Who am I in Christ?

"In Christ" is new creation, a contrast to being "in Adam" (1 Cor. 15:22), the head of the first creation. In new creation, "old things are passed away — all things are become new." He is not speaking of the experience of a believer, but of his new position. Some have been deeply frustrated in trying to apply this to daily experience, for our present body is still connected with Adam, and the fleshly nature is still with us. But positionally we are now brought permanently into this new creation by the death and resurrection of Christ.

Not only has Christ cleared away the sin, but He has taken me out of the place I was in and put me into a new one. My place before God is only in Christ, and in Christ because He bore my sins, because Satan did his worst, because the cup of wrath was drunk. The Christ I know is the One who has accomplished the wonderful work of redemption.

If the holy Son of God was made sin, a sacrifice for sin, and also bore our sins in His own body on the tree, then both our sins and sin the root have been dealt with by God in the blessed Person of His Son, so that before Him there is nothing left to condemn... Note, it is not in us, in ourselves, but in Him. He has been made sin; He has endured its awful judgment; and in Him we are a new creation. In Him we are the righteousness of God. In Him, whiter than snow.

There you find the mind of God, that we should have all the dignity and understanding and power of sonship. It refers not so much to the moral nature we are to be formed in, as to the relationship in which we stand before His face... If you can grasp in any degree how much God loves this wonderful Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom He calls here "the Beloved," you can see what a stupendous revelation it is to us that we are taken into favour in the Beloved... you are taken into favour in the measure of the love He has for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Not only is God fully revealed to us in Christ, but believers are fully presented before God in Him. All the blessing that God has purposed for believers, and that Christ's work has secured for believers, is set out in Christ Himself, in His place in the glory above every principality and power. Our portion and position, as set out in Christ, is complete.

God would remove all questioning from us. He would have His people in perfect rest before Him, so He links the display of judgment with our present standing before Himself in Christ: "for as He is, so are we in this world." As Christ is in resurrection, so are we, though in this world of sin and death. Yes, as He is in glory; as He is, accepted on high in the favour of God; as He is, the enthroned One — so are we in this world at this moment, weak, helpless, sinning though we be.

How blessed it is for every Christian to be able to take account of himself as being "in Christ." Looking at Christ in the presence of God, we see One who is altogether pleasing to God; and we can say, That is how God sees me, in Christ; and that is how I can take account of myself.