Disputation 46: On The Communion Of Believers With Christ, And Particularly With His Death

1. The union of believers with Christ tends to communion with him, which contains, in itself, every end and fruit of union, and flows immediately from the union itself.

2. Communion with Christ is that by which believers, when united to him, have, in common with himself all those things which belong to him; yet the distinction is preserved, which exists between the head and the members, between him who communicates, and them who are made partakers, between him who sanctifieth, and those who are sanctified.

3. This communion must, according to the Scriptures, be considered in two views, for it is either a communion of his death, or of his life; because Christ must be thus considered in two relations, either according to the state in the body of his flesh, which was crucified, dead, and buried, or, according to his glorious state and the new life to which he was raised up again. 4. The communion of his death is that by which, being planted together in the likeness of his death, we participate of his power, and of all the benefits which flow from his death.

5. This planting together is the crucifixion, the death and the burial of "our old man," or of "the body of sin," in and with the body of the flesh of Christ. These are the degrees by which the body of the flesh of Christ is abolished; that may also in its own measure, be called "the body of sin," so far as God has made Christ to be sin for us, and has given him to bear our sins, in his own body, on the tree.

6. The strength and efficacy of the death of Christ consist in the abolishing of sin and death, and of the law, which is "the hand-writing that is against us;" and the strength or force of sin is that by which sin kills us.

7. The efficacious benefits of the death of Christ which believers enjoy through communion with it, are principally the following: The First is the removal of the curse, which we had deserved through sin. This includes, or has connected with it, our reconciliation with God, perpetual redemption, remission of sins, and justification.

8. The SECOND. is deliverance from the dominion and slavery of sin, that sin may no longer exercise its power in our crucified, dead and buried body of sin, to obtain its desires by the obedience which we have usually yielded to it in our body of sin, according to the old man.

9. The THIRD is deliverance from the law, both as it is "the hand-writing which was against us," consisting of ceremonial institutions, and as it is the rigid exactor of what is due from us, and useless and inefficacious as it is on account of our flesh, and the body of sin, according to which we were carnal, though it was spiritual, and as sin, by its wickedness and perversity, abused the law itself to seduce and kill us.