Having been identified with Christ in His death, we have also been identified with Him in His burial. In Romans 6:4a Paul tells us, “We have been buried therefore with Him through baptism.” Also, Colossians 2:12a reveals that we have been buried together with Christ in baptism. In this way we are identified with Christ in His burial.
Ephesians 2:5 says that we have been made alive together with Christ. As sinners we need God’s forgiveness and justification, but as those who are dead in offenses and sins (Eph. 2:1) we need to be made alive. Forgiveness and justification bring us back to God’s presence to enjoy His grace and participate in His life, whereas being made alive enables us, as the living members of the Body of Christ, to express Him. God made us alive by imparting His eternal life, which is Christ Himself (Col. 3:4), into our deadened spirit through His Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2). He has enlivened us with Christ. God enlivened us together when He enlivened the crucified Jesus. Therefore, He made us alive with Christ.
Colossians 2:13a says, “You, being dead in the offenses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made alive together with Him.” The word “dead” here refers to the deadness in spirit because of sin. We who once were dead in offenses and in the uncircumcision of the flesh have been made alive together with Christ. This means that God has enlivened us in Christ with the divine life.
We also have been identified with Christ in His resurrection. Romans 6:4b says, “As Christ was raised from among the dead through the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Ephesians 2:6a speaks of our having been raised up together in Christ. To make us alive is the initial step of God’s salvation in life. Following this, God raised us up in Christ from the death position. Morever, Colossians 2:12b says that in Christ we were “raised together through the faith of the operation of God, who raised Him from among the dead.” Here we see clearly that in Christ we have been raised together through the faith of the operation of God. In Colossians 3:1 Paul again tells us “you were raised together with Christ.” We were raised together with Christ, and now we are where Christ is.
Finally, we have been identified with Christ in His ascension. Ephesians 2:6 tells us that God has “seated us together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.” The word “heavenlies” refers not only to a place but also to an atmosphere with a certain nature and characteristic. In Christ, God has brought us into a heavenly place and into a heavenly atmosphere with a heavenly characteristic. Because we are in a heavenly atmosphere with a heavenly nature and characteristic, we are a heavenly people.
It was in Christ that God seated us all together, once for all, in the heavenlies. This was accomplished when Christ ascended to the heavens, and it was applied to us by the Spirit of Christ when we believed in Him. Today we realize and experience this reality in our spirit through faith in the accomplished fact.
The believers have been joined to the Son of God by being grafted into Him as the reality of the cultivated olive tree (Rom. 11:17). This cultivated olive tree is God the Father’s unique interest in the universe. Christ is the reality of this divine interest, of this divine business, and we have been grafted into Him.
Being grafted into Christ as the reality of the cultivated olive tree leads to our growing in Him. Paul refers to this growth through grafting in Romans 6:5: “If we have grown together with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection.” A marvelous definition of the Greek word for “grown” in this verse is found in Commentary on Romans by Fredrick Lewis Godet. According to Godet (p. 243), the word grown denotes “the organic union in virtue of which one being shares the life, growth, and phases of existence belonging to another.” Through the organic union of two trees, accomplished by grafting, the one tree partakes of the life and characteristics of the other tree. Applying this understanding to our spiritual experience, we may say that we have been grafted into the “tree” of Christ, the Son of God, as the embodiment of the processed Triune God. Having become one with Him through grafting, we now partake of the life and characteristics of Him as the all-inclusive One, and in this way we grow in Him.