We Get Him
Participation in the Life of Christ
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
— Galatians 2:20
From Sympathy to Participation: The Gospel’s Two Movements
The incarnation proclaims that God gets us.
The gospel proclaims that, by grace, we get Him.
The Word did not merely draw near to understand humanity; He assumed our humanity to draw us into His divine life. The incarnation is not simply divine empathy—it is divine union begun. In Christ, God does not stand beside us in solidarity; He stands within us by His Spirit.
This is the essential logic of redemption: identification leads to participation. “He gets us” describes the downward movement of grace; “We get Him” describes the upward movement of salvation. The first is condescension; the second, incorporation. Both belong together, for the God who stoops to us in the flesh also raises us with Him in glory (Phil. 2:5–11).
The Incarnational Ground of Participation (John 1:14–18)
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”
The incarnation is not divine curiosity about human pain; it is God’s self-commitment to our healing. The Word became what we are—not to affirm humanity as it is, but to redeem it as it must be.
Athanasius wrote, “He became what we are that He might make us what He is.” In the enfleshment of the Son, humanity is assumed into personal union with the divine Word. The “getting” of humanity is the beginning of its transformation. Christ does not merely observe our weakness; He enfolds it into His obedient life.
In the incarnation, God’s “getting us” is the assumption of our history into His. It is participatory empathy—the kind that heals by uniting. Grace is not detached compassion but restorative presence. As Irenaeus taught, what is not assumed cannot be healed; what is united to the Word is renewed.
Thus, the “He gets us” moment of Bethlehem is already the seed of “We get Him” at Pentecost.
Participatory Redemption: The Cross as Incorporation (Galatians 2:20)
At Calvary, Christ did not die instead of us as a distant substitute but with us and for us as our representative Head. Paul’s claim—“I have been crucified with Christ”—reveals the participatory structure of salvation.
Union with Christ means that His story becomes ours.
In His death, our old humanity is judged and buried; in His resurrection, a new humanity is born.
Grant Macaskill calls this “realistic participation”: not mere metaphor but ontological sharing. The believer’s identity is no longer grounded in personal autonomy but in Christ’s history. Our lives are, in Calvin’s words, “mystically united to Him in such a way that whatever is His becomes ours.”
To “get Him,” then, is to live no longer from self-originating power but from the indwelling life of the Son. The gospel does not improve the old self; it replaces it. We live as those whose existence has been transferred—“hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).
The Shape of Participation: The Kenotic Pattern (Philippians 2:5–11)
Paul’s hymn in Philippians 2 portrays both the descent and ascent of the Son—the divine humility that leads to exaltation. Yet this hymn is not mere Christological description; it is ethical and existential summons:
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.”
The kenosis (self-emptying) is not an unrepeatable divine act but the pattern of all redeemed existence. Christ’s humility before the Father defines the logic of our sanctification.
To “get Him” is to be drawn into that movement of surrender and glory.
Participation means cruciform existence: losing life to find it, yielding to receive, dying to self to live in God.
Karl Barth captured it well: “To be exalted with Him is to be humbled in Him.”
The gospel does not call us to ascend through moral effort; it invites us to descend with Christ into obedient love. The one who went to the lowest place is now seated at the highest—and those united to Him share both His cross and His crown.
The Spirit’s Role: Mediating the Life of the Son (Romans 8:9–17)
Union with Christ is Spirit-mediated. The incarnation grounds it; Pentecost enacts it.
The Holy Spirit is the “bond of union,” the living connection between the risen Christ and His people. Through the Spirit, Christ’s filial life becomes operative within us. Our obedience is His obedience extended; our prayer is His cry, “Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15).
Michael Horton notes, “The Spirit is not a substitute for Christ’s absence but the continuation of His presence.” The Spirit draws believers into the Son’s communion with the Father—making our lives an echo of divine fellowship.
Thus, to “get Him” is to participate in His relational life. Christian spirituality is not a climb toward God but a sharing in the Son’s communion through the Spirit’s indwelling. Every act of holiness, every sigh of prayer, every endurance in suffering is the life of Christ pulsing in His body.
Christ’s Life in His Body (1 Corinthians 12:12–27)
Participation is corporate. The same Spirit who unites believers to Christ unites them to one another.
Augustine famously said, “We have become Christ. For if He is the head and we the members, He and we together are the whole man.”
This is the mystery of the totus Christus—the whole Christ, Head and body.
The church, therefore, is not a religious association but an incarnational extension of Christ’s presence. To “get Him” collectively is to embody His compassion and holiness in community. Our unity is not sociological but theological—the shared life of the Triune God manifest in redeemed humanity.
Hence, the church’s mission flows from its union. Evangelism is not mere recruitment but participation in Christ’s continuing mission to reconcile the world. As the Father sent the Son, so the Son sends us—not as substitutes but as participants in His ongoing presence among the nations.
Hiddenness and Revelation (Colossians 3:1–4)
Union with Christ is an eschatological reality: already accomplished, not yet revealed.
“Your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.”
The believer’s true life is presently veiled—real but unrevealed. The world sees weakness; faith sees participation in glory. The resurrection life is already implanted but awaits disclosure.
John Calvin observed that “we are not yet what we shall be, but we are truly in Christ.” Sanctification, then, is the gradual unveiling of a glory that is already secured.
To “get Him” is to live in this tension—between the already of grace and the not yet of glory. We live as pilgrims whose home is certain but unseen. The Spirit is the arrabōn (pledge) of our inheritance, the down payment of our final participation when faith becomes sight.
Pastoral and Apologetic Implications
(a) Against Moralism: Life from Above
The Christian life is not self-generated virtue but Christ’s life reproduced by the Spirit.
We do not live for Christ; we live from Christ. Every attempt to achieve holiness apart from union collapses into moral exhaustion.
(b) Against Therapeutic Reductionism: Grace That Transforms
Modern religion often reduces Christ’s compassion to mere empathy. But divine sympathy without transformation is sentimentality. The Christ who gets us also sanctifies us. He identifies in order to redeem.
(c) Against Prosperity Theology: Cross Before Glory
To “get Him” is to get His cross before His crown. Union means participation in His sufferings (Phil. 3:10) before the manifestation of glory. True prosperity is conformity to the crucified Lord.
(d) For Gospel Witness: Incarnational Apologetics
Our apologetic task is to embody truth as participation, not abstraction.
We do not merely argue that Christ gets the world; we demonstrate that we get Him by living cruciform, compassionate, Spirit-filled lives. The church’s holiness is its greatest argument.
Participation as the Fulfillment of Incarnation
The gospel’s movement is from divine condescension to human participation:
He gets us — the Son assumes our humanity.
He redeems us — the Son bears our sin.
He indwells us — the Spirit unites us to His life.
We get Him — we share His righteousness, His mind, His mission, and His destiny.
Athanasius’s paradox captures the entire mystery: “The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men might become sons of God.”
Union with Christ is not a metaphor for moral imitation but the metaphysical core of salvation. Through the Spirit, believers participate in the Son’s filial relation to the Father. Our holiness, hope, and mission are nothing less than the extension of that divine communion into the world.
Living the Life That Lives in Us
The Christian life is not a moral performance of admiration but a relational participation in divine life.
“He gets us” is the gospel’s descent; “We get Him” is its ascent.
In Christ, God’s empathy becomes our energy; His incarnation becomes our transformation; His resurrection becomes our vocation.
The believer stands in the miracle of exchanged lives:
“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
This is not poetry but ontology. Our lives are caught up in His. His faithfulness sustains our obedience; His victory defines our hope; His presence animates our mission.
And so, every act of love, every battle against sin, every tear of endurance whispers the same wonder:
He got us—so that, by grace, we might get Him.
Key Texts
John 1:14–18 · Galatians 2:20 · Philippians 2:5–11 · Romans 8:9–17 · Colossians 3:1–4
Suggested Reading
Grant Macaskill, Living in Union with Christ
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.i–xi
T. F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ
Michael Horton, Covenant and Salvation
Athanasius, On the Incarnation
Dane Ortlund, Deeper