Living in the Vine 8: Union with Christ

Union with Christ

John 15:4; Galatians 4:1-7; Ephesians 1:18-23; Romans 8:17.

Verse 4 of John 15 contains one of the greatest mysteries of what it means to be a believer and walk the daily Christian life. If I had been taught this truth as a new convert, perhaps my life would have been very different…

My mother was mentally unstable and involved in the occult. My abiding memory of early childhood is one of being left alone, neglected, for many hours on end, whilst at the same time being told that I was a mistake. It was in October 1973 that I was baptised, having given my life to Jesus earlier that year. My church seemed to assume that I knew what they knew, which I did not. My identity in Christ was based around my ability to play ‘Sing Hosanna’ on the piano and in trying my best to imitate the behaviour of my new Christian friends. I always failed! 

Once the initial excitement of becoming a Christian evaporated, events in my life only seemed to compound my inbuilt sense of being a mistake, unwanted and a repeated failure. By the time I was 30, I was a complete mess, having largely given up trying to be a Christian – I badly needed to know how much God loved me. The crisis came between 1990-92 when, bed-ridden, suffering from M.E., unable to care for my two small boys and believing the lie that I would be better off dead, I began to plan to take my own life. Cutting a very long story short, Father God wonderfully stepped in and, through a deliverance which made way for me to absorb the contents of Neil Anderson’s books Victory over the Darkness and The Bondage Breaker, I learnt for the first time about my true identity in Christ and His in me.

When we first believe, God places His Spirit within us and immediately we become a hugely-loved precious child of Father God and heir with Jesus of many spiritual riches, blessings and precious promises. The life of His Spirit within us becomes the source (root) of our branch-life; we are united with Him and that means that everything the Vine is, is now also ours. When we are weak, He is strong; when we are poor or in need, He is rich with our provision.  This abundant life in the Vine is all a gift of Father’s grace, given freely to us at the point we first believe: we cannot behave our way into it; we cannot buy it for money or swap our life for someone else’s – it all comes through the faithfulness of God to the new covenant He made with us through Jesus. 

For Jesus to be seen and experienced by others He needs us disciples – branches – just as we need Him, because we are His hands and feet in the world. It is this mutual life, in and from the Spirit, that gives us the ability to bear any good fruit, because anything that does not flow from His root will instead come from us, our self-nature, rather than from Him, and so the quality of its fruit will be questionable.

What I did for twenty years was to try to behave my way into a more meaningful relationship with God, resulting in spectacular failure that always compounded the lies my background had sown into my identity. I know I am not alone in this because so many Christians have not been taught these truths. But this way only leads to fruitless exhaustion, repeated failure, giving up and walking away.

The only thing we need to do is to STOP trying to earn our way to a deeper relationship with God and 1) activate our faith and trust in Him; 2) believe what the bible says about us is wholly true, and 3) yield ourselves to His control. As we take these steps, our self gives way, allowing us to live more richly in Him and for Him to live more fully through us. We are ALREADY united with Him; we simply need to believe it is true.

Additional reading: John 17:22; John 14:12; Philippians 3:12.

Prayer time

Meditate on the image of Christ as the True Vine and your union in Him. Allow the truth to wash over you and enrich your worship today. Try to remain resting in the awareness of His presence in whatever you do today.


^{Image by David Kohler on unsplash.com}