Life in the Son, Exploring Participation and Union with Christ in John's Gospel and Letters

Life in the Son, Exploring Participation and Union with Christ in John's Gospel and LettersThe New Testament writers use spatial language and imagery to portray our relationship with God, speaking both about God or Christ in us and us in them. Believers are also described as possessing and participating in divine qualities such as life and glory. Both aspects are prominent in John's Gospel and letters. However, outside the Pauline writings, union with Christ has hardly been addressed in New Testament scholarship. Clive Bowsher seeks to

The New Testament writers use spatial language and imagery to portray our relationship with God, speaking both about God or Christ in us and us in them. Believers are also described as possessing and participating in divine qualities such as life and glory. Both aspects are prominent in John's Gospel and letters. However, outside the Pauline writings, union with Christ has hardly been addressed in New Testament scholarship. Clive Bowsher seeks to redress this balance in his New Studies in Biblical Theology volume Life in the Son. In John's Gospel, the oneness of the Father and Son is described as the Father and Son being "in one another." Clive Bowsher's study shows that union with Christ in John's Gospel and letters is the in-one-another relationship of believers with the Father and Son by the Spirit—the intimate, loving, relational participation of the believer and God, each in the life, affections, ways, and work of the other. Insightful and accessible, Bowsher's study also explores connections with the shape of sonship, covenant and the life of the age to come. This volume fills a significant gap in the literature and promises to be a blessing to pastors, preachers, and scholars alike.

Publisher: IVP
Type: Paperback
ISBN: 9781789744293

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Clive Bowsher is provost of Union School of Theology, where he teaches and researches in New Testament and Biblical Theology. Previously, he served as lead minister of a local church and co-mentored Union's Learning Community in Oxford, UK. He has held positions at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Bristol.

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"Many Protestants are familiar with the one-anotherness of the Christian faith; we are called to a life of selfless love for one another in Christ's body, the church. But few are aware that the one-anotherness between believers is based on something even more fundamental, the fact that the Father and Son are eternally in one another and that we as Christians are in the Father and the Son. Bowsher's illuminating research expertly explores the contours of in-one-anotherness between God and believers in the Johannine writings of the New Testament. His book is eye-opening, faith-enriching, and heart-warming; it will affect every aspect of your relationship with God and with his people. I recommend it enthusiastically." Donald Fairbairn, Robert E. Cooley Professor of Early Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary