This article continues the Gospel and New Covenant series. We recommend beginning with Is Christ Enough? if you haven't already.

Paul uses the phrase in Christ - or its equivalents, in him, in whom, through him - more than 160 times in his letters. One hundred and sixty times. In almost every paragraph of almost every letter he wrote, this phrase appears. It is not decorative. It is not pious filler. Paul is not a man who wastes words, and he is certainly not a man who repeats himself 160 times without meaning something precise and concrete.

And yet for most believers the phrase has become theological wallpaper. It is present everywhere and noticed nowhere. We read past it the way we read past familiar furniture - it is always there, it registers as background, and we have long since stopped asking what it actually means.

This article is an invitation to stop and ask.

Because if Paul meant something specific - and he did - then in Christ is not a description of religious affiliation or spiritual aspiration. It is the most precise and radical description of the believer's actual status before God that the New Testament contains. And understanding it changes everything - including, and especially, the question of where a believer's identity is located and what it actually rests on.

What "In Christ" Is Not

Before we can understand what union with Christ means we need to clear away a few misreadings that have accumulated around the phrase.

It does not mean that the believer has aligned themselves with Christ's teaching and is now trying to live accordingly. That would make in Christ roughly equivalent to following Jesus - a description of moral and spiritual direction rather than ontological position. Paul's usage will not support this reading. He does not say in Christ when he means trying to be like Christ.

It does not mean that the believer has entered a community that belongs to Christ - the church, the covenant people, the new Israel. That would locate the reality of union in membership rather than in the person. The HRM actually comes close to this reading - covenant community, defined by observable markers of belonging, becomes the primary category. But Paul locates everything in the person of Christ himself, not in the community that belongs to him.

And it does not mean that the believer has had a subjective spiritual experience of closeness to Christ - a feeling of his presence, an encounter in prayer, a season of spiritual warmth. Those experiences are real and valuable. But Paul says in Christ to describe an objective reality that is just as true on the days when the believer feels nothing as on the days when they feel everything. It is not a description of emotional state. It is a description of position.

The Historical Dimension - Romans 6

The most important passage for understanding union with Christ is Romans 6:1-11. Paul has just finished the most exhilarating description of grace in all of literature - where sin increased, grace increased all the more - and he anticipates the obvious objection: shall we sin so that grace may abound? And instead of a moral argument he makes an ontological one.

"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin." (Romans 6:3-6)

Read that with fresh eyes. Paul is not saying the believer should try to identify with Christ's death as a spiritual exercise. He is saying something happened. Objectively. Historically. When Christ died, the believer who is in him died with him. When Christ was buried, the believer was buried with him. When Christ was raised, the believer was raised with him into newness of life.

This is what theologians call federal or representative union - Christ acting as the head and representative of his people, so that what happens to him happens to them in him. Adam functioned this way in the garden - his act of disobedience was counted to all who were in him. Christ functions this way at the cross and empty tomb - his death and resurrection are counted to all who are in him. The believer's history has been merged with Christ's history. You were there at Calvary - not physically but representatively, in your head and substitute. And you were there at the empty tomb.

This is why Paul says in verse 11: "So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." The word consider - logizesthe in Greek - is the same word used for the accounting of righteousness in Romans 4. It is not wishful thinking. It is a reckoning with what is actually true. You are dead to sin. Not because you feel dead to sin. Not because you have achieved a level of sanctification that makes sin powerless. But because the one in whom you died is dead to sin, and you are in him.

The Personal Dimension - Galatians 2:20

If Romans 6 gives us the historical dimension of union - what happened to Christ happened to us - Galatians 2:20 gives us the personal dimension. It is one of the most intimate verses Paul ever wrote, and it comes in the middle of a passage where he is describing his confrontation with Peter over the Jew-Gentile table fellowship issue. In the middle of that thoroughly practical dispute he suddenly opens a window onto something astonishing about his own inner reality.

"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

The old Paul - the Pharisee, the persecutor, the man whose identity was built on Torah observance and ancestral tradition and religious achievement - that Paul is dead. Crucified. Not reformed. Not improved. Dead. The person who now lives is defined not by what he does but by who lives within him. Christ in me. The life I now live is not my own performance being measured against a standard - it is Christ's life being expressed through a person who has stopped trying to generate their own standing.

This is the most radical possible answer to the identity question that runs underneath all religious performance. The HRM asks: who are you before God? And the answer it offers is: you are a Torah-observant member of the covenant community. Your identity is expressed and maintained through your practice. Paul's answer is entirely different: you are the person in whom Christ lives. Your identity is located in him and in what he is - not in what you do or what community you belong to or what markers you wear.

And notice the ending of the verse - "who loved me and gave himself for me." Paul does not end with a doctrine. He ends with a love story. The crucified and risen Christ is not an abstract theological category. He is the one who loved Paul personally and gave himself personally for Paul personally. Union with Christ is not a cold positional transaction. It is the most intimate possible relationship - the life of the Son of God taking up residence in a human being who has stopped insisting on living for themselves.

The Positional Dimension - Ephesians 1

If Romans 6 is the historical foundation and Galatians 2:20 is the personal expression, Ephesians 1 is the comprehensive declaration - and its comprehensiveness is almost overwhelming. Paul piles up the phrase in him and in Christ like a man who cannot find enough ways to say it. Count them as you read:

Blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. (v.3) He chose us in him before the foundation of the world. (v.4) In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ. (v.5) His glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. (v.6) In him we have redemption through his blood. (v.7) Making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ. (v.9) A plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him. (v.10) In him we have obtained an inheritance. (v.11) 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. (v.13)

Every spiritual blessing. Not some. Not the ones you've earned or the ones available to the sufficiently obedient. Every spiritual blessing - in the heavenly places - in Christ. Chosen in him before the foundation of the world. Before you existed. Before you could do anything to qualify or disqualify yourself. The choice was made in him, and it was made before time began.

Redeemed in him. Sealed in him. Inheritance given in him. This is what positional union means - the believer's standing before God is not generated by their performance and cannot be altered by their failure. It is located in Christ, and it is as secure and as complete as Christ himself. You do not become more in Christ by obeying more carefully. You do not become less in Christ by failing. The position is in him - and he does not fluctuate.

The Vine - John 15

Jesus himself gives us the most vivid and practical image of union in John 15. On the night of his arrest, walking with his disciples through the moonlit vineyards outside Jerusalem, he says:

"I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5)

The image is precise and deeply practical. A branch does not produce fruit by trying harder. It does not produce fruit by observing the right practices or joining the right community or wearing the right markers. It produces fruit by one thing only - remaining connected to the vine that is the source of everything. The life that produces the fruit flows from the vine through the branch. The branch's role is not to generate but to receive. Not to perform but to remain.

The word translated abide or remain - meno in Greek - appears ten times in John 15:1-11. Jesus is not making a casual suggestion. He is describing the entire structure of the believer's life. Everything - fruit, joy, answered prayer, love for one another - flows from this one reality. Remain in me. Stay connected. Don't wander off looking for another source of life.

The HRM, in its deepest impulse, is a movement away from the vine toward the branch's own resources. Torah observance as a lifestyle framework is the branch deciding that it can generate its own life through disciplined effort. The fruit may look impressive from a distance. But it is not connected to the source - and Jesus is unambiguous: apart from me you can do nothing.

Where Is Your Identity Located?

This is the question that union with Christ answers at the most fundamental level - and it is the question that exposes the deepest problem with any performance-based religious framework.

If your identity before God is located in your practice - in your Torah observance, your Sabbath keeping, your feast attendance, your dietary compliance, your covenant markers - then your identity is as stable as your performance. On the days you observe well you are more fully yourself. On the days you fail you are less. Your standing fluctuates with your obedience. And the anxiety that generates is not a side effect of the system - it is built into the system. Because no one observes perfectly. And if your identity depends on your observance, then your identity is always under threat.

But if your identity is located in Christ - in your union with him, your position in him, the life of him that dwells in you - then your identity is as stable as he is. Which is to say, perfectly stable. Eternally stable. The same yesterday, today, and forever.

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1)

No condemnation. Not reduced condemnation for the well-performing. Not condemnation held in reserve pending continued obedience. None - for those who are in Christ Jesus. The location is everything. And the location does not change.

The Downstream - Where This Leads

Understanding union with Christ does not lead to passivity or moral indifference - the objection Paul anticipated and demolished in Romans 6. A branch connected to the vine is the most active and fruitful thing in the vineyard. But its activity flows from life received rather than effort expended. The obedience that union with Christ produces is not the anxious performance of someone trying to maintain their standing. It is the natural overflow of a person who has been loved completely and is responding from fullness rather than fear.

And union with Christ leads somewhere specific theologically - somewhere we will develop fully in the next article. If the believer is genuinely in Christ, and Christ is the fulfilment of everything the old covenant was pointing toward, then being in Christ means standing inside that fulfilment. Not outside it looking in. Not approaching it through observance. Inside it. Already there. Already arrived.

The shadow pointed to the substance. The substance has come. And you are in him.

Continue reading: Fulfilment Theology - The Substance Has Arrived

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20