I think it may be worth while to comment for a moment on the phrase "dying in Christ," for it is charged that Paul inculcated a life of repression and renunciation, whereas Jesus said that he came "that ye might have life and have it more abundantly." This life of repression was inherent in the old Stoic philosophy, and the historical church has not been free of the idea. In one of his periods of depression Keats said the world had taken on a "Quakerish aspect."
But if we are open to the charge, Paul was not. He was really the antithesis of a Stoic. There was nothing that was not lawful to him. Joy and Grace are his key words. His dying in Christ is simply the resurrection to the new life but formulated in a statement which is relative to the old life. He is "swallowed up of life." The new life is the death of the old life, but there is no sense of renunciation. We do not "give up" the old things with perhaps a tinge of regret but we discard them with relief. It is a matter of revaluation. Dean Inge speaks of our "nostalgia for the infinite." That is it. When we are homesick and are permitted to go home, we don't feel that we are making a "sacrifice" in "giving up" our foreign surroundings. In the same way if we feel that "dying with Christ" is frustration or renunciation we really haven't died at all but we are very much alive to the old life. There is no virtue in that. Iamblichus says:
"When the soul is elevated to natures better than itself, then it is entirely separated from subordinate natures, exchanges this for another life, and, deserting the order of things with which it was connected, links and mingles itself with the other."
Plotinus says:
"And this is the life of the gods and of godlike and happy men, a deliverance from the other things here, a life untroubled by the pleasures here, a flight of the alone to the Alone."
This complete change of status Paul could only express by death and resurrection. If we can see only the horror of death, we have not effected the change as yet.
One further thought. His relationship with Christ gave Paul contact with a tremendous power. He uses again and again the word "energy," which we think is so characteristic of our own time. God, with Paul, first is a personality, but personality culminating in power. There are two reasons why it was inevitable that Paul's God ultimately should stand for force, power, energy.
In the first place if we read over the seventh chapter of Romans we find that the one thing which characterized Paul's condition was impotence, lack of power. He lacked the power to do what he would. He lacked the power to exercise his will. He was, as he said, a slave to sin. God, to Paul was the liberator. To supply the lacking power was the very thing God did for Paul.
In the second place, Paul in his new state became a functioning unit in the universal organism, God's scheme, the body of Christ. As such he could not but be conscious of the energy of the organism passing through him and exercised through him. So in any hint that Paul gives of the nature of the new creation we must expect to find the idea of force dominant. Listen to these passages:
Col. 1.29:1
"I exert-my-strength-like-an-athelete (it is just one word in Greek,—'agonize'), according to his energy energising in me with power (the Greek word is 'dunamis,' our dynamite, dynamic)."
Notice how Paul piles up the words for power. It is typical of his style, and gives us a sense of his feeling. He is not satisfied to say that we are conquerors. We are more than conquerors.
Phil. 3:21:
"According to the energy of his power (dunamis again, this time in a verb form, 'having power') to subdue all things to himself."
We have come across this verse before. I hope we have not forgotten it. The power here referred to is none other than Christ the catalyst, "who shall metamorphose our bodies of the flesh so that they are fashioned the same as his body of glory."
Eph. 1:19:
"What the transcendent greatness of God's power (dunamis again) into us who have faith according to the energy of his mighty power (Here Paul calls in the aid of two more Greek words. We haven't enough synonyms to keep up with him) continually energised in Christ."
So we may gather that this is what union with Christ meant to Paul: a relationship which was in the first place personal and concrete, not abstract and what we should call mystical; a relationship so close that it amounts to blood kinship, nay more, the very blood of the Christ body flows in his veins; so it is a relationship which is more than human, which transcends all human intercourse however intimate; which results in an integration with the purpose of God; and which links up with the ineffable energy of the cosmos.