Podcast: Why Christianity Is Not Just about Being a Follower of Jesus (Sam Allberry)

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

The Doctrine That’s Been “the Single Biggest Blessing to Me”

In this episode, Sam Allberry makes a case for why our union with Christ stands at the heart of the Christian faith and is the doctrine that has been the single biggest blessing to him since his conversion.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

• Conversion
• Identity
• A Wonderful Invasion
• Being a Follower of Jesus vs. Being in Christ
• Defining Union with Christ
• Scriptural Examples of Union with Christ
• Practical Implications

01:08 - Conversion

Matt Tully
Sam, thanks so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Sam Allberry
Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me back.

Matt Tully
At the end of this new book that you’ve written on union with Christ, you write that meditating on this doctrine, the doctrine of our union with Jesus, has been the single biggest blessing to you since your conversion. And so I want to get into why you say that and what it is (big picture) about this doctrine that it’s just blessed you over and over again. But before we get there, could you just take us back to your conversion and just share a little bit about how that happened?

Sam Allberry
I was seventeen, soon to turn eighteen, and wasn’t spiritually seeking. I had no particular heart interest in the Christian faith, but I had a couple of very good friends who were Christians. And so they invited me to their church’s youth ministry, and before I could think of a good enough reason not to go I agreed to go.

Matt Tully
And where was this?

Sam Allberry
This is back in England in my hometown of Sevenoaks in Kent. So I went to their youth ministry not because I was looking for anything myself but because I thought, Well, it’s probably polite to find out more about what they’re into. So I was thinking I wanted to be a good friend to them and see what makes them tick. But I certainly wasn’t seeking. I was open minded about whether God existed. I would have called myself a spiritual person for that reason. But I heard the gospel, and the first time I heard the gospel it rang true and I realized this is real. And it suddenly occurred to me that if God was real and really had made me, I didn’t know him and I was probably supposed to. And I figured that was my fault, not his. So I very quickly had an awareness that if God existed, then I was spiritually lost. And so then hearing the message of the one who came to seek and save the lost suddenly became relevant to me. So it was very shortly after that I became a Christian. I started going to that youth ministry each week, joined a Bible study, and I think just two or three weeks later really began to understand Jesus’s death for me. And I remember thinking if Jesus really has died bearing my sins, then that can’t just be a nice thing in my life; that has to be everything. It’s everything or nothing. It can’t just be something. So I remember thinking, Well, I’ve got to give my life to him. That’s the only response that fits. I knew next to nothing about what it would mean to be a Christian, but I knew I could trust Jesus. I knew if he had done that for me, then I could build my life on him. And so that was thirty-one years ago this month. So I’m very grateful for that day.

Matt Tully
I’m struck by how it seems like the quick understanding that you came to related to the totality of what it means to be a Christian, that to follow Jesus and to be saved by Jesus, really, it connects to our whole lives. Everything about us is wrapped up in that. That’s something that I think sometimes we can hear more often perhaps from those who grew up in the church. That can be that challenge where they view Christianity as an add on, as a thing over here, but then I can live my life the way I want to over here. Do you think there was something about coming to faith as an older young adult that helped you to understand what it means to be a Christian?

Sam Allberry
I think coming in cold helped in the sense that a lot of my Christian peers had grown up in the church and had gone through seasons of walking away from the faith or being half-hearted. There was an over familiarity with some of them with what they believed. I was coming in fresh and seeing it with fresh eyes.

Matt Tully
Your parents weren’t Christians?

Sam Allberry
I wasn’t raised going to church. Growing up in England, you get taught certain bits and pieces in high school. So I was familiar with some of the Bible stories at least, but I hadn’t heard the gospel before. I hadn’t really understood the message of Jesus before. So it was all new to me and just exciting. It was like being parachuted into this amazing new world that you had to explore and discover. So I think that helped. And I had lots of conversations with my new Christian friends where I think me coming in helped them see their faith again through my eyes, and I think a few people found their own faith being rekindled at the same time. Growing up in England and living outside London, London never did anything for me. Since moving to America and visiting London with American friends and seeing it through their eyes, I’m amazed at London now. I love London. It was there that whole time, but I needed to see it through fresher eyes to really appreciate it. I think something of that happened as I came to faith.

06:06 - Identity

Matt Tully
As we look around the world today, and many people have observed this because it’s almost a truism at this point, but the issue of identity is such a foundational cultural topic that we see pop up in lots of different contexts. Lots of the conversations, even the controversial conversations, that are happening around us in our society today in some way connect to that issue of identity. Tim Keller was a mentor to you, and I know he was someone that you were very close with. He once said in a sermon that the issue of identity is the moral absolute—the only one in our culture today—and that would be that you got to be yourself; you have to be true to yourself. And we hear this language in movies and music and just broader culture all the time. And as I was thinking about talking with you today, taking a step back and even looking at things that you’ve written on, things that you’ve spoken about in the past, it struck me that a lot of what you’ve engaged with over the years has related in some way to this topic of identity. You’ve written on our physical bodies and why they matter to God, why they have an inherent meaning; you’ve written about singleness and marriage and how we think about ourselves in those ways; and you’ve written about homosexuality and some of those issues as well. All of those connect, again, to some of the biggest identity-related issues today. And then obviously this doctrine of our union with Christ and this new book that you’ve written, I can’t think of a doctrine that maybe has more direct application to how we view ourselves (our identities) than this one. As you think about your own work, whether writing or speaking, do you think there is a throughline there related to identity? Is that intentional? What would you say about that?

Sam Allberry
I hadn’t seen the through line there. I’m not clever enough to have intentionally built out a body of work around that one theme. If it’s a recurrent theme, I don’t think that’s because it’s central to my theology. I think it’s because it’s so central to our culture. And so it’s hard to talk about anything without it affecting identity because, as you say, that’s the core conviction of so many people around us now. You can almost say identity is everything to people, and therefore whatever part of Christian truth you’re speaking about, you’re going to bump into how someone understands themselves. Christianity confronts us. I discovered that at age seventeen. I was thinking I could hear the message of Jesus and keep it at arm’s length. I was just there to understand it so I could better understand my Christian friend. But you can’t keep the message of Jesus at arm’s length because it confronts us about our hearts. The whole biblical doctrine of sin and our fallenness—we have to come to terms with who we are before the Lord. That’s such a fundamental part of the Christian faith. And it collides so spectacularly with the cultural idea of I’m good deep down inside, and I’ve just got to be true to that good deep down me. So I think it’s an unavoidable issue, which is why it feels like every part of Christian truth seems to connect to it in some way, just because it’s that big a deal to our culture. I think fifty years ago I could have written books on the same topics and you wouldn’t have to think about identity because that just wasn’t as big a category in people’s minds then.

Matt Tully
I think previous generations seemed like they were far more comfortable or willing to accept this idea of a given identity, that by virtue of all kinds of things about us—our birthplace and our gender and all these other things—our identities are kind of shaped by outside forces. Not that we don’t have any role to play in that, but today it feels like the reaction has been so strong towards let’s throw off every possible boundary, every possible constraint, and we get to define ourselves completely.

Sam Allberry
Yeah. There were certain things that were given and assumed in earlier generations. And they had other issues where the gospel needed to do more work. But the whole issue of anthropology and who we are and how we know who and what we are is something we cannot assume today. That is the area where we most need to think things through as Christians and try and explain the gospel in the light of that. That’s a big feature of the time in which we live here in the West, certainly.

10:54 - A Wonderful Invasion

Matt Tully
And that’s one thing that I love about this doctrine of our union with Christ because it does speak to our identity as Christians very fundamentally and it has this two-fold dynamic to it. It both is a constraint—it tells us who we must be, who we are, how God has made us in certain ways, or remade us—but it also brings with it so much freedom and blessing and grace. It’s redemptive. And so it’s both a message of constraint and a message of freedom at the same time, which feels like such a unique thing. That’s maybe a segue into talking more about union with Christ. Here’s a two-part question for you. How would you say that your own personal story and your own life today as a single man doing pastoral ministry impacted your approach and your thinking about this doctrine? And then on the flip side, how would you say that this doctrine has shaped your own perspective on your life and your own story?

Sam Allberry
I’m much more conscious of the latter than I am the former, because I can see how this doctrine has wonderfully invaded my life in so many areas. I don’t know if it seems silly to have favorite doctrines, but I feel like it’s the doctrine that has most helped me. I was familiar with the doctrine for years and you pick up these things in systematics and all the rest of it, but there’ve been so many points in my life where this doctrine has suddenly waved at me and said, “This is what I’m for.” I talk in the book about how I had quite a breakthrough when I realized that my relationship to sin has totally changed because I’m in Christ. And so holiness isn’t this weird trying to be someone I can never be thing; it’s actually my truest identity now. It’s who I am. And sin is going against the grain of that, not trying to be godly. That was a huge breakthrough for me. So you learn doctrine and then you learn to discover as you go through the Christian life what a blessing those doctrines are. I can think of certain areas where this has really intersected with my life at just the right moment and given me what I needed. I also talk in the book about trying to explain atonement to someone who’s not a Christian and how can it be right for someone who’s innocent to take the punishment of someone who’s guilty. And again, I remember wrestling with that. I had friends who were non-believers who would raise issues about that, and I think, Yeah, that’s a good question. What’s the answer? And again, union with Christ comes and waves and goes, “Hey, look at me! This is how you understand that.” So it’s brought so much clarity to my Christian life and so much comfort to me as well, because it means Jesus really is the one who’s closer than a brother. When he says, “I’m with you always to the very end of the age,” this is how he is with us to the very end of the age. So I can’t remember what the question was now, but those are some of the ways that it has really shaped me. And therefore it’s something I’ve wanted to teach and help other Christians come to a clearer understanding of it. It serves us so well to understand this.

14:30 - Being a Follower of Jesus vs. Being in Christ

Matt Tully
As you were talking there and as I was reading through the book, I was struck by how this doctrine is so special. Not that it’s more special than other doctrines, but it really does seem to, for so many of us and I know for me, it meets us in a very practical, pastoral way. It’s such an encouragement to me spiritually as I meditate on it, but it also serves as such a foundational theological doctrine that helps to make sense of so many other ones. It helps to make sure they can fit together well. You alluded to that with justification and imputation. It’s such a foundational doctrine for both our lives and our experience as Christians and our theology that it can be surprising that it is—and maybe in certain circles it’s probably changing somewhat—but it feels like it’s a doctrine that is sometimes not very well understood or even misunderstood in Christian circles and churches. You highlight the fact that at least in the New Testament, that this is a key doctrine. We see it as foundational. And you even contrast how often we see language related to “being in Christ” compared to language like “being a Christian.” There’s maybe three instances in the Bible where it refers to believers as Christians, but there’s over 100 where we’re referred to as those who are “in Christ” in some way. Can you unpack that a little bit more, the prevalence of this doctrine in the Bible?

Sam Allberry
This is one of the key eye-opening moments for me was thinking if the New Testament’s main way of talking about being a believer is different to ours, then it probably means there’s something we’re not seeing that we should be seeing, and realizing that that language of being in Christ is just scattered all over the pages of the New Testament. It’s hard to open the New Testament at random and not see a reference to it. And yet it’s something I hadn’t heard preached on or talked about a huge amount. There’s been a wonderful flurry of books and things on it in the last five years or so. I feel like the consciousness of it is growing. I can think of another couple of books coming out in the near future that will also be really good on this. But yes, if our concept of the Christian life is different to the New Testament’s, then we’re lacking something. And the New Testament’s principle paradigm is being united to Jesus, being in him. We’re still followers, we’re still disciples and servants and friends and worshippers and all those other things, but that seems to be the one the New Testament has most locked in on. And we’re going to be diminished in our understanding if we don’t come to terms with that. So I hope it will raise awareness of that. That’s part of the reason for writing the book is just to help us see something that is right in front of us there in the New Testament on pretty much every page. And again, as we see it, we then see so many other things in the light of it.

Matt Tully
I think Ephesians 1 is a great example of a chapter of Scripture where this doctrine is so foundational, so present. Is it just because it’s such a simple little phrase and this simple little preposition and then “Christ” that makes it sometimes fly under the radar? We almost just read over it and don’t even stop and think about what’s being said?

Sam Allberry
Yeah, I think so. In one sense, it’s familiar language because it’s there all over the place. But we don’t stop to think, What does that actually mean to be in Christ? Why is that the recurring motif of these New Testament writers? So I think it is one of those things where it just sort of sounds like a religious way of saying “Christian.”

Matt Tully
I mean, we sign our letters sometimes saying “in Christ.”

Sam Allberry
Yeah. It’s conventional language, and again, it’s one of those things where our familiarity with it stops us noticing what it actually means. So you can go through the Christian life using that language and not really understanding what it means to be in Christ and not knowing that there’s something you’re missing. That was my Christian life for many years. I would sign emails with “Yours in Christ,” or whatever it might be, without really thinking what that means. I think I used it to mean yours affiliated to Jesus or something. I wasn’t stopping and thinking, What does it mean to be someone else’s in Christ? So it was just sort of one of those weird, quirky New Testament ways of speaking that we didn’t really stop to think about.

19:10 - Defining Union with Christ

Matt Tully
So then help us start to understand what this actually means. We’ve been talking a lot about how common it is, how important it is, but we haven’t actually defined it yet. So how would you concisely explain what it means for Christians to be in Christ?

Sam Allberry
What it means is that when we put our trust in Jesus Christ, we become united to him. That’s what the New Testament is showing us. We become so profoundly one with him spiritually that we can be said to be in Christ and he can be said to be in us. Both those ways around it are used in the New Testament. (More commonly, it’s referred to as being in him than he is in us). It means that there’s a profound union there, one that is akin to marriage, and it’s likened to marriage at various points in the New Testament. I think I had always thought that being a Christian is being a follower of Jesus, and it is, but I think conceptually that meant that Jesus is a dot on the horizon that I’m always struggling to keep up with and never quite making it. Now, there’s a sense in which that is true. Obviously, I’m trying to follow the example of Jesus and never in this life will I be succeeding in that fully. But I was missing the spiritual closeness of Jesus that is really made clear by understanding myself to be in him. That is how tight we are with him. So it isn’t just an affiliation. It isn’t just a respect of him. It isn’t just that I follow his moral precepts. As we come to faith in him, we’re plunged into this uniquely deep, tight relationship with him, which means we’re in him from now on. Everything about our lives is bound up with him and everything about his life is bound up with us. We’re fully defined by him. And all of that is just glorious. We have everything there is to have of Jesus in our lives. We have him so fully that we are one with him.

Matt Tully
One thing that I think that can sometimes be confusing about this doctrine is there does seem to be this spatial dynamic to it. It’s a locational kind of thing. We are inside Jesus—in Christ. And that can be a little confusing. What does that mean? Are we literally in Christ in some way or is it just a spiritual thing? How would you explain that to somebody who’s kind of struggling with the spatial locational dynamic to this?

Sam Allberry
It’s such an unfamiliar concept. But what we’re looking at is the fact that we have both a physical location and a spiritual location. Physically, right now I’m in Nashville, Tennessee. Spiritually, I’m in Jesus. Both those things are true concurrently. I don’t have to be in a particular geographical spot on planet earth to be closer to Jesus or further away from him. I can be in Jesus wherever I am on planet earth. And we see that in the New Testament letters where the letters are addressed to the church in Corinth that is in Christ Jesus. Both the physical and spiritual addresses are being used there. So I liken it in the book to how strange to us the language of being born again is, because we can have been physically born of a woman and spiritually reborn—born of the flesh and born from above, both at the same time. So it is an unusual concept, but it’s so unavoidable in the New Testament. We can’t just push it to one side. It’s everywhere. We won’t understand our Christian lives without it. But it’s so comforting because, again, it means it doesn’t matter where I am on this planet; I am in Christ. I will not have to spend a waking moment away from his presence. I can have intimacy with him anywhere. So that is just a deep comfort. It’s reassuring. It’s stabilizing to know that.

23:22 - Scriptural Examples of Union with Christ

Matt Tully
So you talk about how this doctrine is all over the New Testament, and perhaps the apostle Paul is probably the preeminent theologian of our union with Christ in the New Testament. It’s kind of woven throughout virtually all of his letters. But you actually highlight a few other examples in the Gospels and in other letters where we do see this doctrine coming out. I wonder if you could just point us to a few of those other examples.

Sam Allberry
The language is there in John’s writing, both in his Gospel and his epistles as well. I was just looking at a book that came out last year that is a study of union in Christ in John. Jesus famously talks about himself being the true vine and us being the branches. That’s one of those biblical analogies for being in Christ. So it’s there in other forms in other parts of the New Testament too. And each of those different ways of describing it help us see it with a different angle and see how multifaceted and rich it is.

Matt Tully
Do we see this doctrine in the Old Testament in any way? Are there hints of this idea of being directly connected to God in a significant way?

Sam Allberry
I think in some ways, yes. It’s not as explicit. I think the yearnings of the psalmist in so many of the psalms, just longing to be near to God, show us why, ultimately, we would be unsatisfied with anything less than union with Christ. So wanting to be enfolded in the Lord’s goodness and kindness and protection, and knowing that we can be through Jesus. There’s a picture of it, and my memory is terrible with names, but when Jacob tricks Esau in Genesis and gets his inheritance and he puts on Esau’s clothing and goes before their father, who is old and unable to sort of see clearly who’s in front of him, but he sort of smells Esau and he reaches out and he feels what feels like Esau and he grants Esau’s blessing to crafty Jacob. That is a picture of someone doing through trickery what Jesus does through generosity, because Jesus gives us his clothing to come before the Father so that as we come before the Father, we’re clothed in Christ, we’re bearing the aroma of Christ, and we can receive the blessing that Jesus the firstborn himself deserves. And Jesus does that for us. We don’t trick him out of it. He voluntarily gives us that. So it’s interesting that some of the concepts are kind of anticipated in the Old Testament. And certainly, there’s so much in the Old Testament about the kind of intimacy God’s people are designed to have with him that we only really understand in its fullness when we come to this doctrine.

Matt Tully
And that makes me even go back to Genesis 3. I think it’s verse 21 where we see God, after Adam and Eve sin and fall, God creates these garments out of skins and clothes them. And many Bible scholars and theologians will point to that as this little hint, this little shadow of the idea of God clothing us—clothing our nakedness and our shame and our sin, providing, even through sacrifice, the means of that clothing. Ultimately, that idea develops into this idea of being clothed with Christ himself, which is just such a beautiful trajectory that we see starting back in the garden.

Sam Allberry
Yes, that idea of needing to be covered. David talks about this in Psalm 32. It was when he confessed his sins that God covered them, and it’s the New Testament that shows us exactly how God does cover our sins. He covers us in Christ. So again, it means we are so identified with him, so enfolded in him that we can come before the Father with that, and wonderfully, we receive the blessings of Jesus.

27:16 - Practical Implications

Matt Tully
Such a beautiful doctrine. Well, maybe a final series of questions. So often with theology, we can fall into the trap of talking about these doctrines in the abstract and even enjoying them and relishing them in that way. But we sometimes can struggle to let them trickle down from our heads to our hearts and out into our hands and really think about the practical implications or just the day to day implications of these things. And so I wonder if you could help us reflect a little bit on how this doctrine of our union with Christ—how even a greater understanding of it—could affect our lives as Christians. You highlight a few different ways in which this has impacted you. One of them that I thought was really interesting was just our confidence in Christ as Christians. How would you describe the way that this has given you more assurance as a Christian?

Sam Allberry
I would say it’s done so on a number of different fronts. One is simply that the whole point of the book is to try and show how this sheds light and brings clarity to so much of the Christian life. It all makes more sense when we see it through this lens. That in itself has given me assurance because things are clearer now and fit together more coherently because I’ve understood this doctrine. But it also means that if I’m following Jesus, it’s very easy for me to conceive of not following him. I could slow down too much and he just disappears off the horizon and I’ll never see him again. If I’m united to Jesus, I can’t be un-united from him. Something has happened there that I can’t undo. “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it”—and I do every day. I feel the ways in which my heart will draw me away from Jesus. But I’m united with him, and he would have to come back down from heaven and climb back into the grave for that not to be true. That gives me assurance because it means my sense of Christian confidence isn’t based in myself; it’s based on my union with him. And my union with him is based on what he’s done, not based on what I’ve done.

Matt Tully
Yeah, that’s so good. Another example that even kind of then arises out of that foundational assurance that we can have as Christians is our pursuit of holiness, our pursuit of sanctification. How has that been impacted by this doctrine for you?

Sam Allberry
As I said earlier, it makes me realize sin isn’t the natural way for me to live now; holiness is. One of the big lies of the devil is, “Stop trying to be this Christian thing that you’re clearly not.” Whereas my union with Christ shows me, no, that is who I am. That is me at my most me now that I am who I am in Jesus. So that is game changing. The fact that, from a practical point of view, 1 Corinthians 6 says that when the believer goes and sleeps with a prostitute, the very body with which he’s sleeping with a prostitute is a body that belongs to Jesus now and is inseparable from him. And so we’re taking Christ with us into our sin. That’s a negative motivation to avoid sin is when I’m sinning with my body then I’m sinning with a body that Jesus is united to. I can’t leave him outside the room. And then the positive motivation is that I know I will be like him when I see him. First John 3 tells me that we will be like him and we shall see him as he is. And that is the motivation to then be pure now. I want to reduce the culture shock when I get to heaven. And the more we see of Jesus, the more we want to be like him, and my union with him shows me where this is going ultimately in the future. And therefore, why would I live in a way that contradicts that now?

Matt Tully
So the final implication I wanted to hit on with you is just one that feels ever relevant and perhaps more relevant today in the culture in which we live and the way that the church is doing today—the evangelical church broadly. That’s the issue of Christian unity—our relationships with other believers who are also united to Christ, just like us. How do you see this doctrine impacting how we think about those relationships?

Sam Allberry
Oh, it helps us enormously. It underlines the seriousness of our Christian unity. Because again, I’m not just affiliated to Jesus; I’m united to him. Therefore other people who are united to Jesus, I am united to them. That’s a reality and I have to honor that reality and live in a way that’s consistent with it. So I can’t keep other believers at arm’s length. I can’t demean them. I can’t diminish them. I can’t be a lone ranger Christian if I’m united to Jesus. So it really does raise the stakes on Christian unity because Jesus longs for us to be one, just as we are one with him and he is one with the Father. Our visible unity is meant to be a reflection of, an expression of, a result of the union we have with Christ. So it makes the Christian community we have extremely significant. We’re not just another club. There should be something about what is binding us together that is not explainable other than there’s a heavenly spiritual presence that is actually knitting us together.

Matt Tully
Sam, thank you so much for helping us to take a step closer to understanding this really amazing, foundational doctrine that has the potential to really connect to virtually every facet of our lives as Christians and our doctrine. We appreciate it.

Sam Allberry
It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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