OUR DIVINE CRAVINGS

'To be human is to exist with the sense of an absence to be filled. Only the light of our human's substance's longing for union with the divine do our lesser yearnings make sense.'

Erik Varden, Chastity, p.32.

GOD'S LOVE FOR US

'Listening to that voice with great inner attentiveness, I hear at my centre words that say: "I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favour rests. I have moulded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother's womb. I have carved you in the plasm of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on your head and guided you every step. Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know me as your own and I know you as my own. You belong to me. I am your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your lover and your spouse...yes even your child...wherever you are I will be. Nothing will ever separate us. We are one.'"

Henri JM Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, p.24

THE CHRISTIAN AS A HOLY OBJECT

'...If you wish to boast of a holy object, why do you not praise the holy object that Jesus Christ, God's Son, has touched with His own body? What does He touch? My living and dying; my walking, standing; my suffering, misfortune, and trials - all of which He experienced, bore, and passed through.'

Martin Luther in John W Kleinig, Wonderfully Made, p.68.

UNION WITH GOD

'Union with God, in Christian thinking, is not a dissolving of the self. Union is not the absorption and dissolution of the human being into the substance of God. On the contrary, the human person is never more herself as when she is closest to God. The presence of God is a personal presence. It is an intimacy of relationship between two ontologically distinct persons. It is an intimacy that is closer than relationships between two human beings. God knows each human being perfectly. God also knows without measure. To be known and yet to be loved is the foundation of intimacy.'

Gregory E Granssle, Our Deepest Desires, p.130.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN A LINE

'God looks at you as if you were a little Christ; Christ stands beside you to turn you into one.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.193.

DRESSING UP AS JESUS TO PRAY

'Its very first words are Our Father. Do you now see what those words mean? They mean quite frankly, that you are putting yourself in the place of the Son of God. To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.187.

COMMUNION WITH GOD

'Our communion with God lies in his giving himself to us and our giving ourselves and all that he requires to him. This communion with God flows from that union which is in Christ Jesus.

This communion will be perfect and complete when we enter into the full enjoyment of Christ's glory. Then we shall totally give ourselves up to him, resting in him as the utmost fulfilment of all our desires.'

John Owen, Communion with God (Abridged by RJK Law), p.3. 

THE CENTRALITY OF UNION WITH CHRIST

'To make real in ourselves the good which Christ offers us in the redeemed life, we must at some point begin to appreciate the literal character of the Scriptures which speak of Christ being "in" us.'

Dallas Willard, Hearing God, p.149.

A CHRISTIAN'S WEALTH

'By virtue of the believer's union with Christ, he does in fact possess all things. But it may be asked, how does he possess all things? What is he the better for it? How is a true Christian so much richer than other people?

To answer this, I'll tell you what I mean by "possessing all things." I mean that God three in one, all that he is, and all that he as, and all that he does, all that he has made or done - the whole universe, bodies and spirits, earth and heaven, angels, humans and devils, sun, moon and stars, land and sea, fish and fowls, all silver and gold, kings and potentates - are as much the Christian's as the money in his pocket, the clothes he wears, the house he dwells in, or the victuals he eats; yes, properly his, advantageously his, by virtue of union with Christ; because Christ, who certainly does possess all things, is entirely his; so that the Christian possesses it all, more than a wife the share of the best ad dearest husband, more than the hand possesses what the head does. It is all his.

Every atom of the universe is managed by Christ so as to be most to the advantage of the Christian, every particle of air or every ray of the sun; so that he in the other world, when he comes to see it, shall sit and enjoy all this vast inheritance with surprising, amazing joy.'

Jonathan Edwards in Dane C Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners, p.64.

THE GREAT MARRIAGE

'There will come the time, when Christ will sweetly invite his spouse to enter with him into the palace of his glory, which he had been preparing for her from the foundation of the world, and he shall as it were take her by the hand, and lead her in with him: and this glorious bridegroom and bride shall with all their shining ornaments, ascend up together into the heaven of heaven; the whole multitude of glorious angels waiting upon them: and this Son and daughter of God shall, in their united glory and joy, present themselves together before the Father; when Christ shall say "Here I am, and the children, which thou hast given me": and they both shall in that relation and union, together receive the Father's blessing; and shall thenceforward rejoice together, in consummate, uninterrupted, immutable, and everlasting glory, in the love and embraces of each other, and joint enjoyment of the love of the Father.' 

Jonathan Edwards in Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.87.

WHAT JESUS SAYS TO HIS PEOPLE

'You have praised Me, I will praise you; you think much of Me, I think quite as much of you. You use great expressions for Me, I will use just the same for you. You say My love is better than wine, so is yours to Me. You tell Me all My garments smell of myrrh, so do yours. You say My word is sweeter than honey to your lips, so is yours to Mine; all that you say of Me, I say it to you. I see Myself in your eyes, I can see My own beauty in you. And whatever belongs to Me, belongs to you. Therefore, O My love, I will sing back the song - you have singing it to your beloved and I will sing it to My beloved. You have sung it your husband, I will sing it to My sister, My spouse.' 

Charles Spurgeon in Julian Hardyman, Jesus. Lover of My Soul, p.95.

IDENTITY IS FOUND VERTICALLY NOT HORIZONTALLY

'Since the fall, people have looked horizontally for what they were designed to find vertically. They ask people, places and things to do for them what only identity in the Lord can.' 

Paul David Tripp, Lead, p.164.

UNION WITH CHRIST DRIVES SEXUAL ETHICS

'...the problem with sexual immorality is precisely that it is incompatible with the holiness associated with the believer in union with Christ. It actively defiles the sacred.'
Grant Macaskill, Living in Union with Christ, p.89.

BAPTISM & UNION WITH CHRIST

'...baptism signifies that the Christian life involves donning the identity of someone else and not simply improving our own. What we clothe ourselves with is not a new set of attitudes or practices but another person, Jesus Christ.'
Grant Macaskill, Living with Union in Christ, p.71.

THE TRUE IMPORTANCE OF CHRISTIAN UNITY

'We frequently approach Christian unity as something that follows from what we are or what we do: we see Christian unity as constituted by doctrinal agreement or by moral alignment. We consider there to be no meaningful between someone who takes a different position on this or that doctrinal issue or this or that moral position. The way we approach evangelical ethics often reflects this. Even if we have a good emphasis on unity, it is often understood as an imperative modeled on Jesus' willingness to love the other, which still needs a move toward agreement by dialogue. But proper reflection on the sacraments confounds this: for Paul, our unity is a function of our union with Christ, which is a union with the one God, whose oneness becomes ours. Our attempts to draw a circle around those who think like us is fundamentally wrongheaded and, frankly, sinful. Now, this is not to say that it is wrong to pursue moral and theological agreement in the truth; it is important to do so, but we do it to bring the highest glory to God, not to define who is in and who is out. I am united to the believer whose doctrine is dreadful and to those whose life I find abhorrent; it is precisely because they share in Christ's body that I am compelled to speak to both problems, but to do so in brotherly love and affirmation. For Paul, the sine qua non of inclusion seems to be limited to the confession "Jesus is Lord," which can be made only by the acting presence of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor.12:3).'

Grant Macaskill, Living in Union with Christ, p.70.

UNION WITH CHRIST APPLIED

'Christ has made holiness a reality for you (you are in Christ) and a possibility for you (Christ is in you).' 

Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ, p.185. 

THE GOSPEL IS DEIFICATION

'The purpose of the gospel [is] to make us sooner or later like God; indeed it is, so to speak, a kind of deification.' 

John Calvin in Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ, p.165. 

UNION WITH CHRIST DOESN'T DESTROY THE INDIVIDUAL

'...our self is not obliterated by our union with Christ; our self is fully realized. God the Creator clearly delights in our unique particularity. From sunsets to snowflakes, he makes endless variations of beautiful things for the sheer joy of it.He never repeats himself and never runs out of ideas.' 

Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ, p.162. 

YOU FIND YOURSELF WHEN YOU FIND GOD

'Against the prevailing mindset of our day - you are what you make yourself - union with Christ tells you that you can discover your real self only in relation to the One who made you. You are not, you cannot be, self-made. Union with Christ tells that you can only understand who are you are in communion with God and others. And that is a wildly countercultural claim.' 

Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ, p.135.  

WHAT THE CROSS REVEALS

'...the cross is our best picture of who God is: God providing from within his own life the gift of bringing us back into his life.' 

Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ, p.111.