In this union, Christ becomes your wisdom and thus overcomes your blinding ignorance that keeps you away from him. In Christ Jesus becomes your

righteousness and overcomes your guilt and condemnation. In Christ Jesus

becomes your sanctification and overcomes your corruption and pollution.

In Christ Jesus becomes your redemption and overcomes your miseries and pain and death.

What does it mean to be in union with Christ?

In this episode of Light and Truth,

John Piper opens Roman 6, 1 to 7 to explore this profoundly life-giving doctrine.

The sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on October 8, 2000.

Let's read verse 5.

It says, for, if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death,

certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.

Now before I focus on the word united, which is what I want to spend most of my time on, united with him, I want to tackle this phrase in the likeness of his death.

That's a good literal translation.

If you're looking at another version, as some of you are,

you won't see it exactly like that, but that's a very good

literal translation.

We became united with him in the likeness of his death.

What is that referring to? I think likeness means this. When Christ

died, he died in a unique way. We join him in death that is like his death, but not exactly like his death.

He died as a perfect sin-bearer for all those who sin and trust him. We don't die like that.

When we die, we die in the likeness of his death but not identical with his death.

And when he rises, he will rise in a unique way as the first fruits of the harvest of all those who are in him, but we are like him in the way

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