Union with Christ

How can a person who lived nearly two thousand years ago radically change a human life here now? How can Jesus of Nazareth radically affect us, as persons, to the depths of our being? How can he reach out over the great span of time that divides us from him and change us so profoundly that we become "new creatures" in him?

The answer, according to the Apostle Paul, lies in the fact that Jesus Christ enters into union with us. Lewis B. Smedes believes that union with Christ is at once the center and circumference of authentic human existence. Union with Christ is Smedes' probing and sustained exegetical study of what Paul means when he speaks of our being in Christ and Christ being in us. Hailed as "a thoughtful, discerning, and thoroughly scriptural study" when it was first published in 1970 under the title All Things Made New, the book has been greatly streamlined in this edition. By judiciously cutting away what now strikes him as "scholarly clutter," Smedes has produced a carefully condensed version of his earlier work while retaining its basic substance.