2: I am in Christ
Two
I AM IN CHRIST
We have begun to answer the question, “Who am I?”, with the fact that we are all creatures, created in the image of God, dependent on him, and accountable to him. This is true of everyone born into the world whether we realize it or not. But for those of us who have trusted in Christ as our Savior, there is much more to our identity than simply being creatures.
The answer to the question “Who am I as a Christian?” is far more elaborate and wonderful than the answer to the simpler (if still profound) question, “Who am I as a human being?” Once we are converted, there are seven additional glorious truths that come into play as essential components of our identity. These will constitute our focus for the remainder of this book.
As we seek to answer that more elaborate question, it is beyond dispute that we must start with the fact that we are “in” Christ Jesus.
What does it mean to be in Christ? Is it a question of location, like being in a house? Is it something like belonging to a club or an organization? No, the term “in Christ” is the apostle Paul’s shorthand expression for being united to Christ. It is one of Paul’s favorite expressions, and (including similar expressions such as “in him” or “in the Lord”) Paul uses it more than 160 times in his letters. Clearly this is an important concept in Paul’s theology. And it should be an important concept for us because all the remaining answers to the question, “Who am I?”, are based upon the fact that we are in Christ, or we are united to Christ.
This of course begs the question, what does it mean to be united to Christ? To answer it, we begin with 1 Corinthians 15:22, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” Note the two expressions “in Adam” and “in Christ.” And again in 1 Corinthians 15:45, Paul refers to “the first man Adam” and to “the last Adam,” who is clearly Christ. What Paul is getting at in these two verses is that in God’s way of dealing with humanity there are only two men, Adam and Christ. All the rest of us are represented before God by one or the other of these two men.
Adam as Our Representative
In verse 22 Paul said, “in Adam all die.” This idea is developed more completely in Romans 5:12-19. Verse 12 says, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned….” This verse is a reference to Adam’s sin of eating the forbidden fruit as recounted in Genesis 3. God had said, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Adam, along with Eve, ate, and they both died. They instantly died spiritually, and they would eventually die physically. But Adam was not an ordinary man so that the consequences of his sin would fall only on him.
Rather, Adam had been appointed by God to represent the entire human race. As a result, the consequences of his sin fell upon all humanity. When Paul writes in verse 12, “and so death spread to all men because all sinned…,” he is referring, not to our own individual sins, but to the fact that we were so united to Adam as our representative head that when he sinned we all sinned, and so we all suffered the consequences of Adam’s sin.
This idea of the representative nature of Adam’s sin is further developed in verse 18, “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men,” and again in verse 19, “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners.” Note especially in verse 19 the expression, “many were made sinners.” All humanity (with the exception of Christ, who was not descended from Adam) suffered the consequences of Adam’s sin. We were made sinners. As each of us comes into the world, we come as sinners by nature.
In answer to the question, “Who am I?”, we would therefore have to say, “I am a sinner.” That is why David acknowledged, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalms 51:5 NIV). David said the nature he received at conception was a sinful nature. Why was this true? It was because David, like you and me, was represented by Adam in the garden, and through the disobedience of Adam, David was made a sinner.
Picture two men, Adam and Christ, standing before God. Behind Adam stands all of humanity representatively united to him. We all come into this world “in Adam.” Because of that, Paul’s descriptive words in Ephesians 2:1-3 are true of every one of us before we trust Christ. Here is what he wrote:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Paul’s description of our dismal condition can be summed up in three expressions:
• Spiritually dead
• Slaves (to the world, the devil, and our sinful passions)
• Objects of God’s wrath
Think of that! As one “in Adam” you came into the world an object of God’s wrath. It doesn’t matter whether we were born of Christian parents or pagan parents. We are all born “in Adam” and so an object of God’s wrath. All because Adam sinned.
Not only all of humanity, but creation itself suffered the consequences of Adam’s sin. Though in Genesis 3:17-19, God refers specifically to cursing the ground, Paul in Romans 8:19-22, speaks of the futility of all creation. So we all come into the world spiritually dead, objects of God’s wrath, and into a natural environment that is under the curse of God. That is what it means to be “in Adam.”
Christ as Our Representative
The other man standing before God is the “last Adam,” namely the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as God appointed Adam to represent all of humanity, so he appointed Christ to represent all who trust in him as Savior. We have looked at the consequences of Adam’s representative act in Romans 5:18-19. Now observe the contrasting effects of Christ’s work on behalf of all who trust in him. Verse 18: “so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” And in verse 19, “so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
For the sake of clarity, we need to draw out Paul’s artful use of language in verses 18 and 19.
• Verse 18: “as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” In this verse, the first appearance of “all men” refers to our universal condemnation. The second appearance refers to the universal offer of salvation, not the universal existence of salvation. There is universal condemnation, and there is a universal way of escape, yet not all will escape.
• Verse 19: “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Here, Paul follows the same artful use of language as in verse 18. The first appearance of “the many” is a universal statement, while the second appearance refers exclusively to those who come to Christ.
In each verse, therefore, the first “all” and “many” refer to the fact that all humanity has suffered the consequences of Adam’s sin. The second “all” and “many” refer only to all those who trust in Christ and are “in him.”
What are the results of being in him? We will explore these in detail in subsequent chapters, but for now I want to call our attention to the principle by which God operates.
Obedience and Disobedience
In Deuteronomy 28, Moses sets before the nation of Israel two alternatives: obedience and disobedience. The results of obedience are tremendous blessings. The results of disobedience are horrible curses. These particular blessings and curses are all temporal in nature and refer specifically to the nation of Israel in the Promised Land. But at the same time they are an expression of the eternal principle by which God operates: blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience.
By his perfectly obedient life over thirty-three years, Christ earned the blessings of God. By his death on the cross he experienced the curse for disobedience. As our representative, all that he did in both his life and death accrues to our benefit. Someone has said it like this: “He lived the life we could not live, and died the death we deserved to die.” Or again, “He was treated as we deserved to be treated in order that we might be treated as he deserved to be treated.”
When we think of the work of Christ, we usually think of his death to pay for our sin. We call this his “substitutionary atonement,” in that he died in our place, as our substitute, to satisfy the justice of God for our sins. But what is it that makes this substitution valid? How could God’s justice be satisfied when a perfectly innocent man suffers punishment on behalf of those who actually deserve it?
The answer is that Christ stood before God as our representative. He assumed the responsibility for our obedience to the law of God, and he assumed the responsibility to render to God satisfaction for our disobedience. All this because we are “in him,” that is, we are united to him in a representative way.
The Living Union
This truth of Christ’s representative union with us is foundational to all that we will be considering in subsequent chapters as we seek to answer the question, “Who am I?”, But there is also a whole other dimension of our union with Christ that is equally exciting and that will help us understand who we are. That is what we call our living union with Christ.
This living union is best explained by Jesus’ use of the vine and branch metaphor in John 15:1-5. Just as the branch shares in the life and nourishment of the vine, so we as believers share in the life of Christ. This living union is affected by the Holy Spirit who lives within us (See 1 Corinthians 6:19-20), and who imparts to us the spiritual vitality of Christ himself.
As a young Christian I did not realize what it meant to be in a living union with Christ. My concept of my relationship to Christ was that he was in heaven and I was on earth. To me, prayer was like a long distance phone call to heaven, in which I might get through or I might not. My Christian life was largely one of self-effort.
One day in a time of discouragement I said to myself, “How can someone in Christ be as discouraged as I am?” At the time I had no idea of what it meant to be in Christ. To me it was just another expression for being a Christian. But as soon as I said those words, the thought came into my mind, (planted, I think, by the Holy Spirit), “What did you just say? What does it mean to be in Christ?”
So I went to my favorite place to spend time alone with God and began to ponder the question, “What does it mean to be in Christ?” I had memorized various verses which had in them the words “in Christ,” or “in him” or “in the Lord,” but as I said, the words had no special meaning for me. But that day, as those verses began to flow through my mind, I saw the truth in John 15:1-5 that I had a vital living relationship with Christ. I was actually a partaker of his life. I didn’t need to make long-distance calls to heaven. No, I was in him, and through his Spirit he was in me.
Of all the Scriptures that went through my mind that morning, the most exciting to me was 1 Corinthians 1:30 which in the King James Version says, “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” The thought that was so exciting to me was that it is of God that I am in Christ Jesus. I didn’t, as it were, get into Christ of my own doing. It was God who united me to him. It was by his action that I am in Christ Jesus.
Isn’t that encouraging? God is the one who unites us to Christ. To use Paul’s expression, he is the one who has placed us in Christ. That means we can never get out. We didn’t do anything to get in, and we can’t do anything to get out. It’s all of God.
Even today, fifty-five years later, that verse brings sparkle to my life. I often wake up discouraged about something. But as I get dressed and walk down the hall to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, 1 Corinthians 1:30 will come to my mind and I say to myself, “God, it is of you that I am in Christ.” And all of a sudden I will break into a great big smile, and the discouragement is gone.
The idea that our being in Christ is all of God, and further, because we are in Christ, his very life flows into us, could lead to the impression that we have no responsibility or part to play in this relationship. First of all, although it is indeed of God that we are united to Christ, we are united to him by faith. But where do we get the faith? It is the gift of God (See Ephesians 2:8-9 and Acts 16:14). But though this faith is given to us, we must still exercise it.
Having exercised faith to believe in Christ, we must also exercise faith to draw upon the life and nourishment that comes to us from Christ through our living union with him. There are some who teach that just as the branch does nothing to receive the nourishment of the vine, so we do nothing to receive the life and energy of Christ. But this presses the analogy too far. Just as Christ is not entirely like a vine, we are not entirely like branches. Human beings are unique in that we have been created in the image of God. He has, among other things, given us minds to think with and wills which we may exercise, and he works through our minds and wills; not apart from them.
So in summary, we see that there are two related but distinct aspects of being in Christ, that is, united to him.
Representative union. The first is the representative union by which Jesus assumed all our responsibility to perfectly obey the law of God, and also assumed our penalty of death for not obeying. We will explore the results of this in the next two chapters.
Living union. The second aspect is the living union through the Holy Spirit, by which we, by faith, draw upon the nourishment and power of the living Christ to enable us to live the Christian life.
Further development of these two aspects will help us to answer the question, “Who am I?”
By the work of God, I am no longer in Adam: I am in Christ, through a union that is both living and representative.