5 Practical Implications of Your Union with Christ
Implications of Being “in Christ”
For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. (Rom. 5:19)
We are declared righteous now in status, and his ongoing work in our lives is to make us inwardly righteous as we become more like him. Those declared righteous in Jesus are made righteous through his Spirit. What a wonderful prospect this is for us. As we come to Christ for the first time, we come aware of our need for him, of our natural unrighteousness. As we progress in the Christian life, getting to know the teachings of Jesus, we become even more aware of the depths of our sin within. And yet as we grow in awareness of how unlike Jesus we are, we receive the assurance of knowing that he is at work to make us more and more like him.
In Adam we were doomed, but in Christ we are saved! These truths are enormously practical. They shape how we are to see ourselves and others.
1. Human Identity
We tend to view people through any number of lenses. We think of one another in terms of ethnicity, gender, culture, or economic bracket. We think of people as being young or old, rich or poor. We subdivide and categorize. We’re not always aware we are doing it. The particular grid we place on people will vary according to who we are, and it changes over time.
As young children, we are often very interested in people’s ages. We know our own exact age almost to the month, and we want to know how that compares to others. Upon seeing her great-grandmother, a five-year-old relative of mine exclaimed that this elderly lady must be at least twenty-five years old. During puberty, we may be especially mindful of other people’s gender, as we become increasingly sexually aware. During the early days of our working life, we may be mindful of other people’s economic status or livelihood, maybe even calculating where we all fit in the pecking order of our culture, or mindful of other people’s marital status, wondering if they are in the same bracket as we are. There are any number of ways we can categorize and any number of priorities we might have in doing so. But the most important distinction between people, the most fundamental truth about anyone, is whether they are in Adam or in Christ. This is what matters the most because this is what determines the most. We are all born by nature into Adam. And we can only be reborn into Christ. Our standing before God, our inner nature, and our eternal destiny all flow from which of these two men is our representative. Nothing in life determines more than this.
One with My Lord
Sam Allberry
Brief, compelling devotionals by Sam Allberry help believers understand what it means to be “in Christ” and how unity with Jesus shapes their daily lives.
2. Marriage
It is this difference between being in Adam and being in Christ that explains why the Bible repeatedly teaches that Christians should not marry those outside the faith. Writing to widows considering further marriage, Paul says such people can marry whom they wish to, provided it is someone “in the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:39). This is the crucial identifying marker—not whether the other person has the right kind of look, the right kind of job, the right kind of tastes—but whether that person is in Christ. Elsewhere he writes that Christians should not be “unequally yoked” to unbelievers (2 Cor. 6:14). I think Paul had in mind a broader view than just sex and marriage, but the principle certainly applies to these areas. A Christian must not marry someone who is not a believer.
We mustn’t misunderstand why this is so. Paul is not saying that Christians shouldn’t marry unbelievers because he thinks all unbelievers must be bad and all Christians good. I know many very good non-Christians and a number of quite unpleasant Christians. No, the issue is not simply a matter of someone’s observable behavior; it runs far deeper than that. A Christian and a non-Christian belong to entirely different realities. There is no spiritual overlap at all.
As Peter describes the people of God in his first letter, he calls them, among other things, “a chosen race” (1 Pet. 2:9). God’s people are not just one more demographic, voting bloc, or option on a census form. We are a distinct spiritual race, one that transcends all the ethnic categories of this world. And Christians are not to marry outside this spiritual race (while being free to marry any ethnicity). If you are in Christ, you must marry only someone else who is in Christ. The animating core of who you are as a Christian is too distinct to be blended in such intimacy with someone who is not.
3. Compassion
Properly understood, these things should make us more compassionate. The very part of this we often find difficult—our helplessness through Adam—can soften our hearts to one another.
Adam’s sin makes all who succeed him sinners by nature. The presence of sin in our lives is inevitable. We can’t help it. It doesn’t mean that we’re not responsible or that there aren’t consequences for our sin or that God isn’t right to condemn and punish it. But it shows just how helpless we all are. We’re sinners and can’t be otherwise. When we see another person sin, we’re watching him be the only thing he knows how to be. It doesn’t make it less wrong, but it makes it all the more understandable. We can’t snap ourselves out of this. We can only be reborn out of it.
Every human I set eyes on today (including the one in the mirror) has the same ultimate need and helplessness.
This shapes how we see all humanity, even at its ugliest. It explains the world to us, showing us how even with unprecedented wealth, education, and technology, we can’t seem to get our act together as a species. We may be cleverer, healthier, and cleaner, but we’re not better. We see the ongoing pattern of sin, that inherent Adamness, repeating itself in each new generation. No human advances will get us out of this.
This doesn’t mean that we don’t do what we can to encourage social reform or to pursue justice and righteousness. God’s common grace means we can do some things to restrain aspects of our sinfulness. We rejoice over efforts to abolish trafficking, racial discrimination, or abortion. But we do so knowing the deeper issue hasn’t been resolved: sin is native to us, and sinners are going to sin.
4. Mission
Whenever I meet other people—no matter how different they are from me culturally or ethnically or economically—this lens of original sin helps me understand what they most need deep down. However bewildering another culture may be to me, the underlying substructure of the human heart is the same. Our birth certificates may state that we were born in London or Peshawar or Cape Town or São Paolo. But spiritually, we’re all born in Adam.
However different people might be from us, however complex their background or issues in life, the fact is that we do know what they most fundamentally need—new birth through Christ. This is actually very liberating to know. In an increasingly multicultural world, we may find ourselves living in close proximity to communities vastly different from our own—communities that seem so hard for us to understand. We might be tempted to think that we could never really connect with them or relate to them. Their worldview is too different or their experiences too unlike anything we have ever gone through. We would never be able to truly bridge that gap.
Yet whatever complexities exist at the level of culture, at the level of their spiritual state we can understand others profoundly. They, like us, were born in Adam. We know what it is that they most fundamentally need. We can have confidence that the gospel can help and transform them.
5. Parenting
This teaching about being in Adam and being in Christ can be an encouragement for parents. Your child’s sinfulness isn’t just the result of your imperfections as a parent. Even if, somehow, you had made all the right parenting choices at every moment along the way, your child would still be a sinner.
A friend with a young child caught her trying to bite one of the friends she was playing with. He was distressed by this, of course, but also a little confused. Where had she picked up such a notion? He checked with his wife; she had no idea either. They had had to teach their daughter to use the potty, to walk, to brush her teeth, and a thousand other things. They hadn’t had to teach her to sin. Biting someone out of frustration just came naturally, it seems. My friend described realizing this as a bit of a relief: not every crazy thing his children did was necessarily the result of bad parenting.
The best-raised child will still be fallen. No matter how “advanced” a human civilization becomes, its people will still share the same sinful state as those in the least civilized nation. It makes the gospel all the more urgent and all the more precious. Every human I set eyes on today (including the one in the mirror) has the same ultimate need and helplessness. By nature, we’re all descendants of Adam.
This article is adapted from One with My Lord: The Life-Changing Reality of Being in Christ by Sam Allberry.
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