Union with Christ: Heart and Will
What it really means, concretely, to be united to Christ
The phrase “union with Christ” sounds so abstract, doesn’t it? We tend to push abstractions to the periphery and focus on particulars. Let me try to particularize this as best I can.
Do some digging. What does it mean to be one with another person? Well, oneness with another is about love and fellowship. But what does that really mean when we’re talking about Jesus? How do we experience love and fellowship with a two-thousand-year-old resurrected Nazarene? I believe the answer lies in two words: heart and will.
Our heart is the spring of our desire and devotion. What trickles from its hidden caverns is what we most long for. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Luke 12:34). Treasure can be beautiful or beastly. It can glimmer with the glory of eternity, or it can pull the light from our eyes and replace it with darkness (Mark 7:20–23). The heart builds its home around our treasure. It beats in step with our love, our yearning.
The heart builds its home around our treasure.
Our will is the riverbed for heart water. It takes our longing and carries it to thought, speech, and action. Will without heart is madness; heart without will is a cesspool. We need both. We need both the longing and the leading, the passion and the practice, the depth and the diligence.
You and I have this already, whether or not we know it. Right now, at this very moment, you have a longing that is being channeled into thought, speech, and action. Or perhaps several longings. Do you know what they are? Pause and ponder. What do you treasure right now? Where has your will brought you today?
Now, here’s the next phase in our digging. What is the heart and will of Christ? Being one with him will mean sharing his heart and will. If you don’t know what they are, how could you possibly be one with him?
These elements, heart and will, are essential to identity. If someone asked you who Jesus is and what he’s like, what would you say? What is his heart and will? We have to know the answer to those questions.
In Dane Ortlund’s book Gentle and Lowly, he focuses on the heart of Jesus.[1] Jesus, in fact, tells us what his heart is; he sets it in the open air before us, and it’s something we wouldn’t expect.
Remember here that we’re talking about the depths of God, his heart. And “the heart, in biblical terms, is not part of who we are but the center of who we are. Our heart is what defines and directs us.”[2] Are you ready? Here is the heart of Christ, the Son of light and life, very God of very God: “I am gentle and lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29).
Gentle . . . “not harsh, reactionary, easily exasperated. He is the most understanding person in the universe. The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger but open arms.”[3]
Lowly . . . He’s come right down to our level. We can approach him. In fact, “no one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ.”[4]
According to Jesus Christ himself, this is his heart. “Open. Welcoming. Accommodating. Understanding. Willing.”[5] The heart of Christ moves towards others. He moves towards the closed, the unwelcome, the stubborn, the ignorant, the unwilling. The heart of Christ gravitates towards its opposite, and then it makes that opposite like him.
Christ didn’t come to friends in the cold and turning earth. He came to enemies. And yet, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Christ’s heart for us is what made our hearts for him.
Christ’s heart for us is what made our hearts for him.
How is this possible? It’s possible because God is love (1 John 4:8), and love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7). The heart of Christ, the heart of God, bore us, believed us, hoped us, and endured us into himself. And the heart of Christ did that because love is essentially self-giving.
God in Christ held nothing back. He gave all of himself, and he did that because all of him was love. And if love is self-giving, then love must also be open, welcoming, accommodating, understanding, and willing. Love must be gentle and lowly. That is the heart of Christ.
And his will? He tells us in a food metaphor that I’ve always smiled at. What does Jesus need even more than bodily sustenance? More than dried fish and hard bread? “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). Jesus’s will is to do the will of his Father. Don’t you love that? How could it be otherwise if Jesus and the Father are one? They share the same will along with the Spirit. Three persons, one will.
But what is that will? What is the monumental action that bursts from the heart of God? It was an action of love. That is who God is. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). Do you see it, the divine poetry of heart and will? Love leads to giving of self!
The heart and will of God for men
Came with bones and skin and blood.
He laid his body down and then
Drew our souls up from the mud.
What does all this mean? It means that the heart and will of Christ is gentle, lowly, and self-giving. If you are one with Christ, by the Spirit of love, then you will be gentle and lowly and self-giving. And the more gentleness, lowliness, and self-giving soak into your soul, the closer to God you will be.
Want more? Check out One with God!
Notes
[1] I’ve written a short review of Ortlund’s book here. While the book has been a blessing to me in some ways, I have some deeper disagreements with what Ortlund is doing, and specifically how he’s doing it, and so I have some reservations about it that are worth considering. If nothing else, the review will help you to read the book with an awareness of its potential problems. And all books, including my own, have potential problems!
[2] Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 18.
[3] Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly, 19.
[4] Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly, 20.
[5] Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly, 21.