(b) From the union between husband and wife.
Rom. 7:4—“ye also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ; that ye should be joined to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God”—here union with Christ [pg 796]is illustrated by the indissoluble bond that connects husband and wife, and makes them legally and organically one; 2 Cor. 11:2—“I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy: for I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ”; Eph. 5:31, 32—“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church”—Meyer refers verse 31 wholly to Christ, and says that Christ leaves father and mother (the right hand of God) and is joined to the church as his wife, the two constituting thenceforth one moral person. He makes the union future, however,—“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother”—the consummation is at Christ's second coming. But the Fathers, as Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Jerome, referred it more properly to the incarnation.
Rev. 19:7—“the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready”; 22:17—“And the Spirit and the bride say, Come”; cf. Is. 54:5—“For thy Maker is thine husband”; Jer. 3:20—“Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith Jehovah”; Hos. 2:2-5—“for their mother hath played the harlot”—departure from God is adultery; the Song of Solomon, as Jewish interpreters have always maintained, is an allegorical poem describing, under the figure of marriage, the union between Jehovah and his people: Paul only adopts the Old Testament figure, and applies it more precisely to the union of God with the church in Jesus Christ.
(c) From the union between the vine and its branches.
John 15:1-10—“I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from me ye can do nothing”—as God's natural life is in the vine, that it may give life to its natural branches, so God's spiritual life is in the vine, Christ, that he may give life to his spiritual branches. The roots of this new vine are planted in heaven, not on earth; and into it the half-withered branches of the old humanity are to be grafted, that they may have life divine. Yet our Lord does not say “I am the root.”The branch is not something outside, which has to get nourishment out of the root,—it is rather a part of the vine. Rom. 6:5—“if we have become united with him [σύμφυτοι—‘grown together’—used of the man and horse in the Centaur, Xen., Cyrop., 4:3:18], in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection”; 11:24—“thou wast cut out of that which is by nature a wild olive tree, and wast grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree”; Col. 2:6, 7—“As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and builded up in him”—not only grounded in Christ as our foundation, but thrusting down roots into him as the deep, rich, all-sustaining soil. This union with Christ is consistent with individuality: for the graft brings forth fruit after its kind, though modified by the tree into which it is grafted.
Bishop H. W. Warren, in S. S. Times, Oct. 17, 1891—“The lessons of the vine are intimacy, likeness of nature, continuous impartation of life, fruit. Between friends there is intimacy by means of media, such as food, presents, care, words, soul looking from the eyes. The mother gives her liquid flesh to the babe, but such intimacy soon ceases. The mother is not rich enough in life continuously to feed the ever-enlarging nature of the growing man. Not so with the vine. It continuously feeds. Its rivers crowd all the banks. They burst out in leaf, blossom, clinging tendrils, and fruit, everywhere. In nature a thorn grafted on a pear tree bears only thorn. There is not pear-life enough to compel change of its nature. But a wild olive, typical of depraved nature, grafted on a good olive tree finds, contrary to nature, that there is force enough in the growing stock to change the nature of the wild scion.”
(d) From the union between the members and the head of the body.
1 Cor. 6:15, 19—“Know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ?... know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God?” 12:12—“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ”—here Christ is identified with the church of which he is the head; Eph. 1:22, 23—“he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all”—as the members of the human body are united to the head, the source of their activity and the power that controls their movements, so all believers are members of an invisible body whose head is Christ. Shall we tie a string round the finger to keep for it its own blood? No, for all the blood of the body is needed to nourish one finger. So Christ is “head over all things to [for the benefit of] the church” (Tyler, Theol. Greek Poets, preface, ii). “The church is the fulness (πλήρωμα) of Christ; as it was not good for the first man, Adam, to be alone, no more was it good for the second man, Christ” (C. H. M.). Eph. 4:15, 16—“grow up in all things into him, who is the head, even Christ; from whom all the body ... maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love”; 5:29, 30—“for no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also the church; because we are members of his body.”
(e) From the union of the race with the source of its life in Adam.
Rom. 5:12, 21—“as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin.... that, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”; 1 Cor. 15:22, 45, 49—“as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.... The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.... as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly”—as the whole race is one with the first man Adam, in whom it fell and from whom it has derived a corrupted and guilty nature, so the whole race of believers constitutes a new and restored humanity, whose justified and purified nature is derived from Christ, the second Adam. Cf. Gen. 2:23—“This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man”—here C. H. M. remarks that, as man is first created and then woman is viewed in and formed out of him, so it is with Christ and the church. “We are members of Christ's body, because in Christ we have the principle of our origin; from him our life arose, just as the life of Eve was derived from Adam.... The church is Christ's helpmeet, formed out of Christ in his deep sleep of death, as Eve out of Adam.... The church will be nearest to Christ, as Eve was to Adam.” Because Christ is the source of all spiritual life for his people, he is called, in Is. 9:6, “Everlasting Father,” and it is said, in Is. 53:10, that “he shall see his seed” (see page 680).