"Therefore if any man be
in Christ, he is a new creature."—2 Corinthians 5:17
I. First, then, let us
consider THE CHRISTIAN'S POSITION—he is said to be "in Christ."
There are three stages of the human soul in connection with Christ:
-
the first is
without Christ, this is the state of nature;
-
the next is in
Christ, this is the state of grace;
-
the third is with
Christ, that is the state of glory
Without Christ,
this is where we all are born and nurtured, and even though we hear the
gospel, and the Bible be in all our houses, and even though we use a
form of prayer, yet until we are born again, we are without God,
without Christ, and strangers from the commonwealth of Israel. A
man may stand at the banqueting-table, and may be without food, unless
he puts out his hand to grasp that which is provided; and a man may have
Christ preached in his hearing every Sabbath-day, and be without Christ,
unless he putteth forth the hand of faith to lay hold upon him.... O
that God would make all of us sensible of it who are now the subjects of
it, and may we no longer tarry in the position of being without Christ.
The next state is that
indicated in the text, "in Christ," of which I will say more by-and-by.
"In Christ" leadeth to the third state, which we can never reach without
this second one, namely, to be with Christ; to be his companions
in the rest which he has attained, all his work and labour done; to be
with him in the glory which he has gained, made to see it and to
participate in it world without end. To be with Christ is the angels'
joy, it is the heaven of heaven, it is the centre of bliss, the sun of
paradise. Let us seek after it, and in order that we may have it, let us
labour with all our heart and mind to be found in Christ now, that we
may be in Christ in the day of his appearing.
Turn we now to the
expression itself, "in Christ." ... We were all of us in
the first Adam. Adam stood for us. Had Adam kept the command, we had all
of us been blessed. He took off the forbidden fruit and fell, and all of
us fell in him. Original sin falleth upon us because of the
transgression of our covenant head and representative, Adam the first;
but all believers are in the same sense in Christ... Now, as in
Adam we all fell, so all who are in Christ are in Christ perfectly
restored. The obedience of Christ is the obedience of all his people;
the atonement of Christ is a propitiation for all his people's sins. In
Christ we lived on earth, in Christ we died, in Christ we rose, and he
"hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly
places" in himself. ... He is the ark of God provided against the
day of judgment. We by faith believe him to be capable of saving
us; we come and trust him, we risk our souls with him, believing that
there is no risk; we venture on him confident that it is no venture;
giving up every other hope or shadow of a hope, we trust in what Jesus
did, is doing, and is in himself, and thus he becomes to us our ark, and
we are in him.
...the Lord Jesus explains
this phrase of being in himself in another way. He represents us as
being in him as the branch is in the vine. Now, the branch derives all
its nourishment, its sap, its vitality, its fruit-bearing power, from
the stem with which it is united. It would be of no use that the branch
should be placed close to the trunk, it would be of no service even to
strap it side by side with the stem, it must be actually in it by a
vital union. There must be sap-streams flowing at the proper season into
it, life-floods gushing into it from the parent stem; and even so there
is a mysterious union between Christ and his people, not to be explained
but to be enjoyed, not to be defined but to be experienced, in which the
very life of Christ flows into us, and we by the virtue that cometh out
of him into us, become like unto him, and bring forth clusters of good
fruit unto his honour and unto God's glory.... As the limb is in the
body, even so may you constantly be one with Jesus.....
The phrase "in Christ
Jesus," then, has a weight of meaning in it. ...when he clingeth to the
sole hope of the cross, then is such a man in Christ. He is further in
Christ when he loves Jesus, when the heart having trusted and reposed in
the cross, is moved with deep and warm affection to the Crucified, so
that the soul clings to Christ, embracing him with fervent love, and
Christ becomes the bridegroom, and the heart becomes his spouse, and
they are married to one another in a union which no divorce can ever
separate. When love and faith come together, then is there a blessedly
sweet communion; these two graces become the double channel through
which the Holy Spirit's influence flows forth daily, making the
Christian to grow up more fully unto Christ Jesus in all things. The
riper the Christian becomes, the nearer to the glory, the closer to the
perfection which is promised, the more completely will he think and
act, and live and move, in Christ his Master, being one with Jesus
in all things. I shall not detain you longer over that one matter, every
true Christian is in Christ.
For the rest of this
message, please go to
http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0881.htm