Your relationship with Jesus Christ is supremely significant to you, whether you realize it or not. Professor John Murray said, “Union with Christ is the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation” [Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 161]. Discerning gospel preachers have been insisting on this for a long time, making much of it as John Newton did in this 27th of his 41 letters on religious subjects. This is another short letter, so my alteration is more of a paraphrase than an abridgment. Numbered paragraphs correspond with the original.
1. A believer’s union with Christ is so wonderfully great that describing it by analogies with earthly things is really quite inadequate. The best that analogies can do is to show different sides, and even then, we only get a faint idea that falls far short of the stupendous reality. Let us meditate on four worthy comparisons made by Scripture, which I would set forth in this letter.
2. Christ is our Foundation. Without Him, we are unstable (Jas 1.6). Winds of dangerous doctrines and turbulent troubles agitate and threaten us upon the sea of human life. When we are united to Christ by faith, we are established upon a sure foundation, the Rock of Ages. Then we are unmovable despite all the raging storms and floods.
3. Christ is our Root. We have been cut off from God by our sin, and consequently, we are dead and fruitless. Then God graciously unites us by faith to Christ. He is the living Vine and root of all blessedness. Through Him we possess a constant
supply of sap and holy influence. This enables us to be fruitful for God, even persistently and abundantly.
4. Christ is our Head. Our sins have kindled in our hearts a hostility toward God and even made us loathsome to Him. There is a mutual enmity between the Holy One and sinners. Again, through faith we are united to Christ, and then in Him, we have fellowship with the Father and the Son, as well as fellowship with other believers. Scripture uses the analogy of a human body where all the members are vitally attached to the head and also to one another. Spiritually, this makes for universal union, communion, and sympathy within the Church.
5. Christ is our Husband. Without Christ, we are desperate loners. Ezekiel 16 portrays unbelievers metaphorically as naked, destitute, unloved, and helpless. All that changes through faith in Christ. When this covenantal union is consummated in a spiritual marriage, all His righteousness is our righteousness, His riches our riches, and His honors our honors. The gospel announces that our Redeemer is our Husband. By His love and power, He pays our debts, discharges all claims against us, and changes our names.
6. In these four analogies, the Lord Jesus teaches us that our union with Him is intimate, vital, and inseparable. Still, the reality is far greater. Therefore, He makes a statement so grand we will never be able to grasp it fully until we see Him face to face. I refer to His great prayer request for believers in these words, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (John 17.21).
7. A biblical phrase comes to mind that describes our proper amazement at all this: “What has God wrought!” In union with Christ, a believer has perfect security, incalculable privilege, and inexpressible happiness! We are so deeply indebted to the grace of God! We who once were far from God have been brought near to Him by Christ’s blood. We who once deserved God’s wrath are now heirs of eternal life. All these blessings of pure and free grace make it perfectly obvious that we ought to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the God who gives them to us, and in a way befitting those who are being called into God’s eternal kingdom and glory!
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John Newton was able to write this way about spiritual things only because God has revealed them in His holy Word, the Bible. We apprehend them by information and by appropriation. We must know what the Bible says, believe what it says, and personally embrace what it says for ourselves. The main thing it says respecting salvation is that God has given His Son to be the Savior of sinners. He is yours if you will have Him by faith. As believers, we never cease discovering all the blessedness that is ours in Him. Mr. Newton’s letter is an excellent explanation of things both simple and incomprehensible. It is a most uplifting message for all Christians, especially when we are downcast. Union with Christ will ultimately prove to be the supply of all our lack, the relief of all our miseries, and the fulfillment of all our hopes. Amen.