Life in the Son (Bowsher): Exploring Participation and Union with Christ in John’s Gospel and Letters / January 01, 2023

Requires Accordance 11.2 or above.

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.

About the Series:
Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprised by New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead.

New Studies in Biblical Theology volumes focus on three areas:

• the nature and status of biblical theology, including its relationship to other disciplines
• the articulation and exposition of the structure of thought from a particular biblical writer or text
• the delineation of a biblical theme across the biblical corpus

While volume notes interact with the best of recent research, the text of each work avoids untransliterated Greek and Hebrew or too much specialist jargon. The volumes are written within the framework of confessional evangelicalism, but they also engage a variety of other relevant viewpoints and significant literature.