We are containers . . .

Some children think that they are a bag of blood. If they are injured and bleed, their minds imagine themselves leaking until their blood is all gone and they become, well, it isn’t hard to picture the rest.

Normally, people don’t think of themselves as containers, but a phrase in the Bible suggests it. Scripture talks about people being “in Adam” or “in Christ” and the idea is something like a container. I’ve heard it explained that to be “in Christ” means that I am like an envelope put inside a book. Wherever the book goes, the envelope goes. Whatever happens to the book, happens to the envelope. When God looks at the envelope, He sees only the book.

The Apostle Paul uses this and other ways to describe a Christian’s union with Jesus. In Romans 6, he says, “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.”

This works because of the “in” principle. When the first man was created, the rest of the human race was “in him” because his body held the materials for his children, and even his children’s children, and so on. If he had of died without becoming a father, all humanity (as we now know it) would have died with him. This is described in the Bible as being “in Adam” and is part of our existence in this physical world. This term of being “in” someone who lived before is often used in Scripture.

It is also used in a spiritual sense. The Bible says God put everyone “in Christ” so that whatever happens to Him happens to everyone. Spiritually, I was united with Him or put in Him so that when He died on the cross, I died too.

Watchman Nee says this: “That death out-dies all other deaths. . . . In Christ all those who deserve to die have died, with the result that he who had the power of death (the devil) no longer has dominion over them. They are dead; and ashes are something of which you can never make a fire. . . . A house once burned to ashes cannot be burned a second time, for if the first fire has done its work there is nothing for the next to do. For us redeemed sinners who have already died a death in Christ, death itself is passed away. We have become possessors of His incorruptible life.”

That “in” principle makes me dead in Christ to my old life (Paul calls it the old man), and alive in Christ to new life. Not only that, wherever Jesus is, I am. By dropping the concept of time (which ends in eternity and everything becomes NOW), Paul even says, “God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, make us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus . . .”

In the mind of God, and in the mind of those who are in Christ, we are already there. The certainty of our destiny is tied to the reality of being in Him. I am “in” the One who died for me (we all died), and who lives for me (all are made alive when we say ‘yes’) and who ascended to heaven so that where He is, I am also.

But right now, as Paul says, I am “present in my body and absent from the Lord” in the sense that in this current time and to human eyes, the envelope is more visible than the book.

However, another exciting “in” principle is also at work, one that Paul describes as the “earthen vessel that contains a great treasure.” Not only did God put me in Christ, but He also put Christ in me.

My challenge today, and every day while I live on this earth, is to make sure my envelope is open, or has a window, so that others can see who is inside.