In Christ

You need to get out of yourself and into all the riches of God's grace that there are for you in Jesus Christ. And this is such an important thing. We live in a very subjective world. We live in a self-oriented world. We live in a narcissistic world.

We live in a me-centered world. And that can affect us as Christian believers. And so, we need to get out of ourselves into Christ, and then we need to see everything that is ours in Christ. Paul tells us in Ephesians 1, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. These two words, in Christ, are filled with meaning, and they help us, as Sinclair Ferguson said, to not get lost in ourselves, but to see ourselves as those who are in Christ. And that's what Sinclair Ferguson will be helping us do all week on Renewing Your Mind, as you hear messages from his series, Union with Christ. Many Christians have sadly never heard or read a detailed discussion on the doctrine of our union with Christ. So if this is new to you, I'm glad you're with us, and I hope you'll listen all week. These messages will encourage you to look outside of yourself and see that every spiritual blessing is ultimately found in Christ. Here's Dr. Ferguson. Well, welcome to this new series in which we're going to be studying the theme of union with Christ.

And this is our first study. And if you're looking for a passage or a book from which we might make a good introduction to this theme, it would be helpful to open your Bibles to Paul's letter to the Ephesians. I wonder when people ask you about your faith, how you describe yourself. You might take the view that you are a Presbyterian or a Baptist, or you might say, I'm an Episcopalian. Or you might more helpfully say to them, I am a Christian. And it probably never crosses most of our minds that if you had asked one of the early believers to describe themselves, it's almost certain they would never have described themselves as Christians. The word Christian appears only three times in the New Testament. You remember how the disciples were first of all called Christians at Antioch. And later on in the Acts of the Apostles, King Agrippa rather spits out to the Apostle Paul, do you think you can make me a Christian as easily as that? And do you remember how later on in his letter Peter speaks about suffering as a Christian? And in all likelihood, Christian was a pejorative term.

People used it the way sometimes today. People will spit out the word fundamentalist. It's a hate term, and I think in all likelihood this is how the word Christian came into currency. So, when you read the New Testament, if you read the Acts of the Apostles, for example, the word that's used to describe what we call ourselves is disciple, or sometimes followers of the way. You remember how our Lord Jesus says, John 14 verse 6, I am the way.

And so Christians thought of themselves as followers of the Lord Jesus, followers of the way. If you were to ask the Apostle Paul, how do you most frequently think about yourself? His answer would probably not have been a follower of the way, probably not have been a Christian.

His answer would have been, I am a man in Christ. I remember as a very young Christian reading the Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, you remember, where he goes on to speak about the thorn in the flesh. And he begins by saying, I once knew a man in Christ who had these extraordinary revelations of God's wonder and grace, so extraordinary I didn't feel it was legitimate for me to describe them to others. And I vividly remember as a young Christian, wondering as I read this, who is this man in Christ, this anonymous man in Christ, to whom Paul is referring? And being slow of thought and living in a cold climate, eventually it dawned on me, he is actually speaking about himself. This is the chief way in which the Apostle Paul thinks about himself.

He is in Christ. And if you take those words and reflect on them and then, for example, take a quick read through Paul's thirteen letters, you will be astonished how often he uses that expression or some form of it, so astonished that if you've never noticed it before, you will wonder how on earth you have been reading the Bible so long and never noticed this is the central way in which the Apostle Paul thinks about himself. And it's these two words, a little preposition and a great noun, that we're going to be thinking about in different ways in the course of our studies together, what it means to be in Christ. By the end of these sessions, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is the longest exposition of two words that there has ever been in the history of the Christian Church. But the fact of the matter is we will only be able to scratch the surface of this rich and wonderful doctrine.

And I hope that by the end of it, we will never forget that this is who we are as Christians. Every single day of our Christian life, we will remind ourselves and be reminded when we read the New Testament that what is most fundamentally true about me is that I am somebody who is in Christ, a man in Christ or a woman in Christ. There are over 80 occasions when Paul uses this language, and many other occasions he speaks about himself as being in the Lord or being in Him or in the Lord Jesus Christ. And there are actually many other passages in his letters, which we will focus on in our studies, many other passages where, although he doesn't use this language, this language is presupposed and assumed in everything that he says. One New Testament scholar uses what I think may be a good illustration.

He says the word mafia, apparently, I've never seen the movie, he says the word mafia never appears in the movie The Godfather, but the whole of the movie is about the mafia. And so, when first of all we come to the many references to being in Christ, in the Lord, in Him, it opens up our understanding that even where the expression is not used, it's the background to everything the Apostle Paul has to say about living the Christian life. We are men and women, young people who are in the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is what we're going to try and explore together. And I want to introduce this thought by reflecting just a little on Ephesians chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 1, and then on the rest of Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Ephesians 1, what does that bring to mind? To many people who are well schooled in Scripture and in Christian doctrine, the first thing they will say is, oh, that's the passage about election. We are chosen in Christ. And, you know, when we say that, we may be glossing over the fact that it's in Christ that we are chosen. And in actual fact, when Paul opens his great letter to the Ephesians with these wonderful words from verse 3 right to the end of verse 14, which is one long sentence in the Greek text, that is what he is really thinking about. Yes, it's true he wants to emphasize the origin of this, God's sovereign election. But what he wants us chiefly to see is the privileges, the blessings that are ours if we are actually in Christ. Indeed, he opens the letter in a very interesting way, doesn't he? He writes to the saints who are in Ephesus but who are faithful in Christ Jesus.

And the whole of the letter evolves from that. Christians are citizens of two different worlds. We live, in this case, in Ephesus, or in New York, or in Memphis, or in London, or in Paris, or Argentina, or Seoul, Korea, or perhaps we live in Jerusalem. But if we are Christians, we live there in that place fundamentally as those who are first and foremost in Christ Jesus. And of course, this is the reason why if you travel the globe and go to some of these cities and meet Christian believers, you become conscious that we are fellow countrymen together. We belong to the same city. Our citizenship, says Paul to the Philippians, is in heaven. We belong to the same nation.

We are under the same King. We are all who believe in Him in Christ Jesus. And in the verses that follow, he begins to elaborate on that. For example, God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. The point that He makes there, to which we will need to return, is that there are no spiritual blessings available to us except those that come to us in Christ Jesus. And so it is to this union with Christ that we need to look in order to appreciate the blessings that are ours.

He explains how all this began. We were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. We were not chosen apart from Christ, but in Christ. And then he 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.

Verse 7, in Him we have redemption through His blood. In verse 9, the purposes that God is accomplishing, He is accomplishing for us in Christ Jesus. He set forth those purposes in Christ.

Indeed, that purpose, verse 10, is that He wants to unite all things in Christ Jesus in heaven and on earth. At the back of his mind here may be the notion that God has created two families, the family in heaven, the family on earth. Part of the family in heaven rebelled against Him. The family on earth rebelled against Him. And so that family has been distorted.

This family, this branch of the family has fallen. But what happens in Christ Jesus is it's not only that we are reconciled to God in Him and brought back into His family, but that God's purpose in Christ Jesus is that He would bring the family in heaven and the family on earth together as one family under one head in the new heavens and the new earth. So, the Apostle Paul has this thrilling cosmic understanding of what it means for us to be in Jesus Christ. And he goes on to speak about the fact that in Christ we have a glorious inheritance. And in verse 12, this is all as a result of our hope, that is our quiet assurance that we are in Christ. And in verse 13 he reassures us that this hope will not be disappointed. We who were the first to hope in Christ will be to the praise of His glory. 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. These blessings seem to pour out upon Christian believers. But the conduit and the source of all of these blessings is exclusively our Lord Jesus Christ. And this is why the great masters of the spiritual life have urged us to look nowhere else for blessing, to look nowhere else for blessing, but to our Lord Jesus Christ and to the privilege we have of being united to Him. And what's surprising, I think, that B. B. Warfield, the great century ago theologian, is reputed to have said, Ephesians 1, 3 to 14 should never be read in church.

It should always be sung. And you catch the sense, don't you, of the privilege that is ours. You realize how big, how gigantic is this little prepositional phrase, in Christ, because it covers everything that is ours in Him and everything that becomes ours because we belong to Him. And you see here, even in these verses, the Apostle Paul covers virtually the whole of the Christian life from its origin in our being chosen in Christ to our final experience of the inheritance that is ours by grace through the Spirit in Christ. And when you think about that against the background of these Christians, they are in Ephesus, but more fundamentally, they are in Christ. And then read through the rest of the letter, you'll see how this notion opens up every dimension of living the Christian life. In chapter 2, how we are dead in trespasses and sins, weren't we? How we are raised up in and with Jesus Christ, how it all began in our lives.

And then he begins to explore this in chapter 3. What is it that involves us in the blessings of being united to Jesus Christ and having our eyes opened to see the wonder of this? Isn't it interesting that Paul prays that that will happen? I wonder if you have ever met Christians who seem to assume that because they're regenerate, they know everything already.

But Paul never assumed that about those who had been brought to faith through his ministry. He realized they needed the eyes of their understanding opened so that they could begin to grasp the grandeur of what had become theirs in and through our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, if he tells us in chapter 2 not only how we got there by our resurrection in Christ, our spiritual regeneration, our being united together across the borders between Jews and Gentiles so that we would be built together into one temple in the Lord, then in chapter 3, he goes on to describe for us what's involved in being there in Christ. And then in the chapters that remain, he tells us in the first half of chapter 4 that we are never alone there. All those who are united to Jesus Christ are united to one another. And he speaks about us as the body with different parts, those who are united to Christ and within that fellowship given different gifts and different ministries so that we might grow up together to reflect the majesty and the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And then he comes back to this principle with which he began. Yes, you're in Christ, but you're also in Ephesus. There is a clash of worlds in your life.

There is a clash of cultures in your life. And he begins to work through for these Christians, how do I live out what it means to be in Christ when I'm living in Ephesus or wherever I'm living? And he gives us this practical encouragement about how we live out being in Christ individually in the transformation of our lifestyle, and then corporately in the world in which we live, and then so beautifully, doesn't he, in terms of our family life. What does it mean to be in Christ living in your family, your relationship with your spouse, your relationship with your children?

If you're a child, then your relationship with your mum and dad. And he says, this is all taking place in our Christian lives because we are in the Lord. We are in Christ. And then, perhaps surprisingly, he ends with the famous warfare passage in chapter 6 and verses 10 through 20. And once you have seen this, then the words with which he begins this section make sense, be strong in the Lord, be strong in the Lord. And one of the most striking things then about what he is saying is at the beginning of Ephesians, he's saying you're in Christ, but remember you're also in Ephesus. And he ends by saying, be strong in the Lord because being in Christ is the very sphere in which you will find yourself under attack.

And it's actually very striking the way he bookends this marvelous letter in this way. He says, in Christ we have been raised up into the into the heavenly realms. But then at the end of the letter, where is this spiritual conflict fought? He says, we're not resting against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.

Where are they? They are in the very heavenly realms into which we have been brought through our union and communion with our Lord Jesus Christ. And this, of course, is the reason why pastors everywhere all the way down through the ages have so often had new Christians, baby Christians coming to them perhaps after a few months and saying, Pastor, tell me, why is it that life seems to become more difficult for me now that I've become a Christian, now that I'm united to Christ? And the reason is before you were united to Christ, you were, as Paul says in chapter 2, you were ruled by the powers of darkness.

They did not need to make much effort to keep you there, but now that by God's grace you have escaped into Jesus Christ, we may say all hell is let loose against you because you belong to the Lord Jesus. And although Satan and his minions know they can never destroy your salvation, they will do everything under their power to destroy your enjoyment of that salvation and your assurance of that salvation. And so he says right at the end, you need to wear the armor of God. And as you know that passage well, I'm sure you have reflected on the fact that every single part of that armor is the armor that Jesus Christ Himself has worn so powerfully.

Now, here's a very important principle for us to grasp as we come to the end of this study. I wonder if when you became a Christian somebody encouraged you to let Jesus into your heart because we've lived in a subculture in the evangelical world where that has been the common language about becoming a Christian. You need to let Jesus in.

Now, there are some occasions in the New Testament where the apostles speak about Christ coming in, but dominantly the teaching of the New Testament is that you need to get out. You need to get out of yourself and into all the riches of God's grace that there are for you in Jesus Christ. And this is such an important thing. We live in a very subjective world. We live in a self-oriented world.

We live in a narcissistic world. We live in a me-centered world, and that can affect us as Christian believers. And so we need to get out of ourselves into Christ, and then we need to see everything that is ours in Christ.

I remember many years ago now as a young student I went to a student conference in the Netherlands, and I was given the opportunity to speak. And one of the fellow students who was there, a very sweet man whose friends called him Appi Ari, said to me, are you going to speak to us about the life out of Jesus Christ? And I said, no, Ari, I'm going to speak to you about the life in Jesus Christ. He said to me, ah, this is what I mean.

And I thought that is exactly right, isn't it? Those who are in Christ live. I thought he was saying apart from Jesus Christ, but what he meant was living the Christian life out of the resources that are ours, because from eternity to eternity we are united to our Lord Jesus Christ, and we will see more of this next time.

What an important perspective to be reminded of, especially because the world around us continually encourages us to look inward. Today you heard a message from Sinclair Ferguson's series, Union with Christ, and this series has helped Christians to gain a fuller understanding of what it means to be a Christian and has helped them grow in their appreciation for the Gospel. It's a 12-message series, and we'll send you a copy for your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. In addition to the DVD set, you'll receive lifetime digital access to the messages and the study guide. So after donating, simply log in to the free Ligonier app where all of your digital resources can be found from Ligonier Ministries, and you'll be able to access the series there.

So visit renewingyourmind.org or give us a call at 800 435 4343. As we heard today, the Apostle Paul speaks so often of us being in Christ. Well, tomorrow Sinclair Ferguson will press a little harder on what that means by examining Paul's conversion. That's Tuesday here on Renewing Your Mind.