Whenever the word mystical is mentioned in Christian discourse, some people at once become apprehensive. Have not reputable theologians like B. B. Warfield or Karl Barth seriously warned against using this word in our Christian speech? Yet men like John Calvin, C. H. Spurgeon, and G. A. Barrois, all of them in the Reformed tradition, have unblushingly spoken of the mystical union of the believer with the risen Lord. Where, keeping all of this in view, shall we take our stand?
Let us from the outset be clear on this: mystical union with Christ does not describe the total absorption of the believer in Christ or Deity. No identity philosophy as expressed in Neo-Platonism or classical Hinduism is either possible or permissible in an evangelical Christian experience. Nevertheless we do affirm the possibility and reality of a highly personal and intimate union of the believer with the crucified, risen, and exalted Lord.
The word mystical in this context is used to suggest the wonder of our communion with Jesus Christ. For this union of a redeemed sinner with a pardoning Saviour transcends all human apprehension. It is created of God, a gift of his supreme love, not for selfish contemplation, but for the energizing, through the Holy Spirit, of the whole of man for fruitful service to God and man.
The Scriptural Teaching on this Union. The Bible testifies on every page to God’s longing for fellowship with his creatures. God created man for fellowship with himself and his neighbor. Man’s fall shattered his relationship with the Lord, but God unceasingly agonized in order to restore man to blessed fellowship with himself. Abraham like Enoch of old walked and talked with God, as friend with friend. God called Israel out of Egypt’s bondage to be his chosen people, a nation of kings and priests, to be the herald of his will. Moses communed with God face to face, and prophets like Isaiah and Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, knew something of this close and holy fellowship with Jehovah God. And yet it is finally in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, that God’s passionate longing for an enduring fellowship with his lost creatures comes to its highest expression.
The Four Gospels and this Union. The informed reader of the New Testament realizes at once that Jesus through concrete acts and explicit teachings aimed at the most intimate union of his followers with himself and God the Father. It is Jesus who calls, commissions and sanctifies his disciples. Linder various metaphors and pictures Christ illustrates the depth and scope of his relationship to his own. In Luke 12 and 14 as in Matthew 10 and numerous other passages, Jesus describes the strong bond between his disciples and himself in terms of the cost of discipleship. For his sake men are to forsake all—father, mother, brother, sister, house and home! For his sake they must be willing to endure the crucifixion of self to the point of martyrdom. And the apostles and early disciples forsook all and followed the divine Master. In fact, Jesus so completely identified himself with his disciples that he could say, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will the Father give unto you.” When Christ’s followers herald the gospel of grace and judgment, they do so with the assurance that “he that heareth you heareth me, and he that despiseth you, despiseth me and him that sent me” (Luke 10:1–16). Whether Jesus speaks of Nachfolge or following in his steps, endurance in affliction, of speaking in his name, of suffering for his sake, of sharing in his glory, or of always abiding in him, this intimate, personal, indestructible union of the believer with Christ is in evidence. Jesus is the light of the world: his disciples, in turn, are to be the light shining in darkness. Jesus is the vine, we are the branches. He is the shepherd, we are his sheep. He is the Master, we are his servants. As our elder brother he is not ashamed to call us his brethren. As Christ is in the Father so are we in him (John 17). His glorification through cross and death involves our own glorification and ultimate salvation. What could be more holy than Jesus through his bloody passion purchasing our redemption and through his glorious resurrection making us eternally his own? In the explicit teachings of our Lord there is the joy of salvation, the gift of eternal life, fortitude in trial, and the promise of ultimate, culminating fellowship with God through the grace and power of his Son and our Saviour Jesus Christ.
The Mystical Union in Paul’s Letters. Critical scholarship has established the fact of the priority of the epistolary literature of the New Testament over the four gospels. Paul’s letters are no doubt older than either the Synoptic Gospels or that of John. Yet, there is a remarkable harmony between these two parts of the New Testament. While the imagery differs, the substance is basically the same. It is one gospel that is proclaimed, whether we study the Synoptics or the doctrinal or hortatory letters of the apostles. With regard to mystical union of the believer with Christ, Paul is explicit.
It was Adolf Deissmann, eminent New Testament scholar, who in 1892 pointed out the extreme importance of the Pauline formula “in Christ Jesus.” By this formula, which occurs 164 times in Paul’s writings, Paul sought to express the intimate, mystical union between Christ and himself and every true believer.
In Christ, thus Paul teaches, we were chosen (Rom. 16:13), called (1 Cor. 7:22), foreordained (Eph. 1:11), created unto good works (Eph. 2:10), have obtained an inheritance (Eph. 1:11), “being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory …” (Eph. 1:11, 12).
In Christ each believer is justified (Gal. 2:17), sanctified (1 Cor. 1:2), but also crucified as attested through the symbolism of our baptism into Christ’s death (Rom. 6:1–11), and enriched in all utterance and knowledge (1 Cor. 1:5). We are declared to be one in our relationship with men of all races and tongues (Gal. 3:28, 29). If American Christians, North and South, and Christians everywhere could realize the impact of this word of the apostle, racial pride and arrogance, antisemitism, and all non-Christian attitudes towards those of a different color from ours would be radically changed.
The apostle is deeply convinced that in Christ and in him alone we have redemption (Rom. 3:24), eternal life (Rom. 6:23), righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30), wisdom for our folly (1 Cor. 4:10), liberty from the law (Gal. 2:4), and in Christ God, the Father, “has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3). Paul is sure that God causes us to triumph in Christ and that always, without failing (2 Cor. 2:14).
The intimacy of our union with Christ is also suggested in the Pauline writings through various suggestive metaphors. What could be more tender and personal than the relationship between bride and bridegroom, between husband and wife? Paul uses this picture both in Ephesians and II Corinthians. “For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy: for I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you a pure virgin to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2). God’s family, the Church, has its existence in Christ, hence it must live a Christ-like life.
Still another figure in Paul’s writings which bears on our subject is that of the body and its members. Both in 1 Corinthians 11 and 12 and in his Ephesian letter Paul speaks of Christ as the head of the Church and of the believers as members of the body, i.e., the Church. Theologians have spoken of the body of Christ, the Church, as the mystical bride of Christ. And well they might. Ubi Christus ibi ecclesia! Where Christ is, there is the Church! Even though, as Luther intimated, only two or three simple folk are gathered in his Name! Moreover, believers individually and collectively are called in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians “the temple of God.” Here again our high calling and the holiness of Christ’s Church is set forth.
But the highest expression of the believer’s union with Christ is found in Paul’s passion mysticism. No one can read those moving verses in Colossians 1:23–28 without realizing how deeply Paul had understood the Master whom he had never known in the flesh. Paul rejoices in his sufferings for the Colossians. Daringly he speaks of filling “up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church” (Col. 1:24). All with the end in view that “Christ be formed in them” and that his readers might fathom the depth of the mystery hid from past generations, but now made manifest to the saints: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Some one else has said that in every age some part of the Church of Jesus Christ must endure suffering in fulfillment of God’s one increasing purpose. William Carey, pioneer missionary in India, had to sail on a Danish boat because the East India Company denied him passage on its ships. On arrival in Calcutta he was harassed for years. Later his own brethren in Britain severed their connection with Carey. Robert Morrison’s Chinese tutors carried poison on their bodies fearing torture if they were discovered by the authorities as teaching a foreigner the Chinese language. Robert Moffat in Africa, Nommensen in Indonesia, evangelical missionaries in Latin America in most recent times, Russian believers under Stalin, and Christians in Nazi Germany and now in East Germany—these and many others mark “the trail of blood” of the Christian witness through the centuries. The servant is not above his Master. If they have blasphemed him, so they will his followers. Yet where in our country is there a serious grappling with this side of the Church’s mission? There is instead far too much status seeking, compromise with the world’s standards and values, and often open betrayal of the Lord. Paul, Peter, John, and the early Church unite in this testimony: Unless we suffer with him, we may not be glorified together (Rom. 8:17b).
Was Paul a mystic? Galatians 2:20 comes to mind, for there the apostle writes: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me!” Let us remember that Paul is also the apostle of faith and of the infinite grace of God in Jesus Christ. His mysticism, to cite Deissmann, is a reacting mysticism. In it God ever has the initiative. And though Paul experienced such exaltation as being transported into the third heaven, he did not boast of visions or high revelations, but rather of the grace of God, whose strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:1–10). Not in ecstactic elevations is the Christian’s glory, but in the cross of Christ, and his own self-crucifixion, and his anticipation of God’s glory amidst the flux of time. Neither is the Church now a Church of glory, but a Church which through many tribulations must enter the Kingdom of heaven.
Conclusion. From the foregoing it becomes clear that the mystical union between Christ and the believer, Christ and the Church, is a unique relationship, incomparably wonderful, and bound up with the deepest intentions of God’s grace and purpose. It is also an inward, not merely external, union which under the influence of God’s Spirit and the Christian’s self-discipline may organically grow in scope and meaning. It is, moreover, a spiritual union since our being strongly and enduringly wedded and joined to Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit by whom we have been sealed unto the day of our final redemption. It is finally an indissoluble union which the believer sustains to Jesus Christ his head. For we have the promise that we shall never perish, provided we endure to the end. Nothing is ever to separate the believing soul from God’s love which is in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:38, 39).
This doctrine of the mystical union of the believer with Christ ought to be a perennial source of strength in temptation, a clarion call to holy living in season and out, and a summons to realize an ever closer fellowship with our Lord. This doctrine also ought to make us realize our rich heritage of faith and love, of liturgy and praise, of missions and evangelism, of theology and Christian ethos, that we share with all those who in churches of Jesus Christ around the world are united with us in the one body of Christ, the Church. Moreover, as A. J. Gordon has well put it, “to be in Christ is not only to be in union with his divine nature, but also because He is the son of man as well as the Son of God, it is to be in truest union with human nature. We never get so near the heart of our sorrowing humanity as when we are in communion with the heart of the man of sorrows.” May our awareness of being joined with Jesus the Christ impell us to pray with John Woolman, “Lord, baptize me this day afresh into every condition and circumstance of men!” Let us cast aside all lethargy, put on the whole armor of God, and as those who have their very existence in Christ act, pray, live, witness, die, and triumph in his name until faith shall be sight, and the kingdoms of this earth shall have become the Kingdom of our Lord. Sursum corda! Lift up your hearts! Regem habemus! We have a King, even the King of kings, and Lord of lords. He will banish all our fears, conquer all sin and evil, for he has conquered it already on Calvary and on Easter morning. His purpose will yet be realized when a redeemed, united, and glorified humanity shall dwell, by his grace, on a redeemed and new earth.
Bibliography: J. Calvin, Institutes, II. iii. 2; B. B. Warfield, Biblical and Theological Studies; A. J. Gordon, In Christ; J. S. Stewart, A Man in Christ; G. A. Barrois, “Mysticism,” Theology Today (July, 1947); A. Wickenhauser, Pauline Mysticism; K. Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, iv, pp. 620 ff.
Professor of Church History
New Orleans Baptist Seminary
New Orleans, Louisiana
