Question:  In one of your answers you say, “…that we might become one with him.”  What do you mean by that and what scriptures justify it?

            Thanks,

            Stan

Answer:  Dear Stan,

            You may be concerned that somehow I am/was claiming that being “in Christ” means that we become equal with Jesus—equal with God.  That is emphatically not what I am saying in the answer to which you have reference.

            Being one with him, he in us and we in him is not an equality of genus or kind.  We are still what we are—mortal, created, flesh and blood.  The mystery of the ages is Christ in us, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27 ).  It is the life of the age to come given to us by God’s grace without any merit of our own.  It is the resurrected life, the life we experience by God’s grace, as we become recipients of the new life in him, crossing over from death to life (John 5:24), now seated with him in heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6).  The new life in Christ means that we are in him and he is in us (John 14:20 ).  We abide in him (John 15:2, 4, 5, 6, 7), not with him or around him.  We don’t just “hang out” with him, we are in him.  This is what the Lord’s Supper, communion, the Eucharist, is all about.  We become one with him.  We commune with him.  The new life in Christ means that our old man/person is crucified with him and now we live a new life by virtue of the risen Lord who lives within us (Galatians 2:20 ).

            In Him because of Him,

            Greg Albrecht