Christ is Our True Nature

We are already in Christ as much as we are ever going to be, and Christ is already in us as much as he is ever going to be — which is 100%! It is irrevocably so because to undo it would require undoing the Incarnation, in which Christ has united with all humankind. Indeed, it would require the dissolution of creation itself, for all things are created in Christ and hold together in him.

Our salvation in Christ is settled from the beginning. For Christ is the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world, and we are chosen in him from the beginning (Ephesians 1:4).

But there is a sense in which our salvation is progressive as we continue to be transformed, by the life of Christ and the Holy Spirit in us, in our experience of salvation and the redeemed nature we have in Christ.

And there is a sense in which our salvation is future, for we have yet to experience the transformation of our mortal, corruptible bodies into immortal, incorruptible bodies, like that of Christ in his resurrection.

Yet our identity in Christ remains the same throughout. We neither increase nor decrease in him, and he neither increases nor decreases in us. What increases is our awareness and experience of him and our awakening response to him. Our true nature in Christ remains constant, created in the image of God and to be like God, to participate in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).

There is only one human nature, of which we all partake, and it is redeemed in Christ, by his participation in this nature with us. And though we do agree with God about sin, the things that do not belong in us and in our life (this is called confession), we do not agree with any false idea that we are of a sinful nature. For Christ is now our life (Galatians 2:20) and through the Incarnation, he shares with us in the only human nature there is and has healed it, so that Christ is our true nature. So instead of agreeing with the false idea that we have a sinful nature, we agree with the gospel, and with the Incarnation, which is foundational to the gospel.

Humanity As the Likeness of God

From the beginning, the purpose and project of creation was to make Man in God’s image and to be like God (compare Genesis 1:26 with Genesis 1:27). It is important to understand that God’s plan was not just to make us in the image of God but also in the likeness of God. Before that happened, though, humankind fell to sin and mortality.

But in the Incarnation, Christ came and joined himself with humankind, uniting with us even in all our brokenness and mortality. Being life, when he finally met death on the cross, he destroyed it, not only for himself but for all humankind. For even at the cross, Christ was joined with all of us.

That is the glory of the Incarnation; it means that Christ did not die on the cross instead of us but as us. His death is not merely counted as ours (a legal reckoning), but his death truly is our death (an ontological reality), so that his resurrection likewise truly becomes our resurrection. “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22).

Christ restores us to the image of God, as we are conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). Through him, we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). That is, through Christ, we become like God, becoming through grace what Christ is by divine nature.

Some have wondered what might have happened if man had not sinned, and the Fall, however we think of it, had not occurred. But we have not been given to know that; we have only been given what actually happened in the economy of God. Whatever happened and however it happened, it happened. Yet God used it to fulfill his divine purpose in Christ, to bring all things in heaven and in earth to unity under the headship of Christ (Ephesians 1:9-10).

The cross, then, was not a waste of any kind. Nor was it God’s Plan B, a contingency in case Plan A failed. For it is precisely at the cross that we see the full glory of God revealed as other-centered, self-giving, co-suffering love. There also — and for the same reason — we see the full glory of humanity as both the image and likeness of God.