Chuks had not slept properly for three nights before his first trip abroad. There had been the visa interview, the packing, the goodbyes, the endless traffic to the airport. By the time he found his seat on the night flight from Lagos to London, he was so exhausted that he fell asleep before the plane had even left the gate. He did not hear the safety announcement. He did not feel the take-off. He did not eat the meal.
When he woke up, the cabin lights were coming on and the captain was announcing that they had begun their descent into Heathrow. Chuks looked out of the window at grey clouds and green fields, and he laughed out loud. He had travelled more than five thousand kilometres. He had crossed the Sahara, the Mediterranean and most of Europe. And he had done none of it.
He had not flown. The aeroplane had flown. But because he was in the aeroplane, everything that happened to the plane had happened to him. Where it went, he went. When it arrived, he arrived. His position had been completely changed by the one thing he had done, which was to get on board.
That is the simplest picture I know of what the New Testament means by two small words that appear in it again and again: in Christ.
A small phrase that carries everything
If you read Paul’s letters with a pencil and underline every time he says “in Christ,” “in him,” “in whom” or “in the Lord,” you will run out of lead. In the opening paragraph of Ephesians alone, the phrase appears in one form or another around a dozen times. We are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. We are chosen in him before the foundation of the world. We are accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through His blood. In whom we have obtained an inheritance. In whom we were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.
Paul is not using the phrase as a decorative religious flourish. It is the hinge on which his entire understanding of salvation turns. Every blessing God gives, He gives in Christ. Every benefit of the cross reaches us because we are in Christ. If you took the phrase out of Paul’s letters, the whole structure would collapse.
So what does it mean? At its heart, being in Christ means that God has joined you to His Son, so that what is true of Him becomes true of you. His death counts as your death. His resurrection life becomes your life. His standing before the Father becomes your standing. Where He is, you are. It is a union so real that Paul can say, “But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:17).
The best way to understand the phrase is to see what it replaces. Paul tells us that every human being is, by nature, in one of two representatives: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Before Christ, you were in Adam. What happened to Adam, sin and death, happened to you because you were in him. You did not choose to be born in Adam any more than you chose your parents. But when you believed, God took you out of Adam and placed you in Christ. Your whole spiritual location changed.
Paul says it with breathtaking simplicity:
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
A new creature. Not an improved version of the old one. Not the old person with a fresh coat of paint. A new creation. The old things that defined you in Adam have passed away. All things have become new. And the condition is the four words at the start of the verse: if any man be in Christ.
PunchlineBeing in Christ means God has joined you to His Son, so that what is true of Him becomes true of you. Your spiritual location has changed.
Joined to His death
Paul’s most detailed explanation of union with Christ comes in Romans 6, where he is answering an objection. He has just said that where sin abounded, grace abounded much more. Someone asks the obvious question: if grace increases when sin increases, should we keep sinning so that grace can increase further? Paul’s answer is not “No, because you might lose your salvation.” It is far deeper than that. His answer is: you cannot, because you died.
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him , that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.
Baptized into Jesus Christ. Baptized into His death. Buried with Him. Planted together in the likeness of His death. Our old man crucified with Him. Paul piles up the phrases. The point is that when Jesus died on the cross, you were in Him. His death was your death. The person you were in Adam, the old man who was enslaved to sin, was crucified with Christ.
Notice the purpose: “that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” The word destroyed can also mean made ineffective or put out of action. Sin is still around. Temptation still comes. But sin is no longer your master. The relationship of slavery has been broken by a death. “For he that is dead is freed from sin.”
Think of it this way. If a man who owed a large debt to a cruel moneylender died, the moneylender could not come to the funeral and demand payment from the corpse. Death ends the obligation. Sin was a harsh master that held us in its grip, and its claim over us has been ended by our death with Christ.
Water baptism is the public picture of this. Going down under the water pictures burial with Christ. Coming up out of the water pictures resurrection with Him. Baptism does not create the union by itself, but it declares and seals it, which is why Paul can point back to it. “Know ye not,” he asks, as if to say: remember what your baptism meant.
Then Paul tells us how to live in the light of it: “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:11). The word reckon is an accounting word. It means to count something as true because it is true. Paul does not tell us to make ourselves dead to sin. He tells us to count on the fact that, in Christ, we already are. When temptation comes knocking with its old authority, the believer can answer, “I do not live at that address any more. The man you are looking for died.”
Raised and seated with Him
The union does not stop at the cross. It goes through the tomb and out the other side. “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). If you were in Christ when He died, you were in Christ when He rose.
Paul takes the thought even further in Ephesians. God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ, “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6). Past tense. Raised and seated. Where is Christ now? At the right hand of the Father, far above all principality and power. And where are you? In Him.
This is why Paul can write to the Colossians in this way:
If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.
“For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Hidden. Your real life is not on display yet. If people judged you by appearances, they might see an ordinary person with an ordinary job, ordinary struggles and an ordinary bank balance. But your truest life is hidden with Christ in God, as safe as He is. And “when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” One day the hiddenness will end and the world will see what you have been all along.
Notice also what Paul draws from this. Seek those things which are above. Set your affection on things above. Our position shapes our priorities. A person who knows where his life is really located will not be ruled by the anxieties of the present age. He will still go to work, pay his bills and care for his family. But his heart will be anchored somewhere the troubles of this world cannot reach.
Christ in you
There is another side to the union. We are in Christ, and Christ is in us. Jesus used both directions when He spoke to His disciples: “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). Paul tells the Colossians that the great mystery hidden for ages has now been revealed: “which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).
Paul’s most personal statement of this is in Galatians:
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
“I am crucified with Christ.” That is our death in Him. “Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” That is His life in us. “And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
Paul is not describing the disappearance of his personality. He still says “I live.” He is still Paul, with his own temperament, his own history and his own way of writing. But the source of his life has changed. He now lives by faith in the Son of God, drawing on a life that is not his own. And notice how personal it is: “who loved me, and gave himself for me.” The doctrine of union with Christ is not cold theology. It is the love of a Saviour who wanted to share His very life with you.
This is why the Christian life is not fundamentally about trying harder to imitate Jesus from the outside. Imitation matters, and Paul tells us to be followers of God as dear children. But the deeper reality is that Christ Himself lives in us by His Spirit, and He is the source of the life we are called to live. We do not produce Christlikeness by our own strength. We yield to the Christ who indwells us.
What union with Christ does not mean
NuggetBecause this truth is so glorious, it has sometimes been stretched in directions Scripture does not go. A few guard-rails will help us hold it well.
Union with Christ does not mean that we become God, or that the difference between Creator and creature disappears. We share in Christ’s life by grace. He remains the eternal Son; we remain redeemed human beings who have been joined to Him. Peter can say that we have become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), and that is a staggering statement. But in its context it speaks of sharing in God’s moral character and escaping the corruption that is in the world through lust. It never makes the believer an object of worship, and it never puts Christ’s authority into our hands to use as we please.
Union with Christ does not mean that our personalities are erased. Paul still says “I live.” Peter remained impetuous, John remained reflective, and Paul remained intense. In Christ, God does not dissolve who you are. He redeems it, purifies it and fills it with His life. The Nigerian believer does not have to stop being Nigerian, and the introvert does not have to become an extrovert, to be fully in Christ.
Union with Christ does not depend on our feelings. Some believers think that being in Christ is a spiritual sensation they must maintain, so that on days when they feel close to God they are in Christ, and on days when they feel dry they have somehow slipped out. Paul never speaks that way. Our union is God’s work, established when we believed and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Feelings come and go. The union does not. Chuks was just as much on the aeroplane while he was asleep as he was when he woke up.
And union with Christ does not make obedience optional. The same apostle who wrote “ye are dead” in Colossians 3:3 wrote “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth” in Colossians 3:5. Because you have died with Christ, put to death what belongs to the old life. The indicative, what God has made you, always comes before the imperative, what God calls you to do. But the imperative always follows. A union that produced no change in how a person lives would be a very strange union indeed.
Holding these guard-rails does not shrink the truth. It protects it, so that we can enjoy it without distorting it.
Everything you need is in Him
Because you are in Christ, everything He is and has is available to you. Paul makes a sweeping statement to the Corinthians: “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30).
Look at that list. Do you need wisdom? Christ has been made wisdom to you. Righteousness? He is your righteousness. Holiness? He is your sanctification. Deliverance? He is your redemption. Paul does not say Christ gives us these things as separate packages. He says Christ is these things to us. When you have Him, you have them.
He says something similar to the Colossians, who were being tempted by teachers offering extra spiritual experiences and secret knowledge: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him” (Colossians 2:9-10). Complete. Nothing missing. You do not need to go looking for a higher experience or a deeper secret beyond Christ. Growth in the Christian life is growth in the knowledge and enjoyment of what you already have in Him.
This has very practical consequences. Many believers spend years searching for something extra: a special anointing, a particular prophet’s blessing, a ritual that will finally make them secure. They move from conference to conference looking for what they feel they lack. Paul’s message is that what they are looking for is not out there. It is in Christ, and they are in Christ. The search ends where the union begins.
A shared life that bears fruit
Jesus gave His disciples a picture of union that everyone in a farming culture could understand: “I am the vine, ye are the branches” (John 15:5). A branch has no life of its own. Cut off from the vine, it withers within days. But joined to the vine, it receives a constant flow of sap, and fruit appears on it naturally. The branch does not strain to produce grapes. It simply remains in the vine.
If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
Abiding in Christ is the practical, daily side of being in Christ. Our position in Him is settled by God’s action. Abiding is our ongoing response: continuing to depend on Him, letting His words remain in us, and walking in His love. Jesus connects abiding with obedience: “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love.” Obedience is not the price of union. It is the way union shows itself in daily life.
And notice the purpose of it all: “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” The life of union is not grim. It is joyful. Jesus wants His own joy, the joy of the Son in the Father’s love, to remain in us.
Jesus also says, “for without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). That is not a threat. It is a description of how fruitfulness works. A branch that tries to produce fruit by itself is attempting something impossible. A believer who tries to live the Christian life in his own strength will become exhausted and discouraged. But a believer who abides will find that fruit appears in him: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The Spirit produces it as the believer remains in the Vine.
In Christ together
So far we have talked about union with Christ as something personal, and it is. But it is never merely private. If I am in Christ and you are in Christ, then we are joined to each other. Paul’s favourite picture for this is the human body:
For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.
“For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body.” The same Spirit who joins you to Christ joins you to every other believer. Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, Yoruba and Igbo and Hausa, rich and poor, educated and uneducated: in Christ, we are members of one body. “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (1 Corinthians 12:27).
Paul draws some very practical conclusions from this. No member can say to another, “I have no need of thee.” The eye cannot dismiss the hand. And the members that seem weaker are, he says, necessary. God has set the members in the body as it pleases Him, and He gives greater honour to the parts that seem to lack it (1 Corinthians 12:18-24).
This means that being in Christ will change how you treat other Christians. You cannot be joined to the Head and despise His body. You cannot claim deep union with Christ while holding the believer from another tribe, another denomination or another social class in contempt. The quiet woman who sweeps the church compound and the famous preacher on the platform are both in Christ, and both are members of the same body. Neither is more joined to Him than the other.
Living from your location
So how does all of this change an ordinary Tuesday?
When temptation comes, you can remember your location. You were crucified with Christ. Sin is no longer your master. You can reckon yourself dead to its demands and alive to God, and you can choose obedience from that position, rather than from the desperate hope that you might one day become strong enough.
When condemnation comes, you can remember your location. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Notice the address: in Christ Jesus. The verdict over Christ is the verdict over you. John goes so far as to say that we can have boldness even in the day of judgment, “because as he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). As He is, so are we. Not one day. In this world.
When fear comes, you can remember your location. Your life is hid with Christ in God. Nothing that touches your body, your bank account or your reputation can touch the life that is hidden in Him. You may still need to take practical action, and you may still feel afraid. But fear does not get the final word about where you stand.
When you feel insignificant, you can remember your location. You are a member of the body of Christ, placed there by God as it pleased Him. You are not an afterthought. You are not surplus. The body needs you.
PunchlineAnd when you feel you lack something spiritually, you can remember your location. You are complete in Him. Go deeper into Christ, rather than looking for something beyond Him.
Let me go back to Chuks on that aeroplane. When the plane landed and the doors opened, he stood up, collected his bag and walked out into a new country. He had to learn how to live there. He had to find his way through the airport, get used to the weather, learn the bus routes and work out how the money worked. His location had changed in a moment, but learning to live in his new location took time.
That is the Christian life. God has moved you, in a moment, from Adam to Christ. Your location changed the instant you believed. What follows is a lifetime of learning to live where you now are: thinking, choosing, speaking and loving as someone who is in Christ. You will make mistakes as you learn, the way every newcomer does. But you will never again be back in the country you left. You are in Him.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Read Ephesians 1:3-14 and count how many times Paul uses “in Christ,” “in him” or “in whom.” What does that suggest about how central this truth is?
- What does it mean in practice to “reckon” yourself dead to sin and alive to God? Where do you most need to do that this week?
- How does Colossians 3:1-4 change the way you think about your present difficulties?
- How should being in Christ change the way you treat a believer you find difficult?
This Week
Take a notebook and read through Ephesians, Colossians and Romans 6-8 over the coming week. Every time you find “in Christ,” “in him” or “in whom,” write down what Paul says is true of you there. By the end of the week you will have a long list. Read the list aloud at the start of each day, and let it shape how you face that day.
A Prayer
Father, thank You for taking me out of Adam and placing me in Christ. Thank You that when He died, I died with Him, and when He rose, I rose with Him. Thank You that my life is hidden with Christ in You. Teach me to reckon myself dead to sin and alive to You. Help me to abide in Christ as a branch abides in the vine, so that His joy may be in me and my life may bear fruit. Help me to love every member of His body, because we are one in Him. I am in Christ, and Christ is in me. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.