CALVIN ON
This past weekend
I participated in the Calvin Symposium organized by
It may come as a surprise to some that Calvin should have much to say about the subject of our union with Christ and dependence upon him for life. Most people who have heard of him think of him as an austere predestinarian who fathered a form of Christianity that is rigorously objective and has little to do with a living relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. But this is a complete misconception. Calvin speaks of the subject of union with Christ as having “the highest degree of importance” because through this “mystical union”, he says, “Christ makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed.”[1]
What makes Calvin’s understanding of this doctrine so helpful is his appreciation of the place of Christ in the purposes of God. He speaks of Jesus as the Mediator that God graciously provided to reconcile us to friendship with himself. In our native blindness, Calvin argues, we are devoid of anything that pleases God. Though he recognizes remnants of his image in us we have so corrupted the gifts that he gave our first parents that he can only condemn us. As unworthy as we are of his favour, he nevertheless reaches out to us in mercy providing a mediator, one who can represent both his interests and ours. And that mediator is none other than his own Son whom he appoints to take upon himself our nature that he might become one with us.
As the man Christ Jesus, clothed in flesh and blood like ours, the eternal Son undertakes to meet all the righteous demands of his Father as the saviour of sinful human beings. He submits himself to the law of God, offers himself as a sacrifice for the sins of his people, experiences death and burial, rises triumphant over these, and ascends to the right hand of God from where he will one day come to judge the world.
All of these things he does not just as a private individual, Calvin insists, but as the representative of those the Father has given to him. Everything he does he does for them, acting in their place and on their behalf. What is more, it is not only all he does that is for their good but all that he is as the God-man, the mediator, as well. His rich anointing with the Spirit, for example, is ultimately for them too. United to him, what he possesses is theirs. As someone else has well said, Jesus not only gives himself for his people, he gives himself to them as well.
That’s where this idea of “union with Christ” comes into play in Calvin’s theology. He poses the question, “How are the benefits that Jesus obtained for us made ours?” and answers by saying, “By engrafting us into his body.” It’s not by contemplating the Lord Jesus from a distance that we are saved, Calvin says, but by coming to him, and being joined with him through faith. That, in the purposes of God, is what faith does. It is more than the empty hand that receives from Jesus what he has to give; it is the means by which Jesus makes us one with himself. He receives and welcomes the person who turns to him in sincere trust and “engrafts” them into himself so they become a member of his body. That way, they come to possess all that he has as their own.
There are certain benefits that belong to being in Christ that become ours immediately when we are united with him. For example, we are immediately pardoned all our sins, and considered righteous and holy by God in his Son. We are also immediately counted as his children and fully accepted in the Lord Jesus.
At the same time there are other benefits that only become ours through the continued exercise of faith. It is Christ’s purpose that the holiness we have in him should actually be imparted to us personally through the work of his Spirit and word within us. And it is his purpose that all the power, grace and gifts we need to serve in his kingdom should be drawn from him through faith exercised in prayer. Jesus doesn’t automatically impart his life to us irrespective of our interest in it. Typically he waits for us to look to him and through faith draw from his fullness what we need.
This, as Calvin saw it, is the way Christians are to live. We are not to consider ourselves apart from Christ, as those who look at him from a distance and come to him only in times of special need. We are to see ourselves as those who have been made one with him, and who constantly draw from him the life that we, as living members of his body, require.