Union with Christ: Embracing Faith and Community

FERGUSON: Well, yes, I think I can do that fairly quickly that when the Bible speaks about our creation, the Bible teaches us that in creation we were actually united to Adam. He was the head of the whole human race. He was our representative before God. He was like our priest before God and our king before God as well as our prophet before God. And in him when he fell, we all fell. This is what Paul teaches in Romans 5:12 to 21. [00:02:40]

FERGUSON: And when Christ comes, Christ comes to unite us to Himself, first of all, by taking our flesh, so we can speak about an incarnational union. He bonds Himself to us by taking our humanity. And then He does everything that is needed for our salvation, sends His Holy Spirit and then bonds us to Himself by the Holy Spirit, so that we begin to taste and enjoy everything that He has done for us. [00:03:12]

FERGUSON: So, how was Jesus wise on the one hand and how on the other hand did He have this gentleness in Him? And when we look at Jesus, I think we begin to understand that as Luke says at the end of chapter 2 from His early days because of His reflection on Scripture, He grew in wisdom. I sometimes say, especially for those of us who don't have a lot of wisdom that the Bible has a book that gives you wisdom before you've had time to get it, namely, the book of Proverbs that tells you how do you take the principles of God's Word and apply them in a world like this. [00:04:55]

FERGUSON: Well, first of all, to be encouraged that you are struggling to trust Him. I think sometimes when we are struggling, we feel that we are all unbelief, but if we were all unbelief we wouldn't be struggling. So, that is the first thing, not to be wholly discouraged by the fact that you are struggling. The second thing I think is to recognize that there have been plenty of people in the history of the Christian church that God has blessed and used who have also been strugglers. [00:06:30]

FERGUSON: Well, the beatific vision is the fulfillment of Jesus' promise that we will see God. So, that's the essence of it. But then we have to ask, "What does Jesus mean by seeing God? And on the one hand, we've got to say, that is not a matter of physical sight, for the simple reason that God is invisible. He is the invisible God. I find many Christians tend to think when we die we will see God because He'll become visible, but he ain't going to change because we die. [00:08:59]

FERGUSON: John Calvin has a beautiful way of speaking about creation as the invisible God putting on the clothes He wears to go outside so that we can see what He is like. And, I think, that is part of what it means for us to see God. We see Him in this world. We will see Him more fully in the world to come, but chiefly the way in which we are to think about that is He has made Himself visible in the most perfect way capable that human beings are capable of apprehending. And that is in Jesus Christ. [00:09:47]

FERGUSON: Yes, membership to us is a kind of official thing, but if you take the word, it means "being a member," and that is a deeply biblical thing. If we trust in Jesus Christ, we are members of the body of Christ. And therefore, different churches regard membership in different ways and bring people into membership in different ways. The officialese is far less important than the notion, "I really belong here and I am absolutely committed here," because to turn away from that, to reject it or to deny it is really to repudiate what Christ has brought you into. [00:42:05]

FERGUSON: He has brought you into His body. So, it is of supreme importance, first of all, because it's what the Scriptures teach, but, secondly, it's because of what we need. The idea that an individual is sufficient unto himself or herself to live the Christian life actually from a biblical point of view is an extraordinary form of arrogance. When we think of the New Testament's teaching of the extent to which we need one another, when we think of the fact that every gift the Lord has given to people, He has not given to them chiefly for themselves. [00:42:53]

FERGUSON: So, I think, you find there are so many different lines of teaching in Scripture coalesce into the church. "Christ loved the church," says Paul, "and gave Himself for the church." And for me not to love the church that He loved and gave Himself for is in a sense not to love the Lord Jesus Himself or certainly not to love what He loves. [00:45:02]

FERGUSON: And, you know, when I look back on my own Christian life, you know, I am, I think, what I have been helped to be by the church, my family is. You know, I sometimes have said to parents, "You know, God never gave to parents all the gifts that are needed to raise one child for Christ." That's what the whole church is for. It takes a village, it takes a congregation. And when we realize that, then we begin to see the extraordinary blessings that are released, not just into our individual lives, but into our family lives, and if we're parents, into our children's lives in the most wonderful way. [00:46:31]

FERGUSON: So, you might think about it this way. The father who removed all challenges from his children, or to put it in another way, the father who had a fabulous amount of money, who said, "This is your inheritance. I'm going to give it to you now" would not be a wise father. He wants to see his children grow into that, and that's what the heavenly Father wants to do. You know, I think sometimes He takes away some of our friends much earlier than we would want and we sometimes wonder why this is and perhaps it is because He simply wants them in heaven, perhaps it is because He has some mysterious purpose in this, but characteristically, He wants to see us growing from being infants to being spiritual adults, and we can't do that without learning how we overcome these enemies and ultimately, the final enemy. [00:49:02]

FERGUSON: We have to think about it this way, Nathan. If there were no challenge of facing death and releasing everything we have and are, what we love, the people we love into His hands for His care, we'd just immediately be taken to heaven, there are many things about learning to trust Him that we would never discover. So, you see, flashes of illumination, both in Scripture and in our experience, why He has sovereignly patterned the Christian life this way. [00:50:00]