Being In Christ

Sermon, January 9, 2000

Text: Matthew 3:11-17

I've been in ministry long enough to say with confidence that I'm at best skeptical when I hear someone say, "God spoke to me." I want to gently but firmly reply, "How? Did you hear a voice? What kind of voice? If not an audible voice, how did you distinguish between your own thoughts or desires or hormonal influences and the voice of the God?" I would venture to say that none of us here have heard the audible voice of God. I would also venture to say that we may envy the experiences of the Biblical heroes, especially in the Old Testament, those men and women of God who did hear God's audible voice and/or experienced concrete, tangible evidences of God's reality....e.g., pillars of fire, parting seas, dramatic miracles, burning bushes. We might even ask, "Why can't God reveal himself like that to us today?" Well, don't forget that centuries of history are compressed in this collection of books and letters. The events in the Bible are telescoped together; we forget that hundreds of years take place between Abraham and David, between David and the prophet Amos, between Amos and the disciples of Jesus. To us it all seems to happen around the same time or era ("Bible" times); and that all these biblical peoples had this keen sense of the immediate presence of God, that, to paraphrase the old hymn, "He walked with them and talked with them and He told them they were His own." But that was just not the case. Even in the lives of the Biblical giants of faith, hearing God's audible voice was a very rare occurrence. For example, take Abraham, the father of the faithful. Twenty-five years of divine silence followed God's promise to Abraham that his wife would bear a son. Twenty-five years! How well do you remember what someone promised you back in 1975? (Unless, of course, you got married that year...in which case you better remember the promise!) When Abraham finally heard God speak again, God spoke to call Abraham to a severe test of faith by telling him to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Abraham probably wished God remained silent! Moses, the man who conversed with God...do you know how long Moses hid as a fugitive in the desert before he heard God speak out of the burning bush? Forty years...forty years of nothing but silence from God. At times, generations would pass between God's revelations of Himself; there would be decades and even centuries of apparent divine silence. In fact, five long centuries divide the Old and New Testaments. It is a rare event, even from the Biblical perspective, for God to speak audibly, directly, to His people. When it DOES happen, it is worth noting.

For whatever reason, God chose to primarily communicate through the limited medium of written human language, with all its possibilities for misunderstanding and misinterpretation. It is an article of our faith that the Bible is the Word of God, written through the medium of divinely inspired human authorship. Although, as mentioned at the outset of my series on the Ten Commandments, there is one part of the Bible where God apparently bypassed human authorship, and did His own writing: Exodus 31:18 - "When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, He gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God." God Himself wrote the Ten Commandments as if to say, "Get this! These instructions are so important, these directives are so basic and foundational to living, that I have written them down for you Myself!" There are also a few occasions in the Bible where God bypasses human authorship, not by writing, but by speaking directly and audibly from heaven. Again, almost as if He wants to say, "Now, get this! This is important!" In the Gospels, this audible heavenly voice is heard only three times; two of those occasions God speaks from heaven and says, "This is my Son." It's as if God were saying on these occasions, "This truth is so important, this man's identity is so foundational and basic to what you need to believe, I want to tell you Myself. This is my Son." The first is here at Jesus' baptism; God says, (Matthew 3:17, NIV) "This is My beloved Son, with Whom I am well pleased." Then later, at the Mount of Transfiguration, God speaks from heaven to Peter, James and John: "This is my Son, Whom I love; Listen to Him!"

There is an interesting tidbit that can be easily missed in that first passage: The Greek text actually has God saying about His Son: "In Him I am well pleased." It does not say "with," it says "in." The KJV accurately translates this; the RSV and NIV do not. I think we can assume God chooses His words very, very carefully, especially when He speaks audibly, as it is such a rarity. God neither minces nor wastes words. The original account has that He said "in," not "with." It may seem like semantic hair-splitting, but I believe God is saying so much more than, "I'm pleased with my Boy." I believe it is warranted to infer that He is making a bold and dogmatic assertion, as if He were saying: "This is My beloved Son. I am pleased IN Him. In fact, it is only in Him that I am pleased!" It is also Biblically warranted to infer that it necessarily follows that outside of Jesus Christ, God is not pleased; apart from Jesus Christ, God is not satisfied. If we would seek the favor of God, if we would seek the pleasure of God, we must be in Christ.

What does it mean to be "in Christ?" Now, some Christians are used to talking about Jesus being "in us" (which certainly has biblical precedent), but almost as if Jesus were just one more of our possessions. We speak of "accepting Christ," or sometimes, "having Christ in our heart." We sing with gusto, "Blessed assurance, Jesus is Mine." (aside...nothing wrong with that favorite hymn, by the way, but don't leave out the last stanza..."I in my Savior am happy and blest.") As if Jesus were just one more self-help Tool we have with which to pursue our goals in life, one more "possession" to help us as we make our way along. The Bible, however, speaks very little about Jesus as if He were someone (or something) we own. It is more accurate to say that the Bible describes Jesus as One who owns us. He accepts us. He condescends to receive us.

I came across the following insight in my reading some time ago: Faith in Christ, being in Christ, is quite similar to being in Love. We usually don't say a person has love in somebody else; rather, we say that one is in love. The difference is really more than semantics. By claiming that we are in love we admit that we have been overwhelmed by a sense of connection and commitment to another person. Sometimes it hits us at first sight, and at other times it develops slowly, but at no time could we claim to be in perfect control of the love. We don't own it, it owns us; genuine, authentic love really does have the power to control us. I often say during weddings that those who want to be happy should not marry...which, at first, sounds like a heck of a thing to say at a wedding. However, the reality is that only those who first and foremost desire the happiness of the other are really ready to marry. Genuine contentment and happiness comes as a by-product of seeking the contentment and happiness of the other. That is a key element of being in mature, authentic love. We just don't "accept" the spouse, we just don't have the spouse "in our heart," the spouse is really not ours, the spouse is not just another possession to add to our collection of life's little goodies to make us happy. That's self-love, and that just doesn't work. If we are authentically in love, the desire to please the other is paramount, and authentic love takes control. It is the same with faith in Christ. Being in Christ is a wonderful commitment, it involves an all-pervading desire to please Him, and He is allowed to take control. Being in Christ may come slowly or in a moment, but once it gets hold of us it changes just about everything. The former pastor of a congregation I served in New Jersey liked to remind the congregation each Sunday during the benediction: "Remember, as you go from this place...you have the ability to make God smile." Being in Christ, being in love with Christ, aiming to please Him in all we do, that brings pleasure to God. "...In Him, I am well pleased."

Like being "in love," we don't always know where being "in Christ" will lead us. Like being in love, there can be agony and there can be ecstasy. And like being in love, we do find not so much that we are being changed or converted, but that we are being fulfilled. There's a huge market these days in self-help books and seminars and programs which is fed by the great dissatisfaction many people have with their lives; this market is also fed by people's fears that they are stuck with themselves until they die. Sometimes people come to church hoping that God will do what all the books, seminars, and exercise machines have failed to do -- change them. Now, I want to say what I'm about to say carefully and slowly, so as not to be misunderstood: God doesn't necessarily want to change you; He wants to fulfill you. When we come to faith in Jesus Christ, as we grow "in Christ," God doesn't necessarily change us into somebody altogether different, He does not give us a wholly new identity; rather, He allows us to discover what our true identity has been all along. As we open ourselves to the new life that God is creating within us, we will discover that this new life does not look totally strange to us. What it looks like is a purer form of ourselves. In Christ, God restores His image in our lives; He develops within us the self we were created to be from the beginning. Again, it is like being in love. One of the most profound pleasures of my married life was that I was more myself with my dear wife than I was with anybody, even my parents. Sure, being in love with Ann changed me, sure, being in love led me places I never dreamed I would go, some delightful and some difficult; sure, being in love enabled me to do things, achieve things, enjoy things like never before...but again, it's almost misleading to say that being in love with Ann changed me...rather, it fulfilled me. Again, I was more "myself" with her than I was with anybody; she helped bring out the best in me. And that's just a poor reflection of what God wants to do with us IN CHRIST. God doesn't necessarily change us into someone radically different, He does not give us a new identity; rather, as we grow in Christ He allows us to discover our true identity. He creates in us a purer form of ourselves, the way He designed us to be all along.

Psychiatrists' offices are full today largely because people are continually trying to be what they are not made to be, trying to do what they were not made to do, trying to live as they were not made to live, and they're desperate for change. The saving work of Jesus Christ is that He finds us after we lose our way trying to become something other than who we are, or doing something other than what we were designed to do. That salvation invites us to live the rest of our lives in humble gratitude for the really good life Jesus keeps giving back to us. Again, being in Christ is like being in genuine love. We may struggle with our faith in Christ, we may at times even try to deny Him, but in the end most saints will tell you that, while one may "fall out" of love, it is pretty hard to "fall out" of Christ. In fact, it isn't possible. And it is in Christ that God is well pleased...it is in Christ that we experience God's pleasure and blessing.

The Gospel imperatives in a nutshell, spoken on these two occasions when He affirms audibly the identity of His son, are these: Be in Christ, and Listen to Him. If you would experience the pleasure of God, if you would experience to the fullest the pleasure of being who the Creator made you to be, then Be in Christ, AND heed His words.