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“In Christ”

1 Corinthians 1:30

 

Read 1st Corinthians 1:30 and see what the Lord God has made Christ to be to us, and has made us in Christ in the sweet and blessed experience of His grace. — “Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption.

 

Our Experience

Paul is talking about things we experience in Christ. He is talking about every believer’s blessed experience of grace. All true believers, all who are born again by the Spirit of God, are in Christ, vitally united to Him by a living union of faith. As the branches are in the vine, drawing life from and are entirely dependent upon the vine, we are in Christ Jesus. We are in Christ, not by an act of our own free-will, but by the work of God’s free, sovereign, almighty grace. Meditate often, child of God, upon this glorious fact. —— What does it mean to be in Christ?

 

Blessed of God

To be in Christ is to be blessed of God (Ephesians 1:3-6). In the everlasting covenant of grace, God blessed all His people with all spiritual blessings in Christ before the world began. All with which God can or will bless man, He has freely bestowed upon chosen sinners in Christ from eternity, in infinite fulness, and without measure. All who are in Christ have been blessed of God eternally with all spiritual blessings according to God’s electing love. In Christ, we are chosen, adopted, redeemed, forgiven, and accepted of God! But we knew nothing of this great blessedness until we came to be in Christ experimentally by God’s gift of faith, uniting us to our Savior.

 

Favored of God

To be in Christ is to be favored of God, the objects of God’s favor and pleasure. With whom is God well pleased? Only Christ (Matthew 17:5). If we are in Christ and one with Christ, God is well pleased with us for Christ’s sake. He cannot be displeased with the body if He is well pleased with our Head. As the smile of the Father is on His Son unceasingly and justly, so it is upon us in Him!

 

Complete in Him

To be in Christ is to be complete (Colossians 2:10). In Christ Jesus we are complete, full, lacking nothing, perfect. He is all our Wisdom, all our Righteousness, all our Sanctification, and all our Redemption. All that God requires of us, all who believe on the Son of God have in perfect fulness in Him. Being complete in Him, there is no lack, no need, and no room. The only way we can put anything else in is to push Him out!

 

Free in Him

To be in Christ is to be free, freed from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13); freed from the yoke of the law (Romans 10:4), and freed from all possibility of condemnation by the law (Romans 8:1). It is no more possible for a believer to be condemned by God than it is for Christ to be condemned again, for we are in Him. Because we are in Him, because God has imputed Christ’s righteousness to us and will not impute sin to us (Romans 4:8), we can never be condemned. If the Lord God will not impute sin to us, He can never, for any reason, condemn us for sin. We are in Christ!

 

Understand This

 

Be sure you understand this: — Our experience of grace does not make Christ our Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption; and our faith in Christ does not make Him our Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption. But you will never know that Christ is your Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption until you trust Him, until you believe on the Son of God.

That is what the Holy Spirit tells us, when He describes Abraham’s faith as an illustration of saving faith. When Abraham believed the record of God concerning His Son, the Lord Jesus, it was imputed to him (conscientiously) for righteousness (Romans 3:24-26; 4:3-11; 6:11). As our Lord Jesus was “numbered” with transgressors when He experienced being made sin for us, we are numbered with Him when we experience being made the righteousness of God in Him. It is in this blessed and sweet experience of grace, as the sinner believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, that all that Christ is is imputed to him consciously.

 

“The moment a sinner believes and trusts in his crucified God,

His pardon at once he receives, redemption in full through His blood.

The faith that unites to the Lamb, and brings such salvation as this,

Is more than a notion or name: — The work of God’s Spirit it is.

 

It says to the mountains, Depart, that stand betwixt God and the soul;

It binds up the broken in heart, and makes wounded consciences whole.

Bids sins of a crimson-like dye be spotless as snow, and as white,

And makes such a sinner as I as pure as an angel of light!”

 

 

 

Don Fortner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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