Augustus Hopkins Strong (1836-1921) was arguably the greatest Baptist theologian in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. He presided over Rochester Theological Seminary. His theology textbook was almost as popular among evangelical seminarians before 1950 as Charles Hodge’s was among Presbyterian students. The following comes from Strong’s Systematic Theology.

The Seven Togethers

“The Seven Togethers” sums up the Scripture testimony with regard to the Consequences of the believer’s Union with Christ: 1. Crucified together with Christ – Gal. 2:20. 2. Died together with Christ – Col. 2;20. 3. Buried together with Christ – Rom. 6:4. 4. Quickened together with Christ – Eph. 2:5. 5. Raised together with Christ – Col. 3:1. 6. Suffers together with Christ – Rom. 8:17. 7. Glorified together with Christ – Rom. 8:17. Union with Christ results in common sonship, relation to God, character, influence and destiny.

Imperfect apprehension of the believer’s union with Christ works to the great injury of Christian doctrine. An experience of union with Christ first enables us to understand the death of sin and separation from God which has befallen the race sprung from the first Adam. The life and liberty of the children of God in Christ Jesus shows us by contrast how far astray we had gone. The vital and organic unity of the new race spring from the second Adam reveals the depravity and disintegration which we had inherited form our first father. We see that as there is one source of spiritual life in Christ, so there was one source of corrupt life in Adam; and that as we are justified by reason of our oneness with the justified Christ, so we are condemned by reason of our oneness with the condemned Adam.

(a) Union with Christ involves a change in the dominant affection of the soul. Christ’s entrance into the soul makes it a new creature, in the sense that the ruling disposition, which before was sinful, now becomes holy. This change we call Regeneration. . . .

(b) Union with Christ involves a new exercise of the soul’s powers in repentance and faith; faith, indeed, is the act of the soul by which, under the operation of God, Christ is received. This new exercise of the soul’s powers we call Conversion (Repentance and Faith). It is the obverse or human side of Regeneration. . . .

(c) Union with Christ gives to the believer the legal standing and rights of Christ. As Christ’s union with the race involves atonement, so the believer’s union with Christ involves Justification. The believer is enti­tled to take for his own all that Christ is, and all that Christ has done; and this because he has within him that new life of humanity which suffered in Christ’s death and rose from the grave in Christ’s resurrection, –in other words, because he is virtually one person with the Redeemer. In Christ the believer is prophet, priest, and king. . . .

(d) Union with Christ secures to the believer the continuously transforming, assimilating power of Christ’s life, –– first, for the soul; secondly, for the body, –– consecrating it in the present, and in the future raising it up in the likeness of Christ’s glorified body. This continuous influence, so far as it is exerted in the present life, we call Sanctification, the human side or aspect of which is Perseverance. . . .

(e) Union with Christ brings about a fellowship of Christ with the believer,–– Christ takes part in all the labors, temptations, and sufferings of his people; a fellowship of the believer with Christ,–– so that Christ’s whole experience on earth is in some measure reproduced in Him; a fellowship of the believers with one another,–– furnishing a basis for the spiritual unity of Christ’s people on earth, and for the eternal communion of heaven. The doctrine of Union with Christ is therefore the indispensable preparation for Ecclesiology, and for Eschatology. . . .