The Believer’s Life in Christ

At the heart of the message of Paul’s epistles (and of the entire New Testament) lies the concept of the believer’s union with Jesus Christ.  Nothing is more fundamental for our faith, the gospel, and the plan of God than the fact that God saves people by uniting them with his Son, thereby providing them with all the benefits of his life, death and resurrection.

Union with Christ is often expressed by Paul with the words “in Christ” (or some variation thereof like “in him’ or “with him”).  It would be hard to overestimate the significance of the doctrine of union with Christ, but it’s equally difficult to adequately summarize the all-encompassing importance of the doctrine. Last week, however, I came across a chapter that I think does as good of job of summarizing the doctrine’s significance as I’ve ever read.   It comes from T.D. Bernard’s excellent nineteenth century classic, The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament. In Bernard’s chapter on the epistles, he expounds the significance of Paul’s words in 1 Cor 1:30: “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus.”  I encourage you to thoughtfully read the following excerpt from Bernard’s exposition.

Bernard begins by stating that the epistles are dedicated to teaching and explaining the significance of the believer’s and the believing community’s life in Christ.  “The Epistles,” he says, “presuppose the existence of this life, both in the community and in the individual, and their doctrine is directed to educate and develop it. The fundamental thought in every page is that expressed in my text, ‘Of him are ye in Christ Jesus.’”

“In Christ Jesus”…. They are little words, but they make an announcement of vast significance and boundless consequences…. It is no symbolical form of speech, but the statement of a fact, as real in regard to the spirit as the fact of our being in the world is real in regard to the body…. Christ has been manifested, preached, received; and what is the state which has ensued, as exhibited in the consciousness of those who have received them?  They are not merely professors of his name, learners of his doctrine, followers of his example, sharers in his gifts. I may go further. They are not merely men ransomed by his death, or destined for his glory. These are all external kinds of connection, in which our separate life is related to his life only as one man’s life may be related to another’s by the effect of what he teaches, of what he gives, and of what he does. But it is assumed in the Epistles, that believers in Jesus are no longer living a life that is only external, and, as it were, parallel to his life. They are in Christ Jesus, and he also is in them…. [The] writers know that believers are in Christ and Christ in them, and show that knowledge, not only by frequent assertions and a universal supposition of a close and vital union between the members and the head, but by a full development of both the aspects of this union, which the words of the Lord present.

Believers are in Christ, so as to be partakers in all that he does, and has, and is. They died with him, and rose with him, and live with him, and in him are seated in heavenly places. When the eye of God looks on them they are found in Christ, and there is no condemnation to those that are in him, and they are righteous in his righteousness, and loved with the love which rests on him, and are sons of God in his sonship, and heirs with him of his inheritance, and are soon to be glorified with him in his glory. And this standing which they have in Christ, and the present and future portion which it secures, are contemplated in eternal counsels, and predestined before the foundation of the world.

As the sense of this fact breathes in every page, so also does the sense of the correlative fact, that Christ is in those who believe; associating his own presence with their whole inward and outward life. They know that Jesus Christ is in them, except they be reprobatesl (rejected ones). They live, yet not they, but Christ liveth in them, and he is their strength and their song.  This indwelling of Christ is by the Holy Ghost, so that the same passages speak interchangeably of the Spirit being in us, and of Christ being in us; or of the Holy Ghost being in us, and our members being the members of Christ: and so this word, “in you” includes the whole life of the Spirit in man, with all its discoveries, impulses, and achievements, its victory over the world, its conversation in heaven, and earnest of the final inheritance.

Thus, through the different but correlative relations represented by the words, “Ye in me, and I in you,” human life is constituted a life in Christ; and, through the still higher mystery of the union of the Father and the Son, is thereby revealed as a life in God. ” At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” Yes! as we pass through the Epistles, we see that that day is come, and that the consciousness thus predicted has been attained. It is no flight of mysterious rhetoric, but the brief expression of the settled, habitual, fundamental view of the state of those who are here addressed, “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus.”

This idea underlies all that is said, gives the point of view from which every subject is regarded, and supplies the standard of character and the rules of conduct…. The Churches are “in Christ;” the persons are “in Christ.” They are “found in Christ” and ” preserved in Christ.”  They are “saved” and “sanctified in Christ;” are “rooted, built up,” and “made perfect in Christ.”  Their ways are “ways that be in Christ;” their conversation is “a good conversation” in Christ; their faith, hope, love, joy, their whole life is “in Christ.”  They think, they speak, they walk “in Christ.”  They labor and suffer, they sorrow and rejoice, they conquer and triumph “in the Lord.”  They receive each other and love each other “in the Lord.”  The fundamental relations, the primal duties of life, have been drawn within the same circle. “The man is not without the woman, nor the woman without the man in the Lord.”  Wives submit themselves to their husbands “in the Lord;” children obey their parents “in the Lord.”  The broadest distinctions vanish in the common bond of this all-embracing relation. “As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ; there is neither Greek nor Jew, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; they are all one in Christ Jesus.”  The influence of it extends over the whole field of action, and men “do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.”  The truth which they hold is “the truth as it is in Jesus;”  the will by which they guide themselves is “the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning them.” Finally, this character of existence is not changed by that which changes all besides.  Those who have entered on it depart, but they “die in the Lord,” they “sleep in Jesus,” they are “the dead in Christ;” and “when he shall appear,” they will appear; and when he comes, “God shall bring them with him,” and they shall “reign in life by one — Jesus Christ.”

Simply magnificent.  “Hallelujah, all I have is Christ!  Hallelujah, Jesus is my life!”