Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3:1-3.
In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise. Ephesians 1:13.
But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption. 1 Corinthians 1:30.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
It is my doing you are in Christ Jesus. When you believed in the gospel of your salvation I sealed you in Him by the Holy Spirit and your life is hidden now in Christ in Me. You can now live your life through Jesus. You reign in life through Him. I have put you in Christ and Christ in you.
What does life in Christ look like? How does it change your life that you who believe are in Christ Jesus?
My Will for in Christ Jesus is that you rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give constant thanks. So your life in Christ should be one of joy and peace as you do the works He did and greater. I have put you in Christ Jesus for good works and made Him to be wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption for you.
It is time to set your minds above and live your life in Christ. And that is our new series: “Life in Christ,” and Life Lesson No. 1 is “What does it mean to be “IN CHRIST?”
In the letters of My apostle Paul, by inspiration of the Spirit, you find many times that he speaks of believers being “in Christ.” If you are to live in Him it is important to understand what you have in that relationship.
To be “in Christ” puts you at a level and place beyond human natural understanding. It has to be revealed by My Spirit to you to begin to fathom the ramifications of this truth, for it is the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that has set you free from the law of sin and of death. Who you are in Christ is extraordinary and magnificent, for all My precious promises are “Yes” to you in Him. I have blessed you with every spiritual blessing in Heaven in Christ. But above all, and of foremost importance for your daily life, is that being in Christ makes you one with Me.
Jesus explains this to you in His prayer to Me that night before He died to free you from your sins and the punishment due them in order to reconcile you with Me and give you the status of being in Him, “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” John 17:20-21.
When you are in Christ, He is in Me, and I am in Him, so you are in Me and I am in you. You are in His hand, and He gives you eternal life and you will never perish; and no one will snatch you away from His hand. And it is I who sealed you in Him when you believed in the gospel of your salvation, and I am greater than all; no one is able to snatch out of My hand. Jesus and I are one. John 10:27-30. And in Him you are one with Me. Being in Christ connects you directly to Me and gives you access to Me in the Spirit. We now have fellowship together, 1 John 1:3 (“ indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ”). and you can come with confidence right to My throne of grace and receive mercy and find grace in time of need, right the moment you need it, and I lavish My grace on you in Jesus. Hebrews 4:14-16; Ephesians 1:8.
The greatest revelation of being “in Christ,” is your reconciliation and oneness with Me in Him, for He is the channel by which your humanity is joined into My divinity and My divinity into your humanity in one seamless life. He is all God and all man with no division between the two. And He puts you into that flow as well so that IN HIM you can be filled with all the fullness of God bodily as a partaker of the Divine nature. And in Him, and in Him alone, you have eternal life. My testimony is this, that I have given you eternal life, and this life is IN CHRIST JESUS, MY SON. He who is in Jesus Christ has the life; he who is not in Him does not have the life. 1 John 5:11-12.
And when you are baptized into Christ, you clothed yourself in Him. Galatians 3:27. All He has in yours in Him. You are clothed in the garments of Salvation (Yeshuah) and covered by the robe of righteousness, for IN CHRIST you have become righteous with My own righteousness, which is also His. All I have is His and all He has is Mine. And when you are in Him, the same is true for you. It has pleased Me to give you the Kingdom and the Kingdom is within you when you are in Christ! He is the door to Heaven, the way into My Kingdom.
Jesus told you the night before He died that He was going to prepare a place for you and He would come again and receive you to Himself, that where HE IS YOU MAY ALSO BE. John 14:3. In Him you are pulled back into My bosom, into the center of My being, the very throne room of Heaven, and there the evil one cannot touch you. 1 John 5:18. And there is even more, because of My great love with which I love you, even when you were dead in your transgressions, I made you alive IN CHRIST (by grace you have been saved), and I raised you up with Him, and seated you with Him in Heaven IN CHRIST JESUS, so that in the ages to come I might show the surpassing riches of My grace in kindness toward you IN CHRIST JESUS. Ephesians 2:5-7.
And clothed in Christ, as He is so you in this world. 1 John 4:17. For you know the grace of your Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich. 2 Corinthians 8:9. He divested Himself and vested you and IN HIM I gave you all your need for life and godliness and made you partakers of My divinity through the instrumentality of My magnificent promises which are all YES to you IN HIM. As it is written, “For as many as are the promises of God, IN HIM they are yes; therefore also through Him [Jesus] is our Amen to the glory of God through us. Now He who establishes us with you IN CHRIST and anointed us is God, who also SEALED us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge.” 2 Corinthians 1:20-21. You are sealed in Christ, headed for the redemption of your bodies to match what has already been done IN CHRIST for your spirit. Born again to newness of life.
For if anyone is IN CHRIST, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 2 Corinthians 5:17. In Him, you are holy and blameless, beyond reproach, before Me, for once you are in Him, your sins and offenses I remember NO MORE, for He took them all away from you and bore them and the punishment due them in your place.
And being IN CHRIST, now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it. 1 Corinthians 12:27. For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit you were all baptized into one body and were all made to drink of one Spirit. Romans 12:4-5. So being IN CHRIST you are His body on earth to do the works He did and greater. John 14:12. For you are My workmanship, created IN CHRIST JESUS for good works, which I prepared beforehand so that you would walk in them. Ephesians 2:10. As His body, My power resides in you as it does in Him, and I am able to do far more abundantly beyond all that you ask or think by the surpassing greatness of My power toward you who believe in accordance with the working of the strength of My might which I brought about IN CHRIST, when I raised Him from the dead and seated Him at My right hand in Heaven, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And I all things in subjection under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Ephesians 1:18-23; Ephesians 3:20.
And in Christ as His body you are also the church on earth, the called out ones, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart in Him. The church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven. Hebrews 12:23. You should be a people of power going about doing good and healing all who are oppressed by the devil together with your head, who is Christ.
And what does this all mean to you? You should say with My Spirit in union with the apostle Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Galatians 2:20.
By this is My love manifested IN you, that I sent My only begotten Son into the world so that YOU might live THROUGH, IN, AND WITH HIM. 1 John 4:9. You are not on your own in this world, I have put you IN CHRIST. You are never alone, you are never lacking the resources you need, you are never without counsel, guidance, wisdom, redemption, righteousness, sanctification, comfort, help and power, IN HIM you are ONE with Us in Glory. And in Him you can do the works He did and greater, and that is where all the fun of being blessed to be a blessing begins. Jesus had a wonderful time healing and providing for all who came to Him in faith, and so will you. IN CHRIST you walk in NEWNESS of life. Put off the old you that was trapped by sin and Satan and put on the new you who is set free IN CHRIST. For whom the Son sets free is free indeed.
I love you and I have shown you My love by sealing you IN CHRIST. There is no place better to be, and there is no place that compares with it that you should choose it over the magnificent treasure of being found IN CHRIST JESUS your Lord. WHEN YOU ARE IN CHRIST YOU ARE WHERE HE IS AND HE IS IN ME SO WHEN YOU ARE IN CHRIST, YOU WALK RIGHT THROUGH TO ME. In Christ, you are always One with Me with no division between us for you have found the Way, the new and living Way, to the very Holy of Holies. Hebrews 10:19-22, John 14:6. And that Way can only be found IN CHRIST JESUS, your Lord.
Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Hebrews 10:19-22,
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:7-11.