The might of heaven, the power that flung galaxies into existence, has swept you into himself. And you’re there to stay. Amid the storms of your little existence— the sins and sufferings, the failure and faltering, the waywardness and wandering—he is going to walk you right into heaven. He is not just with you. He is in you, and you in him. His destiny now falls on you. His union with you at both the macro and micro levels guarantees your eventual glory and rest and calm. You may as well question gravity as question the certainty of what your union with him means for your final future.

Live the rest of your life mindful of your union with the prince of heaven. Rest in the knowledge that your sins and failures can never kick you out of Christ. Let an ever-deepening awareness of your union with him strengthen your resistance to sin. See it in the Bible. Ponder his tireless care for you. You have been strengthened with the power to fight and overcome sin because the power that raised Jesus from the dead now resides in you, living and active—for Jesus Christ himself resides in you. You can never be justifiably accused ever again. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).”

Selected passages from Deeper by Dane Ortlund