Being "In" Christ

It may be helpful to consider our duties on the basis of some of the Lord's teaching in which he presented a very profound thought in the simplest of words. He said to the disciples, "You in me, and I in you" (John 14:20). In the next chapter the same thought is repeated under the figure of the true vine: "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me" (John 15:4). Then in the prayer uttered just before the supreme trial, there is a plea for unity, "that they may be one, as we are one"; and then at the end of the supplication we have the words, "that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them" (John 17:21, 26).

There is not much difficulty in understanding what is meant by our being in Christ. The phrase is used repeatedly in connections which are self-explanatory. "I knew a man in Christ", says the apostle in drawing a lesson from past experience (2 Corinthians 12:2). He also speaks of some "who were in Christ before me" (Romans 16:7). He says that a maiden or a widow is at liberty to be married to whom she will, "only in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 7:39). He wrote explicitly that "as many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Galatians 3:27). And again, "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?" (Romans 6:3). He also wrote of the "washing of regeneration", by which disciples can be saved (Titus 3:5). Clearly it is this regeneration,

this new birth out of water, this putting on of Christ, which brings us under the constitution of righteousness and makes us "in Christ" (John 3:3-6).

To be a true Christian, however, involves something more than this. We may have believed the good news of the Kingdom of God and of the redemption offered through Christ. We may have been baptized into him, and we may still abide in him; but the searching question arises from his simple words, is he in us? The apostle Paul evidently felt that the believers in Galatia had not attained to this necessary "newness of life". He wrote: "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you . . ." (Galatians 4:19). They had believed the Gospel, and had turned to the living God; they had been baptized, and so, having "put on" the sin-covering name, they were in Christ; but as yet Christ had not been formed in them.