Union with Christ
Theological Definition
Union with Christ is the Bible’s way of describing believers as joined to Jesus in his death and resurrection life. This union changes what defines a person: sin is no longer the ruling master, and a new life becomes possible. Scripture uses shared-death and shared-life language to show both a new identity and a new power source for obedience.
Key Occurrences in Romans
12Therefore don`t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
13Neither present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace.
3Or don`t you know that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4We were buried therefore with him through baptism to death, that just like Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.
5For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection;
6knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin.
7For he who has died has been freed from sin.
8But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him;
9knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no more has dominion over him!
10For the death that he died, he died to sin once; but the life that he lives, he lives to God.
11Thus also consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
4Therefore, my brothers, you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you would be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit to God.
5For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were through the law, worked in our members to bring forth fruit to death.
6But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that in which we were held; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.
1There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who don`t walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
3For what the law couldn`t do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh;
4that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
9But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if it is so that the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if any man doesn`t have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his.
10If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is alive because of righteousness.
11But if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.