What does it mean to be “in Christ”?

Question 7047.

Being in Christ is Paul’s favourite way of describing a Christian, and I suspect most of us read straight past it. He uses the phrase, or one of its near relatives, more than a hundred and sixty times. He does not usually call people Christians. He calls them those who are in Christ Jesus, and the difference in emphasis is worth pausing over.

The phrase is not decoration. It answers the question of where a believer stands, and once you grasp what being in Christ involves, whole passages that previously slid past you begin to open up.

A location, not a feeling

The first thing to notice is that the phrase is spatial. Paul writes as though Christ were a place a person could be inside. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

That is a strange way to speak until you remember the Old Testament pattern. Noah’s family was safe because they were in the ark, and the ark took the storm. The manslayer was safe because he was inside the city of refuge, and the avenger could not touch him there.

So being in Christ describes a position rather than an experience. Feelings come and go; a position does not shift with your mood on a Tuesday morning.

What the phrase is built on

Behind it lies the idea that Jesus is a representative head, one who acts on behalf of a whole group. Paul sets this out in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, where Adam and Christ stand as the two heads of humanity. In Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Every human being begins in Adam, sharing his condemnation and his corrupted nature without ever having voted on it. The gospel is that a second head has appeared, and that a person may be transferred from the first to the second.

That transfer is the whole of salvation in one movement. Out of Adam, into Christ. Nothing else about a person changes their fundamental standing.

What comes with being in Christ

Ephesians 1 is the best inventory. In Him we are chosen, adopted, accepted in the Beloved, redeemed, forgiven, given wisdom, given an inheritance and sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Every blessing in the list arrives through the same channel.

That is why Paul can say God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Not some. Every one. There is no additional deposit to be unlocked by a later experience or a higher level of commitment.

So the practical question for a Christian is rarely what else do I need. It is far more often, do I know what I already have as a result of being in Christ?

No condemnation is a positional statement

Romans 8:1 is one of the great sentences of Scripture, and its force depends on the phrase at the end. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Not for those who feel forgiven, not for those who have had a good week, but for those in Him.

That is why my assurance does not have to rise and fall with my performance. The verdict attaches to my location. As long as I am in Him, the condemnation has nowhere to land, because it landed on Him already.

I have found that many believers know this verse and still live as though it read no condemnation for those who are doing well. Learn to finish the sentence the way Paul wrote it.

How a person comes to be in Christ

Nobody drifts into this position. Paul tells the Ephesians that 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. Hearing, believing, sealing.

The Spirit does the joining, baptising the believer into the body of Christ at the moment of faith. That is not a second blessing reserved for the advanced; it is what happens to everyone who trusts Jesus. See union with Christ.

So the way into this position is faith, and there is no other door. Being in Christ is not the reward for a life well lived; it is the starting point of one.

Living from the position rather than for it

Most Christian struggle comes from getting this backwards. We try to earn a standing we already possess, and then wonder why we are exhausted. Paul’s letters almost always begin with what is true of us in Christ and only then move to what we should do about it.

Ephesians spends three chapters on position before it reaches a single command about behaviour. Colossians tells believers to seek the things above because they have already been raised with Christ. The order is never reversed.

So when you are fighting a temptation or facing a fear, the first move is not effort. It is recall. Remind yourself where you are standing, and then act like someone who is standing there.

The phrase also creates a family

If I am in Christ and you are in Christ, then we are in the same place, and Paul draws the obvious conclusion. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.

He is not flattening the differences between people. He is saying that they carry no weight at all in determining standing. The most cultured believer and the least educated occupy exactly the same position.

That should make our churches very difficult to divide, and where it does not, the fault lies with our forgetfulness rather than with the doctrine.

What it will mean at the end

Paul tells the Thessalonians that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him, and that the dead in Christ will rise first. Even in death the phrase does not lapse. Believers do not stop being in Christ when they stop breathing.

And when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. The end of being in Christ is not simply survival but likeness, which is what God determined for His people from the beginning.

That is a future worth steadying yourself with when the present is hard. Your position does not change when your circumstances do.

In Adam or in Christ

Paul allows only two categories, and that is worth stating plainly because our culture assumes a sliding scale of decency. In Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22). Everyone is in one head or the other.

That means the decent unbeliever and the notorious one are in the same position, which offends us, and the mature Christian and the newest convert are in the same position, which comforts us. Standing is determined by which head you are under, not by where you sit on a scale.

So the question is not how you are doing. The question is whose you are, and being in Christ is the answer that changes everything else.

Reading Paul with this in view

Once you notice the phrase you cannot stop seeing it, and letters that seemed dense start to open. Try Colossians. In Him all things hold together. In Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. You have been filled in Him. You were buried with Him and raised with Him.

Paul’s ethical instructions then follow as consequences rather than as demands from nowhere. Put to death what is earthly in you, because you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

That is the pattern everywhere in his writing. Position first, then practice. Understanding being in Christ is what makes the practice make sense, and it is why I would rather teach this doctrine than almost any other. For the fuller treatment see how union relates to justification and sanctification.

A phrase for the ordinary day

This is not a doctrine for conferences. It is for the Tuesday when you have snapped at someone before nine o’clock and the accusing voice starts up. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin (Romans 4:8).

You are still in Him. The failure needs confessing and the day needs redeeming, but your position has not altered by a millimetre. That is what being in Christ gives you, and it gives it on the bad days as freely as on the good ones.

So, now what?

Try this as an exercise. Read Ephesians 1:3-14 aloud and mark every in Him and in Christ. Then write down what is said to be true of you in each case. Most Christians are astonished by the size of the list.

And when you next catch yourself measuring your standing by your performance, stop and finish Paul’s sentence properly. No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Are you in Him? Then the sentence is about you. What would change if you carried that into Monday morning?

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)