Our union with Christ.
A call to worship.
Themes
Incarnation • Union with Christ • Righteousness • Redemption • Participation • Intimacy with God • Embodied salvation • Atonement • Jesus’ faithfulness • New creation • Friendship with God • Love of God • Christ’s life as ours • Designed for communion • Participation in divine life • Fullness of Christ • Eternal purpose of God • Jesus becoming sin
The incarnation was not an information-event but a union-event.
Scripture reading
John 1:14 2 Corinthians 5:21 1 Corinthians 1:30 Philippians 3:8–9
This call to worship1 invites us to slow down and marvel at the Incarnation, not just as a story about Jesus’ birth, but as the moment God united Himself to us in a real and life-giving way. It reminds us that everything we have in Christ is rooted in this deep, personal union He formed with our humanity.
John starts his gospel with these words: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us— the Word that was in the beginning, the Word that was with God, the Word that was God, the Word through whom all things were made. That Word became flesh and dwelt among us. What was that about? Why did that happen? John answers that question. He says: To all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. Across his many letters, the Apostle Paul further clarifies why Jesus became human — why the incarnation happened. He writes: For our sake, God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin so that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God. Paul also wrote: Because of God, you are in Christ Jesus — Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, who became to us righteousness, who became to us sanctification, who became to us redemption.
Prayer
Father in heaven, our union with Christ— and through Him, with You— is not just something we imagine might, maybe, be real in some way. Our union with Christ— it isn’t just about Him being sympathetic toward us. It isn’t Him merely participating in our feelings, like we might vicariously do with our own children. If we gain any benefit from being in Christ, it is because we have genuinely been united with Him— united to the very person of Jesus Christ Himself. Our union with Him, and therefore with You, Father, through Him— is a union that is vital. It’s a union that is intimate. It is organic. It is personal. It is real. We have become, in Christ, the righteousness of God. We are now Your righteousness! You have declared us righteous precisely because we are righteous in Christ. Father, You regard Your righteousness as ours because we genuinely share in His. What we have in Him is more than just a legal benefit— more than a transactional, arms-length absolution of guilt and condemnation. Our relationship with Christ goes far beyond mere legal representation. It is a union rooted deep in personal reality, made possible through Your incarnation. He came not just to live so that He could then die for us. He came first to unite Himself with us, in and through His humanity. Out of your unimaginable love for us the inconceivable happened. You, God, became flesh of our flesh. The spiritual, incorruptible, and immaterial Word of God became physical, corruptible, and material. The eternally existing, universe-creating Son of God joined Himself to our humanity— to our flesh and blood. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He carried in Himself our true humanity as He lived— as He lived faithfully here with us. You, God, revealed Yourself by giving Yourself. The incarnation was not an information-event but a union-event. You moved into our estranged, fallen condition, and there formed a bond with us. You do the things that You will— the things that You want. And You desire friendship with us. Therefore, You assumed our very humanity so that You could redeem it. You made Your eternal purpose visible. Your intentions could not be more clear: You joined us to You through Jesus Christ. Your Son has united Himself to us. He assumed our human existence into His own existence. And there our existence was lived, crucified, resurrected, and seated in the heavenly realms. And so we now share His life. It is concrete, it is embodied, it is irreversible in the Word made flesh. We were created from the beginning— designed, built, and structurally ordered— to live in communion with You, to share in Your life. And it is all now made clear, right there in the Incarnation— the evidence of humanity in union with You. Christ’s own relationship with You, Father, now includes us. We are joined to You because He has joined Himself to us. And we can now participate, in the eternal life-giving relationship between You and Him. We experience Your life. We experience Your eternal life. We experience the fullness of Christ. Not a legal transaction. Not an accounting transaction. A genuine joining of our life to His life. He has united us to Himself once and forever. In the name of Jesus Christ, who became flesh and dwelt among us, who became sin, who became to us wisdom from God, who became to us righteousness, who became to us sanctification, who became to us redemption, so that we might be found in Him, Amen
1
This call to worship was given to the small assembly of Christians who gathered at Pathway Church in Beaverdam, Michigan, on Sunday, November 26, 2023.