To Be “in Christ”
To be “in Christ” is a curious thing. It’s a distinctly Pauline idea. He seems to use it of anyone who is a believer in the gospel, as in anyone who has been saved by grace through faith in the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ to save them from the penalty of their sins. Galatians 2 gives, I think, the clearest explanation of what he means by the phrase.
“Nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by
the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed
in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the
works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified. But
if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found
sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be! For if I rebuild
what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through
the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified
with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the
life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved
me and gave Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if
righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”
What’s he saying? He’s saying that having faith in Jesus to
save you from the penalty of sin puts you in the camp of “in Christ.” He’s also
saying that if you think you can work your way to perfection, you’re not in the
camp of “in Christ.” Being “in Christ” means living by faith in the son of God,
not by the works of the law. The law reveals sin, grace deals with it.
That’s what it means to be “in Christ.” It means giving up
your protest against God by giving up your sins and choosing to live in faith as
opposed to sin. Christ died in our place, so God is judicially free to bestow
gifts of grace upon us, even though we don’t deserve them. (That’s the point of
grace, by the way. We don’t deserve it.) If we then say that we do deserve it
in any way, we nullify the grace of God. If we deserved it, it wasn’t grace.
Being “in Christ” means living a life that knows God will save you, simply
because he said he would.
I have faith that God will save me from the penalty of my
sins, spare me from His own wrath, because he said that he would in his word. (And
when I say the penalty of my sins, I don’t just mean eternal torment in hell. I
also mean the temporal penalties that my sin gives me on earth when I continue
to sin. Faith in Christ’s death on the cross allows me to be being saved as
well as to be saved in the end. More on this idea later.) More than just his
word, his actions back that up. The assurance of His promise to save us from
His own wrath is the death and resurrection of Christ. I can look to the cross
to be reminded of the promise that God’s wrath will not be poured out on me,
because it was already poured out on Him. That knowledge should be my defining
characteristic, and the defining Characteristic of anyone who is “in Christ.”
The Outworking of Being “in Christ”
Note the words “should be” in the previous sentence. Living
in a constant recognition and deference to the cross is the ultimate goal, but
this goal is never seen perfectly in the Christian prior to his resurrection,
that is part of the sin nature. Every Christian who has been brought to that
point of deference, by the grace of God, has fought against and continues to
fight against that grace every step of the way. Every Christian continues to
resist relinquishing control to God. Instead, he often runs back to his sin and
clings to it. He knows that God’s grace is sufficient to save him from that sin
and yet, on a certain level, he doesn’t want to be saved from it. He still likes
sin, and yet hates it at the same time. Such is the case of fallen humanity.
Paul says as much in Romans 7.
“For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice
the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not
want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then
the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I
joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law
in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me
a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am!
Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through
Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am
serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.”
I myself cling to sin daily and serve the law of sin with my
flesh. I must instead remember that “in Christ” I am free from sin. I am free
to live to God instead of living in sin or under the law. Christ has set me
free and any enslavement I endure to sin is of my own making.
I still look to other wells from which to draw living water,
finding only sewage. My heart wrenches in my chest when I honestly look at my wants
and see a strong desire to avoid confrontation with truth. I have a strong desire
to, through sin, escape the reality God has made instead of living in it as one
he has re-made.
These wells all have one thing in common, they distract.
They distract me from the truth of who God is, serving the ultimate purpose of
allowing me to avoid the mortification of the very sins I use to stifle my
pursuit of knowing God. Ironic, isn’t it? The very things I need to kill are
the things I use to avoid killing them. How clever a sinner I am.
I feel like Luther in knowing I’m a sinful man and being
told to go and love God and yet I cannot love God fully for my flesh will not
allow it. I know that I cannot love God because I still love sin. And yet my
sin does not provide true relief from stress, loneliness, or conviction. It
provides momentary forgetfulness, temporary euphoria. The only times of true
relief I have ever experienced are when I really believe the Gospel. It is in
the times when I really, truly, actually, remember that God gives grace to
wretched, pitiful, destitute sinners like me that peace comes. “The bow of
God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends
the arrow at [my] heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere
pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at
all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with [my] blood.”[1]
Conclusion
It is when I truly fear God, and
love Him at the same time that I come to grips with my sin and make any
progress toward the perfect example set by His son. This is the process of
sanctification. I daily am being saved by my faith, even though I’m already “saved”
from the final torment. It is during these times of clear awareness and
deference to God as ruler that I am sure of my status as “in Christ.” This is
what it means to be “in Christ.” It’s not some fancy phrase or pithy cliché.
Being “in Christ” is responding to the knowledge that God’s wrath was poured
out on Him so that it might not be poured out on us and to live daily like we
know what the hell that means, for without it, hell is exactly what it means,
both now on earth and for all eternity.
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