In Christ

I. Introduction

Whenever we are speaking of spiritual experiences, there is always an element of mystery. Being born again is a spiritual mystery which is difficult to describe. It includes many elements. The means by which we become born again is both spiritual and intellectual, and has emotional consequences. In this sense, being born again includes the body, soul and spirit of the person. Intellectually, we understand that Jesus died for us, and that He promises to make us born again if we surrender our wills to His will as Lord and Savior. The faith part is to act upon His promise, repenting of sin through the conviction of the Holy Spirit, trusting Him for the strength to walk away from sin, and confessing our surrender to Him publicly and through baptism.

After we do this, we experience two powerful things, both in our souls and bodies. In our soul we feel incredible love, peace, joy and fulfillment, and these feelings are reflected in our bodies through emotion. No human being can explain the mystery that is new birth, we know it has happened, we feel it in our soul, and express it in our emotions. What we are experiencing is what it means to be 'in Christ', to have become an intimate part of Him.  We know we are ‘in Christ’ because we know Christ is in us.

To understand being in Christ we need to understand who Christ is. 

II. Christ as Savior.

Noah and his family entered into the Ark and were saved. Jesus Christ is our Ark, not just to be saved from a flood, but saved eternally through being joined to the Eternal One. Jesus Christ is eternal life. He doesn't just give eternal life, He embodies it, it is who He is. 1st John 1:1-2 calls Jesus The Eternal Life who was with the Father. He is the ark of salvation. Noah entered a boat and was saved, we enter into Christ, our ark, and are saved. When we give Him our life, He takes our soul into His life and we become a part of Him. Remember what He said about Himself. ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’.

We sometimes forget that Jesus Christ is our Creator, that He is the origin of all life, the Creator of all that exists, both visible and invisible.

15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15-17)

Paul then states that;

9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. (Colossians 2:9-10)

These words of Paul’s are incredibly profound and almost beyond human comprehension. In essence, Paul uses the same form of the word fullness πλήρωμα (pleroma) used of Jesus Christ, to describe what has happened to those who are in Christ. 

We have been made complete, perfected through being united to Christ, and all that is His, is ours. Paul writes a similar thing in Romans 8:16-17 that we are now God’s children, and if children, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.  In Colossians 2:6 Paul explains that this has happened because we received Christ Jesus as Lord and we continue to live in Him. Notice Paul says, received Christ Jesus as Lord. There are several meanings here. 

1. Receiving Christ as Lord, means to recognize Christ as God. Many people are comfortable with the idea that just a man died on a cross. But, Christ as Lord died on the cross, our Creator allowed Himself to be crucified in order to save us. We can never understand the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit being one God, but we are commanded to believe it. The One who is the Creator of all things, the Eternal, Omniscient, and Omnipotent Creator, became a part of His own creation and reconciled His disobedient creatures through His death and resurrection. There is no greater demonstration of love than that!

2. Receiving Christ as Lord, Κύριον (Kyrion) in Greek, means to receive Him as the ultimate authority and as Master of your life. Paul doesn't say 'receive Jesus into your heart as Savior', for unless He is Lord of your life, then you are still the authority of your life. Many people want a Savior, but don't want a Lord or Master, they want Christ as a fire escape, yet they want to retain ultimate control over their lives. Such people fail to understand that the very principle and root of sin is the demand of the creature to rule its own life. It is like saying to Christ, I will submit where it suits my own agenda, but I retain the right to choose my future. In saying this, a person testifies that they do not belong to Christ (Romans 8) and are not ‘God’s own possession’ (Ephesians 1:14).  We can only be born again by submitting our sinful will to the will of Christ as Lord, as God.  

Verses 6b-7 Paul says to continue to live in Him, that is, in the way of a holy life that He leads us into transforming us from inside, being rooted and built up in Him. Christ perfects our flesh nature as we walk towards eternity. He perfected human nature in Himself, and so He perfects ours as we are in Him.

III. Christ reconciles us.  

In Colossians 2 Paul states that:

19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. 21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation – 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel.(Colossians 2:19-23)

Physical death is something we all inherit, but spiritual death comes to all who sin. From that moment we are separated from God's Spirit and quickly become slaves to sin, feeding our flesh natures, living to please ourselves. 

In our unregenerate state we are enemies of God and alienated from Him. We feel an emptiness, a void in our soul, a void which people try to fill with all sorts of material and emotional things. But this void is a wall between God's holiness and us. The Garden of Eden was like a small walled replica of Paradise, of heaven. When Adam and Eve sinned they were forced to leave. Through His death on the cross, Christ opens the gate to the garden. No one can enter that garden except through Jesus Christ, because He is the only sinless one who has opened the door, through Him we can be reconciled to God. 

The physical garden is gone, destroyed in the flood, but our souls enter the real Paradise and into the presence of God's Spirit the moment we are born again, in fact, Ephesians 2:6 states that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. Christ became one of us, and through His perfect obedient life, and His death and resurrection, destroyed the power of death. Then He returned to Paradise as the God man, the Logos joined to humanity, the first human being to enter since the fall of Adam and Eve. We, as his brothers, sisters, and family, enter with Him because we are in Him. Romans 6: 3-5. When we gave our life to Christ, we were buried with Him, symbolized in the physical realm in water baptism, but, felt as an existential reality in our soul and emotions. We are buried with Him, and become a part of Him.  Paul writes:

3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:3-4)

We died, our old self died with Christ on the cross. We are buried with Him and our sin is hidden in Him. He is our life...He makes us alive because He is alive and we live in His eternal life.  

IV. Spiritual Body

Scripture teaches that when we are born again we become part of the 'body of Christ'. In 1st Corinthians 12:13 Paul says that 'by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body'. Baptism of the Spirit is another term for being born again. By one Spirit, the Spirit of Christ/Holy Spirit and the Father, we are baptized into the Spirit of God and are given the one Spirit to drink. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not 3 separate Spirits. They are all aspects, persons of the one God who is revealed in a physical form in Christ. Our Spirit is taken into the Spirit of God, and as proof of this, the Spirit of God comes to live inside of us.

2nd Peter 1:4 states that through God's promise we now participate in the Divine Nature. Most Christians don't understand the importance of Peter's statement. We need to understand God's purpose in creating humanity to see how this relates to being in Christ.

In Genesis 1:26 it says that mankind was made in the image and likeness of God. What does that mean in terms of the physical bodies we have now, and spiritual bodies we will have when we leave this world? 

1. To have authority: In the text the first reference is to ruling over the earth and all creatures (Genesis 1:26-28). God has absolute authority, yet humans are given authority to rule over His creation. When humanity fell, all of that was under human authority fell with us.

2. No animal, fish or reptile can share a relationship with God as we can: Only humans can have an intimate relationship on a truly communicative level. Other creatures may communicate on a base level with humans, but their instincts govern them.  

3. Humans are self-aware, we are sentient beings and know that we are individuals; we have a soul which is a spiritual essence of who we are. And God gave us the authority to create new life if we choose, just as He did.

4. God created us to become as He is. This is the essence of God's purpose. God wants us to experience what it means to be like Him. Our goal is to become like Christ. He became human in order to give us the opportunity to be united with His divinity.  We become partakers of the Divine Nature: God’s nature is in us and we in Him through being in Christ. Therefore, Christ makes us divine as He is divine. We do not become 'gods', as some heretics claim, but rather true reflections of God, imitating Christ.

5. We become immortal as God is immortal. Immortality means something which cannot be destroyed. 1st Timothy 6: 15-16 says that 'God alone is immortal'. We have been taught for centuries that the human soul is immortal, but the bible doesn't teach that. Jesus said the human soul can be destroyed (Matt:10:28), the second death (Rev:20:21, Romans 6:9). Immortality is a gift from God, it is part of the Divine Nature. This is an extensive topic and covered in my series entitled ‘Hell and Immortality’.

V. Conclusions

1. New Creations.

2nd Corinthians 5:17 states that we are a new creation and the old has passed away. This literally means that we have been re-created. Paul states many times that our old self and sin nature are dead, buried with Christ and a new creature is resurrected. When Paul says he is 'crucified with Christ', he means what he says. The old has gone...gone forever. The ruling sin principle is death, and death has died, has been destroyed because we are already resurrected as new creatures. Our souls are already immortal, we are already heirs with Christ; we are already seated in heavenly places. Those that teach that a truly born again person can lose their salvation contradict the entire New Testament. 

2. Glorified Bodies

Presently we still live in these earthly bodies. This body will die, just as Jesus body died. Jesus now has a 'glorified body', an immortal body which has no limitations. For the time He was on earth, Jesus emptied Himself of the right to use His divine power and relied solely on the Father (Philippians 2:7), but now He is once again endowed with absolute Divine Power and authority, but, in a glorified human form. This is what He planned for us. When we die, we also will have a glorified body, and the mind of Christ. Ephesians 1:3 says that we have been blessed in the heavenly realms with 'every spiritual blessing'. Do we really believe it? Notice it isn't about wealth and prosperity in this world. People like Joel Osteen that preach about God wanting us to have abundant, rich, easy lives on this earth, are still captured by this world and most likely have no inheritance in the heavenly realms.

3. Complete in Him. 

Colossians 2:9-10 states:

For in Christ all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every authority. (Colossians 2:9-10)

Christ is absolutely complete, perfect in all the Divine attributes, and we are complete in Him. 

Notice in the verse Paul's reference to authority. These words echo right back to Genesis 1:26-28. We were made in God image and likeness to have Divine Authority, and in Christ, we have His authority. So many Christians are weak and pathetic because they believe a lie that they are not complete in Christ. As soon as we are born again we have power over sin, power over our flesh nature. Romans 8:12 says we have no obligation to live according to our flesh nature. If we still believe our flesh nature can rule us, then we don't understand that it has been crucified with Christ and that we are complete in Christ. Satan uses this lie to convince Christians that they cannot have victory until they die.

4. Our inheritance sealed and guaranteed.

Ephesians 1:13-14 states that The Holy Spirit is a seal, a guarantee of our inheritance because we are God’s own possession and 2nd Corinthians 1:20-22 states the following:

20 For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. 21 Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, 22 set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. 

(2 Corinthians 1:20-22)

Every promise that God has made is answered as 'Yes' and never 'No'. God keeps His promises to us. Faith is to believe and trust that God is not a liar. If you have experienced new birth, if you know Christ lives in you and you in Christ, if you are walking in His power being transformed to His likeness, if your love for Him grows as you live in the shadow of the cross, if you hold His hand tightly through trials and suffering and He is your first love, then never doubt His promises. 

You either belong to Christ or still belong to yourself and you can test to see which one is your reality. Simply ask yourself this: Can I continually say ‘No’ to Christ, can I refuse to obey His will, do I have areas in my life where He cannot dictate or interfere? If so, then you should doubt your salvation, for you are rejecting Him as Lord. Those who teach you can have Christ as Savior and live any way you choose, retaining your autonomy, are deceiving themselves and those who listen to them. You either belong to Christ or to yourself, there are no other options.

I hope this article has helped you understand what it means to be in Christ. Please share it with those who may benefit from its message.

Steve Copland