June 9, The Relationship, Question 2
Which best defines your life: being like Christ or being in Christ?
“If anyone be in Christ.”2 Corinthians 5:17
If anyone be in Christ, that person is a new creation. What an amazing fact! What an amazing promise! This indicates more than simply a moral realignment. A new creation represents being re-created from a fallen state of sin to a vital union with Christ. Now, to be “in Christ” certainly involves striving to be like Him, but there is so much more. Consider 7 expressions of a life lived “in Christ.”
To be in Christ indicates that one has accepted by faith the purpose of the cross.
To be in Christ indicates that our sin debt has been cancelled, and the brokenness of life caused by sin has been restored. This is not because of any good thing on our own. This results from the grace of God which has changed our condition from condemnation to “brand new.” This becomes the result of Christ’s work in us through His death and resurrection.
To be in Christ indicates that by faith in Jesus we are justified before God with Christ’s righteousness substituted for our own failed attempts at being right with God.
To be in Christ signifies that our faith is placed not in ourselves but in the work of Christ. Therefore, no measurable attempt at being like Jesus could ever result in our own righteous standing with God.
To be in Christ becomes the testimony that Christ, through the Holy Spirit, is in us, transforming us from the inside out.
To be in Christ testifies to the Lordship of Christ over our lives. We live for Him, for He has become the ultimate affection of our heart.
To be in Christ references the cross on the steeple more than the steeple, meaning the gospel over the mere presence of religious identity.
This is being “in Christ.” When a person truly becomes a Christian, he or she experiences a total restructuring of life that alters the entire existence: thinking, feeling, willing, and acting. We place our lives in the hands of Jesus, and by faith surrender to Him.
In his book Identity Matters, Christian author Terry Wardle tells the story from his childhood of receiving a “hand-me-down”, fixed-up, big, blue Schwinn bike that was actually a girl’s bike. One day his mom finally allowed him to venture outside his own neighborhood. Wardle tells what happened next:
I had broken free of the constraints of my little neighborhood, and now I was on my own to experience a grand adventure. I felt like a somebody, even if it was a big, blue, girl’s Schwinn bike. With saddlebags! I crossed the railroad tracks and then rumbled over a small creek on a single-lane bridge. As I began to cross, four teenage boys stepped onto the far side of the bridge. I intended to pass on by. They had other things in mind. One of the boys grabbed my handlebars and spun my bike to an abrupt stop. “Hey, where do you think you’re goin’?” he snarled, as another boy chimed in, “Yeah, kid, where ya goin’?” Instantly I knew they intended to beat me up. I was petrified. I couldn’t fight or break free to run, so I stood there frozen. Suddenly one of the bullies asked, “What’s your name?” I answered him in a high-pitched preadolescent, quivering voice, “Terry Wardle.”The three remaining teenagers got a bit silent and looked at one another nervously. “Are you related to Tom Wardle?” Tom was a much older cousin, who happened to play defensive end on the high school football team. But I lied and told them Tom was my brother. They immediately backed off. One of the boys straightened out my shirt, and started saying, “Hey, we were just funning you. No harm. You’re a great kid, and … if anyone ever gives you any trouble, you tell us and we’ll take care of you.”That was a formative day for me. I learned that simply being Terry Wardle was not enough to be respected, accepted, and safe. But, I had to pretend to be something I was not, Tom Wardle’s brother, or they would have roughed me up. I had learned that this is an unsafe and ungenerous world that would demand much more than simply being me – I needed to do more than rely only on my own identity.[1]
Like Terry, we have all found something else upon which to base our identity. But the greatest discovery is that the only sure identity that matters is “in Christ.”
Today, are you stumbling through life trying to be like Christ, or are you truly in Christ. There is a significant difference indeed. Surrender your whole life and identity completely to Him. There is no other way to live. It truly is all about the relationship.
Blessings.
READRead 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 to be reacquainted with your true identity.
[1] Terry Wardle, Identity Matters (Leafwood Publishers, 2017)