I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be
“in Christ.” The term “in Christ” or “in
Him” is used extensively by the New Testament writers (especially Paul). For most of my life I assumed that, for
someone, being in Christ simply meant that he or she had salvation which had
been made available because of what Christ accomplished through his death and
resurrection. Being in Christ, of
course, does at least apply to
salvation (Eph. 1:7-13; 2 Tim. 2:10), but it certainly isn’t limited to
that. The full depth and breadth of
being in Christ is far more beautiful.
In 2 Corinthians 5:17 Paul says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has
come.” We can see in this passage that
there are both positive and negative aspects of being in Christ; not only has
our old, sinful nature (the “flesh”) passed away, but now we have been given a
new nature in Christ. A little later, in
verse 21, Paul says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so
that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.” Both sides are
again represented here; we have been declared both not guilty, and also fully righteous in Christ.
Because of what Christ has accomplished on the cross, our
new, true identity is as those who are in Christ. It is now who we are in the core of our
being.
As those who are in
Christ we can now have peace (Phil. 4:7);
we have purpose and grace (2 Tim. 1:9);
we have justification and redemption (Rom. 3:24);
we have faith and love (2 Tim. 1:13);
we have righteousness which comes from God (Phil. 3:9);
we can have glory (2 Thes. 1:12);
we have freedom from condemnation (Rom. 8:1);
we have unity with other believers (Rom. 12:5);
and this is only a short list!
We can (and should) now live confidently, convinced of our
new identity. Yet, this new identity is
not solely given to us for our sake.
Returning to the 2 Corinthians passage, Paul writes in verses 18-20, “All
this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the
ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to
himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the
message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making
his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to
God.” As those who are in Christ, we
have been delegated, by God, the ministry of reconciliation. What does this look like? We must live in unity with others in our
racially diverse congregation (Rom. 12:5) and thereby promote racial
reconciliation. We must strive to serve
poor and thereby promote reconciliation between rich and poor. We must seek to build up fathers and mothers,
husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, and thereby
promote reconciliation within families.
Most importantly, we must intentionally, daily seek to reconcile those
who are dead in their sin to the only One who can save them. The way
we do this is through the verbal proclamation of the gospel (Rom. 10:14-17).
We need to be frequently reminding ourselves of our new
identity. I like the imagery Grudem uses
in Systematic Theology that during
communion, by the simple act of breaking off a piece of the bread, and by
reaching out and taking the cup we are again affirming that we are taking on
the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection in our lives. We can remind ourselves of this daily (even
hourly) by preaching the gospel to ourselves.
We remind ourselves that when Christ died, we died; and when Christ
rose, we rose. As such we are now, by
God’s grace, in Christ and have been
delegated the ministry of reconciliation by which we must strive to reconcile
those still dead in their trespasses to God so that they too, by God’s grace,
might be in Christ.
Written by Joel Thompson
Joel is married to Mary Chou-Thompson, is a part-time musician, and is a Community Group leader at Roosevelt Community Church.
