In Christ Jesus (Part 2 of 2)

The Bible says that Jesus is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. So does that mean we can do whatever we want because Jesus has taken care of sin? Alistair Begg provides the answer today on Truth for Life. He's teaching from Ephesians chapter 2.

We're focusing on verse 13. Now, we've said this before, and we need to keep saying it, that while God elects to salvation, some people didn't receive him, by and large, but to all who did—notice the verb receive him, notice the verb who believed in his name—he gave the right to become the children of God. Unless a man is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. A lady once said to George Whitefield when he was preaching, she said, Whitefield, why do you keep saying to people, you must be born again?

And Whitefield said, because you must be born again. There is no other way. Well, did you bring about your own birth? Physically? No. Spiritually?

No. Oh, I know that someone told you, you must return to Christ and be repentant of your sins, and you did all that, and it seemed like you were doing everything. But now you've gone along the road a little while, and you keep looking back and further back and further back and say, you know, it's remarkable that I was even there. It's remarkable that he gave me that book.

It's remarkable that she shared with me what she did. And as you trace the line further back, where do you trace it to? You trace it to eternity. In him you heard the gospel. You believed. Now, the fact is—and this is what Paul is, of course, pointing out in the classic section of 8, 9, and 10 of chapter 2—that the faith, our faith, our laying hold of the promises of God, is actually rooted in the activity of God. For by grace you have been saved through faith. It's your faith.

And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. So the identity that is ours in Christ and the mystery of the work of Christ are there with each other. Paul, in Romans, as you know, begins by showing how the whole world is accountable before God. All have sinned and have come short of the glory of God.

He points out that there's no way that we can work out our condition and put ourselves in a right standing with God. He then says, but the glory of the good news is that the righteousness of God has been manifested. It's apart from the law, and it is that which the law and the prophets have testified to, but it is the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

Okay? So a righteousness that is alien to us through Jesus Christ as a result of what Christ has done—he has kept the law in its perfection, he's the only righteous man that ever lived, he has borne the penalty of sin, which we deserve, but he took in our place—and now that righteousness is imputed to all who believe. Therefore, it is not to those who don't believe.

As Calvin says, all that Christ has done for us is of no value to us so long as we remain outside of Christ, so that there is an appropriation, there is an acceptance, there is a gift that is to be received. And whether that takes place instantaneously in a great dramatic moment or whether it takes place over a period of time, whatever way it comes about, eventually the person begins to sing the songs and suddenly says, You know, I actually believe this. Something has happened to me. I guess I have been born from above, and I believe. And as a result of believing, I know myself to be included in this company. Now, by the time he gets to chapter 6, Paul is recognizing the fact that somebody will put up their hand and say, Well, if this justification-by-faith thing means that I am completely righteous in Christ, that I am now raised with him, as he said in Ephesians 1, that I am seated with him in the heavenly places, that the whole thing is signed, sealed, and delivered, why don't I just sin as much as I want to sin?

Actually, I can't affect the thing at all. Paul says, Now, listen, let's just think about this. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin? We'll just go on sinning so that grace may abound, so that we can say, Look how wonderful God is that he forgives? By no means.

Now, what's his argument? How can we who died still live in it? What do you mean died?

We're alive. No, died with Christ in his death. And then he says, Picture it in terms of baptism. Don't you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism. Not that baptism achieved this, as the Roman Catholic Church teaches, but that baptism portrayed this. So when the person has been brought face to face with the Word of truth, the gospel of salvation, and has believed, has discovered who Jesus really is, as Paul did—Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus—then it follows, logically, that they would then be prepared to let everybody know that they are under new management, that they have been brought underneath the jurisdiction of another other than themselves. So the baptismal pool—which I stand on top of here closed mercifully—but the baptismal pool is like a grave, and it is purposefully like a grave, so that when the person is baptized, the metaphor unfolds. Buried with him in baptism, raised with him to newness of life.

Nothing special in the water, all accomplished by Christ, but portrayed then in this way. Now, what is Paul's argument? He says, You live in a society where they regard sex as just fun with anyone you want anytime you want. But you have been united with Christ. You now live in a community where Jesus says sex is for the enjoyment of relationships within the commitment of marriage and only within the commitment of marriage. Therefore, since you have been united with Christ, it is absolutely incongruous for you then to engage in that which he who is now your Lord and King has told you is off limits.

You can take it all the way down the line. Society says you are what you have amassed. Jesus says, Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Society says it's the tough guys that win. Jesus says, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Society says, Give as good as you get, get them back. Jesus says, Forgive your enemies, and do nice things to those who can't stand you. So, he says, what is the impetus for this? It is that you are united with Christ. It is not that you've decided to be religious. It is not that you've determined to live a better life. In fact, you even surprise yourself, because you know yourself to be sinful. You know how easy it is to be tempted.

And the answer to it is not to pull the shutters up and run for your life. The answer is to remind yourself who you are. This is who I am. I am a new creation. I died with him. I have been raised with him. He ascended, and I ascended with him.

I have been seated with him in the heavenly places. It is absurd. It's not impossible.

But that's the appeal, you see. Dementia is a dreadful thing, is it not? When people go older—especially, I guess, pre-senile dementia, where there is a loss of identity, people no longer know who they are, you find them in the street, they have no way of identifying where they're going and what they're doing—it's a terrible thing. But what is an even worse thing?

It's for that to happen. And in that case, you've known who you are, and you've forgotten who you are. But in the case of some of us in Jesus, we've never known who we are. We've never known who we are.

We've got a kind of dementia as it relates to our identity. And that's why Paul, a hundred and sixty-plus times, says to his readers again and again and again, You need to know who you are. You need to know that your life is Christ's life. And when you go from Romans 6 into Colossians 3, as I suggested, it comes across with great clarity.

Indeed, I've already been dipping into it. You can sense that when you turn to Colossians 3. If then—or since then, equally good—if then, since then, you have been raised with Christ, what does that mean? Well, we've been united with Christ. That's his argument in Ephesians 1. The same power, he said, that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that has been unleashed in your life to bring you from death to life. He was raised, and you were raised with him. He has ascended, and you have ascended too.

As Don Carson told us as pastors at the conference a few weeks ago, as he was speaking tangentially about this, he says this notion of being raised with Christ is the spatial dimension of realized eschatology. You have to love Don Carson for just a phrase like that. But it makes perfect sense. In other words, this is absolutely done and certain.

It's not questionable. We are both in Christ, and we are in Cleveland. We are raised, and we're down here. We are both perfect and horribly imperfect—perfect in the righteousness of Christ. He looks on us, and he sees us in his Son. Our wives look on us, and they don't see us like that. We look on ourselves, and if we look inside of ourselves, there's only reason for discouragement.

There's only reason for disappointment. "'Cause I haven't done what I said I would do. I've done what I said I wouldn't do.

I was going to do this, and I didn't do that, and I probably did it again," and so on. So where do I look? Well, I look to my identity. I am in Christ, a new creation.

That's what he's saying. Since then, you have been raised with Christ. Seek the things that are above. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. For you have died—and here's this amazing phrase—and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

My life is hidden with Christ in God. We used to sing it as children, safe in the arms of Jesus, safe on his gentle breast. I used to love that song as a child. Such a beautiful metaphor. I'm safe. He's got me, and he's keeping me, and he won't let me go.

Why? Because he took the initiative in getting a hold of me, and he didn't get a hold of me to let me go. The marriage of Christ to his church is an irrevocable engagement. That's what makes marriage wonderful, if you can stick with it, you know? That's why I love songs with the lines like, As long as old men sit and talk about old women, as long as old women sit and talk about… No, as long as old men sit and talk about the weather, as long as old women sit and talk about old men, honey, I'm gonna love you forever. And Overstreet finishes that song. If you wonder, he says to his wife, if you wonder how long I'll be faithful, well, just listen to how this song ends.

"'Cause I'm gonna love you forever. Forever and ever. Amen."

Now, on our best day, we can only approximate to that. But God says that. That's exactly what God says. When he took a hold of you, when he drew you to himself, when you, in childlike trust, opened up your empty hands and took hold of that which he made available to you by his death on the cross, he promised—in fact, way before you even did anything, he had already promised.

That's what makes it so amazing. I'm gonna love you forever. Loved with everlasting love. Led by grace, that love to know.

Spirit breathing from above, thou hast taught me it is so. Oh, what perfect peace is this! His forever, only his, who the Lord and me shall part. Ah, with what arrest of bliss Christ can fill the loving heart. Heaven and earth may fade and flee, and earth-born light in gloom decline. But while God and man shall be, I am his, and he is mine.

That's what Paul is saying. He's saying, This is what has transformed my life. I was a radical Jew. I hated this Jesus thing. But he has transformed me. And I know now that the reason that I tell you this story, the reason that he says in 2 Corinthians 5, I say to you, I beseech you on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God. In other words, receive the reconciliation that God has provided for you in Jesus. And when you do, you'll discover that your identity is just this, and that your security is found in this, and that your mentality will be governed by this.

Now, we'll go on from here later on, but for now we should draw this to a close. And I want to remind you of a story I told some years ago now about a Chinese student that I met on Harvard Square in a coffee shop one morning when I was there for a conference. It was empty. It was early in the morning. I was sitting at a table. I happened to have my Bible out, because I had to give a talk that day. And so this girl came in with a backpack—just a young Chinese girl, as it turned out—and she saw my Bible, and she said to me, she said, Are you a Christian? I said, Yes.

By that time, I wasn't, you know, doing what I do now. I said, Yes. I said, Are you a Christian? And she said, Yes. And I said, Tell me how you became a Christian.

And this was her answer, and I'd never forgotten it. She said, I enter through narrow gate. I enter through narrow gate. Remember what Jesus said?

There is a broad road, it's completely full. There's a narrow road, it leads to life. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved. And the Chinese girl said, I heard the word of truth, the gospel of my salvation.

I believed. I enter through narrow gate. See, that's the thing, isn't it? Somebody says to you, so what is this Christian thing you're on about? What do you mean you're a Christian?

What are you gonna tell them? Well, what Paul's gonna go on and say is, if you want it just in a phrase, especially for the Gentiles, he says, You who were far away he has brought near. So, far away, near. I was once far, far away.

Now I'm near. As I finished my studies this week, I had one picture then in my mind, and it was the picture of Joseph disclosing himself to his brothers in Genesis 45. If you remember, we won't do the background to the story, but eventually, after all the comings and goings, the brothers are present, and Joseph can't control himself anymore, because his brothers are there, and he realizes what he's confronted with. So he shouts out, Everybody out!

Get everybody out of here! And the record records, So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud, so loud that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. And Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph.

What an interesting thing! I mean, the brothers are like, Really? Well, they didn't know he was Joseph. And I would imagine that when he dispensed with the Egyptians, he probably dispensed with the evidences of his statehood.

Perhaps his Egyptian headdress had obscured his visage even from his brothers. And he takes off, as it were, the majesty of his statehood, and he lays it down, and he reveals himself to these guys, I am Joseph. Did I ring any bells for you? Saul of Tarsus is blinded by a light brighter than the noonday sun. He falls on the dust of the Damascus road, and a voice from heaven says, I am Jesus. I'm Jesus. And Joseph says to his brothers, Come near to me, please. Come near to me, please.

It would have been legitimate if he said, I am Joseph. Welcome to Egypt. The jail is down here. You will only be in it a short while, because most of you will have your heads chopped off as a result of all that you've done. You were my enemies. You were opposed to me.

You did all these things to me. But hey, come near to me. That's what Jesus says. That's what he says to you if you have never actually closed with his offer of mercy.

Do you know what he says to you? Come near to me. Draw near to me. How do you draw near to Jesus? By taking him at his word. By believing his promises.

By receiving him. By being placed in Christ Jesus. Being in Christ Jesus doesn't mean we've decided to become religious or to try to live a better life. It means we have a completely new identity, a transformed life. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life.

Alistair returns to close the program in just a minute. Over the next few months, you may be traveling to celebrate the holidays with friends and family. You know, you can take Truth for Life along with you. You can download the Truth for Life mobile app to your phone or your tablet. That way you can listen to the daily program wherever you are, whenever you want.

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The zip code is 44139. Now here is Alistair with a closing prayer. Father, we thank you that your word is clear.

Mine always isn't. Any confusion is always on our side of the fence. So grant, Lord, that we may have absolute clarity in these matters, so that those of us who profess to know you may have our chins lifted up out of our chests, may realize that when we sing, in Christ alone my hope is found, we're supposed to really, really mean that. And help us to marvel again at the wonder of the song that you give us to sing and with which we close. For we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

I'm Bob Lapine. Most of us long for harmony in our families, in our workplace, our communities, in the whole world essentially. Is peace really possible though? Join us tomorrow as we see what the Bible has to say about that. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.