A FURTHER STEP: “Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure man, or one who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God” (Eph. 5:5). Here Paul said, that neither sins of the flesh (“[immoral] or impure man”), nor the sins of the disposition (“covetous [that is an idolater]”) has any inheritance “in the kingdom of Christ.”
This is the first time in the New Testament we have come across the truth that being in Christ means being in the kingdom of Christ. It is the first time, too, we have come across the fact that being in the kingdom of Christ is the same as being in the kingdom of God.
Now the idea of being in Christ needs the emphasis of the fact that being in Christ means being in the kingdom of Christ. Otherwise being in Him may come to mean a private matter, very personal, but with no social or corporate meanings. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the entrance into the kingdom of Christ is personal and by a new birth, but the nature of that kingdom is social. When you come into Christ you come into a universal Order, the kingdom, which embraces all relationships, personal, and social. To be in Christ is to be in the kingdom which controls your total conduct. All compartmentalisms are down, life is one under one control, the kingdom.
A woman didn’t like the teaching of a theological professor of a certain seminary, and she said, “My mother prayed one man out of this world. And if that professor doesn’t change his teaching I’ll pray him out of the world.” Here was a Christian who used prayer as a means of paying off private grudges! This is private religion, with unsocial application.
In Bombay there is a sign over a liquor shop, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” The kingdom as an all-controlling and all-redeeming Order would save from a disastrous bifurcation of life. To be in Christ is to be in a kingdom which embraces all and redeems all. If it doesn’t redeem all it redeems none.
O Christ, my Lord and my God, I thank Thee that when I come into Thee I come into a kingdom—a kingdom which demands a total obedience in the total life. I am made for total obedience so I give it totally. And I’m free! Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: A personal religion that isn’t social, isn’t personal—it is nothing.
