It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak with Clive Bowsher, author and Provost of Union School of Theology. We discuss his latest book ‘One: Being United to Jesus Changes Everything‘ and the reasons why union with Christ is so important today. I hope our conversation together will be helpful, encouraging, and practical to you!
How did you come to know and love Jesus?
I grew up in a non-Christian family and we didn’t go to church. I don’t think I had even read the Bible before I was 19-years-old. I was on a gap year before going to university at Birmingham School of Music doing Piano performance and accompaniment; it was quite a nice way to spend a gap year! I had a lot of Christian friends in the Lord’s providence and they challenged me and said, “If you think all of this is nonsense, you should at least read it, right?” I couldn’t really argue with that.
I remember this electric blue NIV Bible that I bought and the first day I opened it, I was commuting into Birmingham on the train. There was a missionary lady sitting next to me and she asked, “Do you read the Bible very much?” I said, “Well actually this is pretty much the first time I’ve opened it.” I came to Christ that year and was baptised on Easter Sunday – that was about three decades ago.
How did your book ‘One: Being United To Jesus Changes Everything’ come to be?
It is a project that I have worked on over quite a number of years. It started out by reading a book by Richard Gaffin called ‘Resurrection and Redemption’ where he looks at union with Christ in Paul. I had some time to do some research and I was looking for a topic, something that I thought was important for the church. I started to wonder how union with Christ works in John. How does this look in John’s writings?
I did New Testament style work, exposition and exegesis, and really dug into what the Bible was saying in the gospel of John and in 1 John as well. It was a slow but deep process. I was amazed that not many people had written on me-in-you-and-you-in-me language and relationship. There was a bit in German and a bit in French, and not very much in English. I was really surprised.
I was working on this and thought this is really important. This is an aspect of the gospel that we don’t hear much about. This is so deeply relational.
Salvation is deeply relational. We are saved from judgement but into something so rich and so relational.
I got really passionate about the project and worked a lot on it. I wrote a book aimed more at pastors and people training to be pastors called ‘Life in the Son’. I then thought this is just so important for everyone. It made a massive difference to my own devotional life and prayer life. As I spent time with these parts of Scripture, I started seeing my prayer life and sung worship change. It was hugely transformational and refreshing. It was a very exciting time spiritually. I thought I would really like to write something that is accessible so that anybody, non-Christian or Christian, could pick it up, read it and understand what Jesus is saying about life with Him.
What do you hope readers will glean from it?
I hope people will understand more of what Jesus means in John 17:3 where He says “This is eternal life that you know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent” and they would really see just how relational that salvation is. Not just what we have been saved from, but what we have been saved for and into, and the kind of fellowship and communion God wants with us.
You mention in your book about the ‘me-in-you and you-in-me’ relationship between God and us. Can you explain what that means and what that looks like for followers of Jesus in their daily life?
It is very two-way. The way Jesus talks about it in John 14:20, He says “On that day..” which is our day today, following His resurrection, “…you will know that I am in the Father” so you will know who I [Jesus] am. You will also know that “I am in you and you are in me”. That is really very two-way in the language itself.
One of the most important things digging into all of this in John’s gospel made me realise is what worship is all about. Lots of people, if you said “What is Christianity all about?” somewhere or other in their answer would say it has to do with worship. I hadn’t grasped early on just how much worship is about a very beautiful two-way relationship of love with the God who made everything. We can complicate worship, I think. I am talking about all kinds of worship: sung worship, prayer, how we live day by day, and having that loving relationship and fellowship with Christ at the centre of it.
You share, throughout the book, your own experience. One thing that stuck out was what you described as a spiritual crisis of spending a fortnight trying to imitate Jesus in your own strength. Can you share a little about that and what led you to that point?
That was in my early 20s, so fairly early on in my Christian life. My understanding of God was off. And so, I think my understanding of the gospel was off as well. I think when I heard the gospel, I often heard it as quite transactional and forensic. The problem is your sin and God’s judgement of it. The solution is turning to Christ and belief and that will result in a different way of living. There is, of course, truth in all of that, but I think that more fundamentally, God in the gospel in Christ is giving Himself to you.
He is going to the cross – why? Because of His love. He is pursuing you. He is dealing with your sin. He is dealing with the barrier there has been between the two of you. He is reconciling you. Why? Because He delights in fellowship with you. He delights in you turning to Him and putting your hope, confidence and trust in Him personally, and sharing life with Him. So what is obedience? Obedience is sharing in His ways as He works in you by His Spirit and through you. I had never heard the gospel that way.
I was convinced about who Jesus was. I was convinced that He was raised from the dead, but I had a wobbly understanding and not a rich enough understanding of who God is, what His heart is like, and how Christ gives Himself to us in a very personal way. I didn’t have a very participatory view of the Christian life; that truth that God actually lives in me by His Spirit, that He is working in and through me. Not me sealed off and God sealed off and He expects this of me, and my sin has been dealt with but now I’m trying to live up to all these demands that I didn’t even know about before. Now, it’s Christ in me and me in Him.
What would you say to someone who is struggling in their faith or perhaps striving in their faith in their own strength?
If I didn’t know the person at all, I think I would want to explore with them who they think Jesus is. Sometimes people will say ‘I’ve been a Christian for quite a long time and I believe in God, and this stuff has happened’. I would want to sit with them for a bit and find out who God is from their point of view and who Jesus is.
I think I would want to hear about their journey of faith and what they mean by ‘belief’. I think in the West we can often think of belief as quite a cognitive thing. Do you ascent intellectually to these truths? There is no genuine faith without that Christological confession, but it is so much more. It is a belief in – a trusting of your life to someone. I would want to explore how much of that personal trusting in Jesus is happening.
And I would want to explore with them how loved they believe they are by God. That can be a really revealing question if someone is happy to answer. If they don’t really feel loved by God, why? What is it you think God most wants from you, with you, for you? I would try to help someone journey from maybe quite a transactional view to one that is about relationship with Christ and grounded in His love for them.
On a practical level, how do we abide in Christ’s love?
I think people think that abiding is something you do. I would want to say abiding, more fundamentally, is our side of a relationship that we are already in, that we are embraced in and that we cannot lose. You can almost think, if you are going to tell me to abide, I could almost worry a little bit about how effectively I am going to do that. In reality, the Father is giving you to Christ and He has brought you in. He has united you with Himself by the Spirit and you are held in that embrace.
Abiding is your side of that two-way relationship. It’s your enjoyment, sharing and participation in that relationship. Practically, it’s remembering it. It’s praying out of that relationship and that embrace. It’s enjoying it. Relaxing in it to some extent. Worshipping in response to that love.
If someone is on the margins of society or the fringes of faith, what would be a helpful way in sharing the love of Christ to them?
I think if someone has had very little contact with Christianity and with the church, or maybe has even had unhelpful contact in the past, there is something really grabbing and beautiful about the truth that God sees you and wants to know you personally. He knows you to the depths of your being and loves you through and through. I think people are really looking for that kind of love and connection. We can encourage them to turn their face to Jesus because that’s where they are going to find the love and security that they really long for.
If people think of God as being distant and unapproachable, maybe even harsh, then to hear that God actually wants to be close is amazing news. How do you describe that closeness? It’s oneness – it’s that close. It’s God in me and me in Him. You can’t get much closer than that.
In these challenging times in which we live, why would you say this topic of union with Christ is so important for the church today?
Christ brings us into union with Himself both individually and corporately. There is no oneness with Christ apart from our oneness with each other as well (we see that in John 17).
I think we live in a world that is crying out for connection both with God and with one another; crying out for a genuine relationship that we can trust that is not fragile and prone to disappear, disintegrate or cancel us. You need a solid source for that. There is a deep sense in which union with Christ – our fellowship with Christ by the Spirit – is that source. We are united to Him and by Him.
Finally, who are some individuals in the past and/or present that have influenced your work on union in Christ?
Going all the way back to the church fathers, some of Cyril of Alexandria and other writings by the church fathers have been really encouraging. The early church fathers taught about these things quite a lot, which was really interesting to me as a New Testament studies person. I have a patristics colleague called Donald Fairbairn who has encouraged me in this area, so I am really grateful for his friendship.
Richard Gaffin – that made a big difference reading his work on Paul.
I am also hugely grateful for the ministry at St Aldates in Oxford and books by Simon Ponsonby and Charlie Cleverly. There were some differences of emphasis here and there, but it really moved me and encouraged me to go deeper into intimacy with God.
And the Pauline scholar, Con Campbell. I’m really thankful for the interest he took in the project at an early stage.
Clive Bowsher serves as Provost and Director of Mission at Union in Wales, U.K., where he teaches in New Testament and Biblical Theology, and on the eldership of Grace Community Church in Porthcawl.
Ruth Clemence – Writer and Blogger 