Let us go to Ephesians 1 to start to back this up. We will read verses 15 through 23. I want you to be cognizant of Paul's argument here, if you want to put it that way, what he is leading to, how he constructs this to give us information, edification, and hope, building us up. So be careful as you listen to see his manner of speech here, the rhetorical devices, if you will, to convince us.
After explaining the wonders of our redemption through Christ and the receipt of the Holy Spirit, which is, as he says here, a down payment which guarantees our inheritance in God's Kingdom, Paul then turns to the question. What now? What happens? What is supposed to happen once these great things have been done for us? What do we do? I mean, what the Father has done in giving us these things through Christ is astounding! But we are not supposed to be static upon receiving these things. We are supposed to move forward.
And so he begins in his argument, in his declaration here, by extolling their faith and love, saying, I heard of your faith and your love, and because of that, he does not cease to give thanks for that because those attributes, those virtues are necessary to what is next, what they need to do from the point that they are started out on in this road of sanctification.
So in saying this, he implies that their growth is just beginning and they are just starting on a grand adventure and they have the necessary things that they need. It has been told to him they have faith and love, and that is a wonderful start. That is a wonderful beginning. So he prays that God would give them all that they would need. Everything else. They had the starter pack, but he wanted them to have the whole series. And so he says he prays that God would give them all of what they needed.
Now he begins to list these things. He prays that they will be given the spirit of wisdom and revelation. That they would be given enlightenment. That they would be given a sure hope, something to reach out for. He asked that they would be given understanding of the riches of their inheritance, just how great it is, what it entails, because that is a motivation that can keep you going. You can see the wonderful riches of God that He has out there for us, and we can keep them in mind as we, you know, slog through the mud of this world. It is going to get better. I just need to endure. I need to get to the end. So understanding the riches of our inheritance is an important thing.
He also asked that we get a sense of God's power as shown, as seen in the life of Christ. Because think of this, God loves you as He loves Jesus Christ. It actually says that. Pat [Higgins] did some wonderful articles about this early on. As You have loved Me, Jesus said. The Father loves all His children. And if He was willing to display His great power in the life of Jesus Christ as a human in this world, He is willing to expend the same kind of power out of love for you in this world. Remember, the apostle John said we are as Christ in this world because we are going through the same training regimen that Jesus Christ went through. Now, he came at it with the character of God and the Holy Spirit without measure. He did not mess up like we do. But God is taking us through the same obstacle course and we are running through it the best time we can. We try not to stumble over the stumbling blocks and fall in the pitfalls, but He is giving us the power to get to the end and to rise to the occasion and put on the image of Jesus Christ.
And of course, we are also supposed to think of what happened once Christ died. That God expended His power to raise Him from the dead and have Him ascend to His right hand with all that eternal power and glory. We are on the same course. We need to understand that the motivation that we get from that sort of knowledge will help us in what is next - from our baptism all the way through to our death and resurrection.
By the time he gets to verse 22, … . . .
Now this kind of language is all over the New Testament. It is the image that springs from the idea that we abide in Him or we abide within Him. We are part of Him, members of His Body of which He is the Head. He is the directing influence and authority within the church. And so we all look to Him for guidance and help.
So, Paul and the other apostles write about our being in Christ a great deal because it is a vital concept to understand our place. We are no longer considered in the world, we are in Christ. We are set apart by being so closely associated with our Savior there is no distinction. We are one with Him. We are just part of His Body.
We are one entity in the metaphor. And when He zigs, we zig, because we are connected to Him and when He zags, we zag, because that is where He is going and we are attached. We abide in Him like a branch to a vine. The branches cannot do anything except what the vine does.
Now we could rebel and do something else, but we saw in John 15 what happens to those branches that after they are pruned a bit, do not bear any fruit. They go on the fire. Not good.
But we trust in faith that we are in Christ and that we are doing what is right and God has given us teachers and those sorts of things to help us and then He intervenes directly to keep us in line with the Head.
That is what He is working toward, making us all one in Christ and that we could all be glorified in Him, as part of Him.
But in terms of Paul's use of in Christ and in Him, it is actually fairly typical. He is putting these phrases all over his epistles. In fact, such phrases are found in nearly every passage in Paul's epistles.
In his 14 letters (we are counting Hebrews here), in Christ appears 84 times. In Him, referring to Christ, occurs another 20 times, by Him or by Christ occurs another 13 times, through Him or through Christ another 12 times, with Him or with Christ another 26 times. And these counts, if you added all those up, is 155 times, and do not consider instances of the name Jesus or God or any of His titles like our Lord or in phrases like in His goodness or in His presence.
He is trying throughout all his epistles to get us to understand our place. And our place is in Christ, in Him, with Him, to always be in His presence.
