New Testament Greek: ἐν Χριστῷ translated as ‘In Christ’ – what does ‘in Christ’ mean?
In April 2016, you may remember, Archbishop Justin Welby, revealed that he had recently discovered that his biological father was not Gavin Welby, his mother’s husband.
In his press statement, he explained that, although the news came as a great surprise, ‘I know that I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not in genetics, and my identity in him never changes.’
As I listened to his steady voice and calm manner as he read out his statement, I wondered what those listening made of the phrases ‘who I am in Jesus Christ’ and ‘my identity in him.’ Christian poetic jargon? Ecclesiastical psychobabble? An awkward way of simply saying ‘as a Christian’?
‘I know that I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not in genetics, and my identity in him never changes.’
And, maybe, for those whose church-attending ears are more attuned to New Testament phraseology, ‘in Christ’ is a familiar phrase often quoted by St Paul and inferred by Jesus. ‘In Christ’ or ‘in Jesus Christ’ is mentioned over 160 times in the New Testament. But, even among churchgoers, is this simply a phrase devoid of any greater meaning than ‘a Christian believer?’
Two hymns ‘In Christ Alone’ (written in 2001) and Charles Wesley’s ‘And Can It Be?’ (1738) repeat the phrase and are popular still in churches today.
But what does the two-word phrase ‘in Christ’ mean? What picture does it paint?’
Jesus also used very similar phraseology:
‘Abide in me and I in you’ John 15v4; ‘The Spirit dwells with you, and will be in you’ John 14 v 17, ‘As You, Father, are in me, and I in you…may they be one just as we are one: I in them and You in me’ John 17 v 22,23
Paul also talks of the Israelites being ‘baptised into Moses’ (1 Cor 10v2) and of Christian believers being ‘baptised into Christ Jesus’ (Rom 6v3) and believers former state of being ‘in Adam’ (1 Cor 15v21)
To explore the phrase ‘in Christ’ I am using three pictures (i) the container (ii) the inheritor (iii) blotting paper.
Picture 1 The Container
Tools in a box, passengers on a bus, members of a team
The tools are contained in the toolbox and go where the box goes, as do the passengers and the members of the team. So, this picture ‘works’ in the sense that the Israelites, having chosen to follow Moses into the desert, or believers having chosen to follow Christ go where Moses in the Old Testament or Christ leads. Or, if a more static picture is envisaged believers in Christ are positioned where He is, spiritually speaking, contained ‘in Him’.
This picture works quite well for ‘in Christ’ but not so well for ‘Christ in you’. If Jesus is Lord then we follow, He doesn’t follow us, so ‘Christ in you’ could suggest He goes where you lead.
More doctrinally, this phrase is impossible to marry with ‘substitutionary’ atonement.
Jesus died on the cross for us, in our place. The sinless died for sinners. It was a sacrifice that cost everything, the price was paid in His blood to reconcile us to God. God’s wrath was poured out on Christ, not us. He was a substitute. A simple illustration that is often used is of a law court. The guilty person in the dock is awaiting the judge and the sentence. The sentence is the death penalty. All looks lost until we find the judge acquitting the guilty, someone else having died in their place.
Paul summarises this in Romans 5v8,9
‘God demonstrates His own love for us – while were sinners Christ died for us…and acquitted (or justified) us by His blood’
The problem with ‘substitutionary’ atonement isn’t that it is untrue. It is true. We can say that Chrost’s death and his blood atoned for our sins. Wonderfully true. Once you ‘see it’, that Christ took all our sins and died in our place, and can say ‘Christ died for me’, you know you are forgiven and have been reconciled to God. A relationship of love has begun.
The problem isn’t that it isn’t true, the problem is that it is incomplete.
The guilty defendant is released. He has no criminal record. It’s all been wiped, a clean slate. But the defendant’s nature has not changed. We are left with, as many say, ‘we are sinners saved by grace’ but how can Christ have sinners contained ‘in Hm’ and how can sinners have ‘Christ’ living in them? It doesn’t fit, it doesn’t marry.
Many square the circle by saying ‘Christ in me, the hope of glory’ (Col 1v27) gives me faith that I can be changed, transformed, sanctified, and become more like Christ. Changed from the inside-out. Or even, to quote John the Baptist, ‘I must decrease, that He may increase’.
This is the logical conclusion of the gospel being viewed through substitutionary atonement alone.
The sinner may be ‘covered over with a robe of righteousness’ (Is 61v10) so that when God looks at me, He doesn’t see me but Christ’s righteousness covering me, but the sinner is still a sinner, he or she has not had their essential sinful nature changed.
The problem with ‘substitutionary’ atonement isn’t that it is untrue. It is. But it is incomplete. It is half the story.
Lastly, the limitation of this picture, of tools in a box, is either that there is ‘Christ in me’ a small Christ, contained in a large me, or ‘in Christ’ a small me contained in a large Christ. The tool is not organically joined to the toolbox or the passengers on the bus to the bus. And yet the New Testament speaks of us ‘abiding in Christ’ or being ‘one with Christ’. This picture, therefore is of limited usefulness, it helps us in terms of destiny but not relationship.
Conclusion: Picture 1 The Container is an inadequate interpretation of being ‘in Christ’ or ‘Christ in me’ and cannot be married to substitutionary atonement’ because substitutionary atonement is an incomplete gospel.
Picture 2 The Inheritor
This, I would argue is far closer to what Jesus, Paul and other NT writers meant by the phrase ‘in Christ’ or ‘Christ in you’.
If we were ‘in Adam’, we inherit Adam’s sinful nature, we are ‘sinners’ by nature and so we sin, if the Israelites are ‘in Moses’ they inherit everything that was given by God to Moses i.e. the Law, and the spiritual food and drink referred to in 1 Cor 10. Similarly, if believers are now ‘in Christ’ they stand to inherit everything in Christ: His holiness, His righteousness, His eternal life, His limitless power over sin, His riches.
This inheritance, it can be argued, is part and parcel of the New Covenant inaugurated by Jesus’ death on the cross and His blood. Another translation for ‘covenant’ is ‘testament’ as in a person’s Last Will and Testament.
After the last supper with his disciples, Jesus raised a cup and said: ‘this cup is the New Covenant in My blood, shed for you’ Luke 22v20.
To quote the last verse of Charles Wesley’s great hymn, And Can It Be:
No condemnation now I dread Jesus, and all in Him is mine! Alive in Him, my living Head, And clothed in righteousness divine, Bold I approach the eternal throne
Conclusion: Picture 2 is an improvement on Picture 1 but ignores the underlying issue – the incomplete nature of the gospel viewed through substitutionary atonement which fails to explain how we can ‘move house’ from Adam to Christ.
Picture 3 Blotting Paper
Before we look at the blotting paper picture it is important to see how scripture solves the conundrum of moving from Adam to Christ.
This can be done in two steps. Firstly to take a look at the details of the New Covenant and find out what is promised as our inheritance once we’re in Christ. And, secondly, to complete the gospel, to go further in our appreciation of what God achieved for us through Christ’s death on the cross.
(i) The New Covenant
The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel all prophesied that God would bring in a New Covenant (New Testament) to replace the Old Covenant (Old Testament). The old covenant formed by God initially with Abraham (see Genesis 12 and 15) and built on through Moses needed to be replaced:
‘See, the day is coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Judah and the house of Judah not like the covenant…which they broke even though I was like a husband to them…this is the covenant I will make…I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts…’ Jeremiah 31 v 31-34 / Hebrews 8 v 7-12
‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My ways’ Ezekiel 36 v 26-27 / Ezekiel 11v19
When Jesus took the cup and announced that the New Covenant would be inaugurated through the shedding of His blood not many hours after the Last Supper, He was referring to these prophetic announcements made hundreds of years before the events of that Passover meal with His disciples.
No longer were the people of God, Israel, bound to God through their attempt to keep the Law of Moses as inscribed on tablets of stone. Now God will come as a heart surgeon:
1. Remove our stony hearts 2. Replace our hearts with a new fleshy heart 3. Give us a new spirit 4. Come and live in us by His Spirit
And this was all to be achieved through Christ on the cross that Jesus knew lay ahead of Him not many hours after raising the cup after supper and saying: ‘this is the new covenant in My blood’.
(ii) Substitutionary and Inclusive
We have seen how Christ died for us, in our place, and taking the punishment we deserved on the cross. The debt paid at the cost of His own life, through His blood. This is substitutionary atonement.
But the New Testament goes further than this in its disclosure of what God achieved for us through the cross.
‘Do you not know that as many of us as were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death…knowing this that our old man was crucified with Him…now if we died with Christ we shall, also live with Him…’ Romans 6 v 3-8
‘I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I know live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who love men and gave His life for me’ Gal 2v20
‘You died and your life is hidden with Christ in God…Christ is your life’ Col 3 v 2,3
Paul makes it abundantly clear that on the cross, it wasn’t just our sins that were laid on Jesus, but us. Not just sins but sinners.
Jesus took that old Adamic you and I to the cross and nailed it there. Dead. Crucified. God achieved the death of that old Adamic nature, the old Adam, through the death of His Son.
And that through the resurrection we have been raised ‘in Him’, ‘in Christ’ with a new nature. In terms of the promised new covenant, the old Adamic stony heart is removed, replaced with a new Christ-fleshy heart, a new human spirit AND His Spirit to come and dwell in us to cause us to walk in His ways.
‘If anyone thirsts let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’. This he said concerning the Spirit whom those believing would receive, for the Holy Spirit had not yet been given’ John 7v37-39
As Paul put it elsewhere: ‘Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come’ 2 Cor 5v17
And it is ‘of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption’ 1 Cor 1v30
So, Galatians 2v20 shows us that the death of Christ on the cross was not only ‘substitutionary’ – ‘He gave His life for me’ but ‘inclusive’ ‘I have been crucified with Christ’ - it includes you and me, we died on the cross with Christ.
Now we can begin to understand what the phrase ‘in Christ’ or ‘Christ in me’ meant to Paul and similar phrases meant to Jesus looking ahead to His relationship with us post-cross and resurrection.
What is the relationship between the new creation-I, the ‘in Christ-I-Christ-in me’ new creation and Christ Himself - and therefore with the Father and the Spirit? And what about how this affects my daily experience of life, my struggles with sin, temptation, the world and the devil – the forces arrayed against us? How does this affect my view of discipleship or spiritual growth?
Often what we need to do is remind ourselves of the terms of the new covenant. We are beneficiaries of the covenant or testament.
Under the old covenant, the Israelites and Gentiles beyond the covenants in their Adamic nature could not keep the commandments written on stone. Now, in the new covenant, His Spirit writes those laws on our new hearts. ‘True Christianity’ is a Spirit-spirit operation. It is more like an eruption than a life of self-regulation. The life of the Spirit erupts from within.
Jesus put it like this:
‘If anyone thirsts let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’. This he said concerning the Spirit whom those believing would receive, for the Holy Spirit had not yet been given’ John 7v37-39
The heart of the matter is a communion, between the Holy Spirit and our new spirit.
‘The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God’ Romans 8 v 16
‘If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ he is not His’ Romans 8 v 9
‘The love of God is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us’ Romans 5 v 14
‘As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God’ Romans 8 v 1
In many passages, especially in the Acts of the Apostles, we see how believers are spoken to, guided, warned, and empowered by the Spirit.
One example:
‘As they ministered to the Lord and fasted the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart Barnabus and Saul to Me for the work to which I have called them’’ Acts 13v2
This is solid reality. This is the new covenant in operation. This is the relationship, the communion, of God with His new creations in Christ Jesus.
Blotting Paper?
Put blotting paper on ink or pour ink on blotting paper and the result is the same, the ink is absorbed by the paper and if you magnify the fibres of the botting paper you’ll see the ink has soaked into the fibres themselves. It is not possible to say where one starts and the other begins. They are in a state of intimate union.
But this union can only be achieved if the paper is plunged into the ink. This is the meaning of ‘baptism’ or ‘bapteizo’ in Greek. To plunge under. Clothes are dyed by plunging them under the liquid dye.
In the New Testament there are three main baptisms. None mention water. They are baptisms into a person.
Firstly, God plunges us into Christ and, as we have seen therefore into Christ’s death, then to be raised in Christ as a new creation. But first the crucifixion of the old man, and the burial.
‘Do you not know that as many of us as were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death…knowing this that our old man was crucified with Him…now if we died with Christ we shall, also live with Him…’ Romans 6 v 3-8
Those of us who are more church-familiar have a problem. It’s the ticking clock you cannot hear, consigned to the background. It is the same with the familiarity of biblical vocabulary. We have been plunged into Christ. This is a radical statement.
We have been plunged into Christ. This is a radical statement.
Firstly ‘Christ’ means ‘Messiah’ which in turn means ‘the anointed one’ so rewriting this we find that we – mostly Gentile believers – have been plunged into the Messiah, the one promised to the Jews. We often refer to Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, he was born a Jew. But Isaiah and other prophets were constantly reminding the Jews of their ultimate purpose ‘I, the Lord, have called You in righteousness…and as a light to the Gentiles’ Is 42v6.
There is no mention of water in this passage.
Secondly, Jesus baptises us in the Spirit. Plunges us into the Holy Spirit.
John the Baptist prophesied: ‘I baptise you with water, but One mightier than I is coming…He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit’ Luke 3v16
Jesus referred to this after the resurrection when speaking to the disciples:
‘John truly baptised with water, but you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now’ Acts 1 v 5
This was fulfilled 10 days later, on the Day of Pentecost:
‘When the day of Pentecost had fully come…they were all filled with the Holy Spirit…’ Acts 2v 1-4
The New Covenant had dawned but notice that Jesus plunged them into the Holy Spirit, there is no mention of water in this passage.
Lastly, thirdly, the Holy Spirit baptises us into the body of Christ:
‘By one Spirit we were all baptised into one body…and been made to drink one Spirit…the body of Christ…’ 1 Cor 12v 12-27
Again, there is no mention of water.
The picture is now complete. There is a union between God and the believer. It turns out that we are ‘containers’ of Christ in us. But the ‘us’ has been redefined through the death and resurrection of Christ. The new ‘Christ-in-me’ creation is fused; the new spirit with the Holy Spirit. As new creations in Christ, we inherit all that God has done in and through Christ’s death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification. And, lastly, we are not only fused as one with Christ but with all other believers in what the New Testament calls the body of Christ: ‘now you are the body of Christ and members individually’ 1 Cor 12 v 27. That union isn’t like two magnets joined together, distinct yet attracted. Whilst Christ has indeed ascended to glory, and we are on the earth the union is via the spirit-Spirit communion. A little like a portal, joining heaven and earth.
Now it makes sense to pray ‘thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven’ as the Spirit in communion with our spirits can reveal His will which can then be accomplished on the Earth…through us.
Two points to close. Water baptism. And spiritual growth or discipleship.
Water baptism is a necessary symbolic act. Dead bodies need to be buried. When Peter stood up to preach on the day of Pentecost, the crowd that listened while others scoffed (nothing new there!) asked:
‘What shall we do?’ Then Peter said, ‘Repent and let every one of you be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ…and you will receive the gift of the Spirit’…then those who gladly received his word were baptised…about three thousand’ Acts 2 v 37-41
Water baptism symbolises the above three baptisms.
Discipleship and spiritual growth in Christ is not a smooth, continually upward, glorious experience of unending joy and victory for many if not all believers.
As new creations with the Holy Spirit in communion with our new spirits and new hearts the potential is there for us to exhibit the new life, the life of Christ, in this world, in the context of our families, friends, work colleagues, many others we meet, and in the context of all the ways we have lived life before the invasion of Christ. In the West, for example, there is a greater emphasis on rational thought and establishing truth via empirical evidence than in the more spiritual East. We have to unlearn the ways of our culture and learn the new ways of the kingdom of God. During Jesus’s childhood, adolescence, and as a young man he ‘grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and men’ Luke 2v52 We, now, as sons of the Father in Christ, are being called to grow in wisdom in exactly the same way. To learn to be led by the Holy Spirit not the flesh – flesh meaning our natural abilities such as our thinking, our understanding, or our emotions, or our wills, or bodily appetites. None of these things are wrong, evil, or sinful in themselves, but we have to learn who’s boss, the Holy Spirit or our flesh.
In a car, we can ignore the SatNav, but as new creations in Christ, we have to learn to hear our in-built SatNav, the voice of the Spirit, and obey His directions.
When I was 6, a friend let me borrow his bike. I didn’t have a bike and couldn’t ride one. But I was determined to learn. So, as dusk was falling, I rode his bike around and around his back garden, falling off, getting back on, falling off getting back on. By the time I had conquered it and could ride his bike, I was covered in grass stains, my legs were hurting and my wrists bruised from falling off, but I learnt.
God will never give up teaching us to live just like Jesus
God will never give up teaching us to live just like Jesus so that we, like Him, only do what we see the Father doing or speak what we hear. We may suffer all kinds of setbacks, but He is faithful. It’s all there in the New Covenant:
‘I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My ways’
John's posts and poetry is on Unless a seed Blog
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