In Christ: A Christian’s True Identity

As believers, we are citizens of two different worlds. But first and foremost, we are in Christ Jesus. If we go to any of these cities where we are complete strangers and meet Christian believers, we are conscious that we are their fellow countrymen. We belong to the same city. “Our citizenship,” Paul says, “is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20). We belong to the same nation. We are under the same King. More than that, all of us who believe in the Lord Jesus are “in Him.”

In the verses that follow, Paul elaborates to this effect: “God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus.” His point—to which we will return—is that all spiritual blessings are to be found in Christ. It is also important to put that point negatively: we are not to look for spiritual blessings outside of or apart from Christ. It is to Jesus Christ and our union with Him that we need to look in order to experience and appreciate the riches of salvation.

Paul explains how all this began—before the foundation of the world. God chose us in Him before He created the cosmos. Way back then (if we can speak from our own point of view), He chose us not apart from Christ but “in Christ.”

The Apostle goes on to speak about the blessings that have come to us through God’s grace. He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. He has redeemed us in Christ Jesus (“In him we have redemption through his blood”; Eph. 1:7). The purpose that God is accomplishing, He has set forth in Christ. That purpose is to unite all things in Christ Jesus, both in heaven and on earth.

So to be “in Christ” is to be part of something much bigger than our individual relationship to Him. What can that mean?

Something Bigger than Ourselves

At the back of Paul’s mind when he speaks of our union with Christ as bringing us into the orbit of His uniting “all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:10) may be his understanding that there are two branches to God’s family. There is the family branch of believers on earth. But in addition, there is a family branch of angels, who are also described in Scripture as being God’s “sons” ( Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7). They are not related to Him in exactly the same way that we are. As we will see, unlike them, we are related to one another in our first father, our representative head, Adam.

We know that a significant part of the family in heaven rebelled against God—those that Jesus described as “the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41)—while others, “the elect angels” (1 Tim. 5:21), were preserved and remained (and remain) faithful to Him. The human family on earth fell in its entirety in Adam. But in Christ Jesus, the Father has reconciled us to God and brought us back into His family. More than that, by doing so He has brought us together with the angelic branch of His family in heaven. Thus, the two branches of His family now live for and love the same King and are destined to be together as one in the new heavens and the new earth.

So the Apostle Paul has this thrilling, indeed cosmic, understanding of what it means for us to be “in Jesus Christ.” In Him we truly have a glorious inheritance. And all this is part and parcel of the Christian’s hope, our assurance of a reality that we have not yet fully experienced. And it is ours because we are in Christ.

Furthermore, Paul repeats here what he tells the Romans: this hope will not let us down (Rom. 5:5). We will not be disappointed, for we who hope in Christ will be to the praise of His glorious grace (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14). We have already received the assurance of this in the gift of the Spirit, who pours the love of God into our hearts (Rom. 5:5): “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” (Eph. 1:13).

Thus, untold blessings are the birthright of Christian believers. But the exclusive source and conduit of them all is our Lord Jesus Christ. This explains why masters of the spiritual life have always urged us to look nowhere else for blessing, but only to Christ and to the privilege we have of being united to Him.

The theologian B.B. Warfield (1851–1921) is reputed to have said that Ephesians 1:3–14 should never be read in church. Really? That must have been a shocker, coming from one of the great defenders of the inspiration and authority of Scripture! But then he added that it should always be sung. That captures the sense of the privilege that is ours, doesn’t it? It well expresses the significance of this little prepositional phrase “in Christ.” It makes us sing because it includes everything that is ours as a result of our belonging to Him. And here in Ephesians 1:3–14, Paul indicates its all-inclusive nature from the origin of our Christian life in being chosen in Christ to our final experience of the inheritance that will be fully ours by God’s grace and through the Spirit of Christ.

Think about these words against the background of the Ephesians whom Paul is addressing. They are in Ephesus—the city that housed one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the temple of the goddess Artemis (Diana to the Romans),¹ described by the Roman author Pliny the Elder as “the most wonderful monument of Grecian magnificence.”² The coming of the gospel to Ephesus had borne wonderful fruit. But it had also resulted in riots (Acts 19:1–20:1). It must have been an intimidating experience to be in a minority group of Christians. But that was surely one of the reasons why Paul begins his letter to them in the way he does. “Yes,” he writes in essence, “you are in Ephesus, but the more fundamental truth about you is that you are in Christ.” And with that in mind, in the rest of this opening passage he gives them and us a wonderful exposition of how being “in Christ” leads to the enjoyment of “every spiritual blessing” (Eph. 1:3).

In chapter 2, he goes on to describe how all this begins in our experience. We were dead in trespasses and sins but have been raised up in and with Jesus Christ. In chapter 3, he explores this further: What is involved in being united to Jesus Christ and having our eyes opened to see the wonder of our new status?

In Ephesians 3:14–19, Paul prays that this will happen. Sometimes Christians assume too easily that because they have been given new life, they already know everything they need to learn about God and the gospel. But Paul never assumed that. He well knew that there is more to the Christian life than its beginnings. We all still need the eyes of our understanding opened so that we can grasp the magnitude and grandeur of what has become ours in Christ.

And so he tells us not only how we have been united to Christ by a spiritual resurrection, but also that we have been united to one another. For Paul, this was one of the most dramatic effects of the union. When Jews and gentiles are “in Christ,” the barriers between them are broken down. Together we become one new man, not two; we are being built together in Christ into one new temple. All this Paul goes on to describe in Ephesians 3. Then in Ephesians 4:1–16, he tells us that being united to Jesus Christ means that the church family was created to function like different parts of a single body. To that fellowship, Christ, the Head in whom we are all united, gives a variety of different gifts and ministries. As we each fulfill our role in the body, we build up one another and the whole body in love. And in this way, we also grow up together into Christ and reflect His majesty and glory as our Savior and Lord.

But then Paul comes back to the principle with which he began: “Yes, you are in Christ, but you are also in Ephesus.” There is a clash of worlds and cultures in being a Christian, wherever we live.

Here, then, is the basic question: “How do I express what it means to be in Christ when I am living in Ephesus (or wherever)?” In Ephesians 4:17–6:20, Paul gives practical instructions and encouragement about how we live out being in Christ—first, individually in the transformation of our lifestyle, then corporately in the world in which we live, and then domestically, in terms of our family life in our relationships with our spouse, our children, our parents, or our masters (Eph. 4:17–6:9). In each of these spheres, we are called to live out the implications of the new epicenter of our lives, namely, the fact that we are “in Christ.”