Life in Christ
"Created in Christ Jesus unto good works" (Ephesians 2:10)
"Of him you are in Christ Jesus" (1 Corinthians 1:30)
"According as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians 1:4)
"And we are in him who is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 5:20)
Just as Jesus’ highest mission was to give believers eternal life, so the highest calling of the believer is to fully make this life his own. For this to happen, the heart needs to be empty of other things. But an empty heart alone is not enough. It must also be a heart that is hungry and thirsty, a heart that longs for God and seeks to know Him more.
But what is this eternal life? Some have said that self-knowledge, a deep understanding of oneself, is the path to it. But “this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
Fellowship with God is the continuous reception and participation in divine life. This means coming to know God more and more through our identification with His nature. Both the capacity and the desire for this fellowship are provided by the divine life itself. Among people, communication transfers thoughts and feelings from one to another. By communicating, people share a common life and get to know each other. It is the same between God and the regenerated person. Spiritual communication is the means of their shared spiritual life and knowledge. However, in both cases, this is possible only because there is a common spirit on both sides. “For who knows a man’s thoughts except the spirit of the man within him? So also, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:11).
This Spirit, dwelling within the believer, acts as an interpreter of his desires to God, interceding for him with groanings too deep for words, and at the same time, reveals the things of Christ to him.
As we learn in our daily lives to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2), and as our hearts fill with fervent contemplation of the person and character of Christ, His image gradually becomes reproduced in our lives. Thus, through fellowship, one comes into a living relationship with Jesus Christ, and by focusing and gazing on His face, one becomes conformed to Him.
These therefore are the requirements to reach “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13): His life needs to be continually imparted into us and His character needs to be continually reflected by us. As we receive His life within us, our obedience to Him becomes increasingly spontaneous, and our service becomes a natural fulfillment of the Word of God. As we reflect His character, our likeness to the Lord Jesus continuously grows towards practical unity with Him. “And we all, as we are beholding and reflecting the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, are being transformed into his image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18).
We know the need of putting to death the old self. But this alone is not enough to make us conform to Christ. The opposite, however, is certainly true: fellowship with Christ is a sure way to put away sin, and growth in grace always leads to the submission and mortification of our old self. If we have struggled in vain to uproot the weeds that the enemy has sown in our hearts, we can rejoice in the fact that these cannot withstand the heat of Christ's presence. The eye that we have failed to pluck out can become so dazzled by a constant gaze towards Jesus that it becomes blind to the things that once allured it.
Thus, the denial of self and growth in Christ are two processes that must occur together. The importance of Paul's dual exhortation about “putting off” and “putting on” is so profound: “You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self” (Col. 3:9-10). This is the true saint, the person in Christ, whom God has justified. The entire journey of our Christian life must be in the practical application of this truth. This is our progressive sanctification. We must always put away whatever belongs to the old self ("anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips") and clothe ourselves with what belongs to the new self ("compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience... and over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity") (Col. 3:8, 12, 14).
If there is something that pains us in this process, we know that this constant putting on and taking off of the soul will eventually come to an end. When death has finally stripped us of our mortality, then our undressing will cease. And this garment, our body, which we have tried so vainly to keep unblemished from the world, will be folded up and put aside. And when it wakes up on the morning of our full redemption, it will be fully completed as well, “For the corruptible must clothe itself with the incorruptible, and the mortal with immortality” (1 Cor. 15:53).
“In Christ”
The words “in Christ” in the New Testament are hiding a profound mystery for the Christian life. Just as “God was manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim 3:16), meaning that God took on human nature while remaining God, so too does man become a “partaker of the divine nature” while remaining human. Both are among the secrets that remain exclusively God's. Yet, while the mystery of these words is great, they hold the key to all the mysteries of Christian truth. Through their own mystery, these words unlock all the mysteries of the divine life, allowing us to enter into secrets hidden “from ages and from generations” (Col 1:26). We may not find an answer there to how all these things happen, but we will see clearly that they do happen. For with this key of our union with “Emmanuel,” the great events of the Christian life—regeneration, justification, sanctification, and redemption—move out of the realm of the human and the impossible and cling securely to Him with whom “all things are possible.” And the question “how can these things be?” changes to “how could it not be so!"
If someone is “in Christ,” they certainly have regeneration: How could the Head be alive and the members dead? If someone is “in Christ,” they have justification: How could God approve of the Head and condemn the members? If someone is “in Christ,” they have sanctification: How could the Holy One, who has no blemish, remain in living connection with someone who is not holy? If someone is “in Christ,” they have redemption: How could the Son of God be in glory while someone He made part of His body is abandoned in the grave of eternal death?
Through these two words, we can gain a deep understanding of the divine way of salvation. God does not work on the soul separately while it is still foreign and isolated from Him, to make it suitable to unite with Him. Instead, He begins by uniting it with Himself, so that through this union, He can impart divine life and energy, without which any other work on it would be futile. The method of grace is precisely the opposite of the method of law. The law first requires sanctification to then bring about union with God. However, grace first brings union with God so that sanctification can follow as a result. This is why the incarnation of God is the starting point and fundamental condition for our reconciliation with God. There can be no union between God and man without the intermediary that is both. And this is why there is a need for our incorporation with Christ, so that what was made possible through the incarnation can become real and experiential in each one through faith.
The principle of our union with Christ has an astonishingly wide application in the Gospel. Christianity does not eliminate natural human relationships, does not abolish human obligations, and does not nullify moral or spiritual laws. But it elevates all these to a new sphere and puts upon them the seal and signature of the Gospel: “In Christ.” Thus, while all things continue as they were from the beginning, all, by their readjustment to this divine character and person, become virtually new. Life is still from God, but it now has this new dependency “in Christ.” “Of Him you are in Christ Jesus.” The obligation to labor remains unchanged, but now it gains new motivation and purpose: “your labor in the Lord...” The marriage relation acquires a new seal: “... only in the Lord.” Children's obedience to their parents is elevated to a direct relation to the Son of God: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.” Daily life becomes “good conduct in Christ.” Joys and sorrows, victories and sufferings, are all “in Christ.” Even truth itself, as if needing a new baptism, is now “truth in Jesus” (Eph. 4:21). Death still exists but has been stripped of its sting and crowned with a blessing, for with Christ, “blessed are the dead who die in the Lord” (Rev. 14:13).
Thus, Christ, by taking on the human element, embraces everything that belongs to humanity. Instead of severing humanity from its natural connections, He embraces all things human along with humanity, so as to sanctify everything. And not only is this true, but the opposite and even more wondrous fact is also true: by elevating humanity into union with Him, Christ raises it into everything that belongs to Him, into His divine life and into participation in His divine work. Thus, humanity dies in His death, is resurrected in His resurrection, is exalted in His ascension, sits with Him at the right hand of the Father, and lives in His eternal life!
The very glory and mystery of the believer's life is that it is one with the life of the Savior and inseparable from it. It is not a life parallel to the life of Christ that is merely shaped and guided by it. It is the very life of Christ that is lived out in His believers, reproducing within them those events that are immortal in energy and limitless in application.
(A. J. Gordon, “In Christ – The Believer’s Union With His Lord”, excerpted)