Union with Christ and the New We

"Union with Christ" is essentially "Christ in you" and "you in Christ." But it involves not only a union with Christ but a union with one another, with the body of Christ, fleshed out in the core of a Christian assembly. Louis Berkoff gives a good definition of union with Christ: it is the "intimate, vital, and spiritual connection between Christ and believers." M. Pete Johnson says "to be saved is to be united to the Savior." God saves us not just as individuals in union with himself but also to join us to his people. The Christian life cannot be lived in isolation from other believers. Rom. 12:5 says "we are members one of another." It is only in the local church that we can rub shoulders with fellow Christians and share our mutual life together. In Christ we are new men and women, but we are joined to other new men and women in the local assembly. We have all been washed of all our various sins by Jesus' blood. We have all been awakened from spiritual death to spiritual life by the Holy Spirit and brought into the same quality of fellowship with God and his people that the triune God has experienced in himself in all eternity. As Christian believers we are in union with Christ and the "new we" - the people of God, the body of Christ.