In Christ

In Christ

The phrase that Paul uses, to describe the Christian experience, is the phrase ​“in Christ.” Christ is not a person in the past tense only. He is present Lord, and the Lord who is to come. To be ​“in Christ,” therefore, is to live by all that He has done, to be involved in all that He is doing, and to prepare for all that He will do.

“Let us give thanks to the Father,” says Paul (Col. 1:12 – 14), ​“who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

Redemption is in Christ. It is an abiding experience. What are the consequences of this indivisibility of man’s inheritance in Christ ?

Accepting the World

First, the Gospel is not truly proclaimed where the proclamation does not make the Kingdom of God the explicit context within which an individual is invited to accept the Gospel. Since there is no other name given by which men can be saved except the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12), no man should be invited to accept Jesus Christ without, at the same time and in the same act, accepting the world for which Jesus died and to which Jesus belongs as its Lord and Saviour. If there were many ways of obtaining salvation, it would be possible for a man to choose a way on which he can go alone or only with those whom he chooses. But, since there is only one way, all humanity is bound together by this circumstance. They belong together on the road of salvation.

There are many Christians for whom the natural way of speaking about the issue of salvation is to say that one is saved by accepting Jesus Christ as personal Saviour and that thereafter one lives responsibly in the world. It does not seem to me to be a mere quibble to insist that the primary act must involve the awareness that one does not really accept Jesus as personal Savior unless that acceptance is informed from the beginning as to who He is. He is Lord of the world and Lord of the Church, and any one who accepts Him accepts Him only to the extent that he accepts to be implicated in the exercise of Christ’s double Lordship.

More of Life Shared

Second, salvation is truly proclaimed only when its indivisibility is effectively demonstrated. Where it is not manifest that Christians share an indivisible gift in Christ, their proclamation of the Gospel is already mutilated.

The basic issue here is not only that of the unity of the Church. It is even more pointedly the issue of the unity of each congregation. Sunday worship in most churches today, in East and West, is not the activity of a family. Discrete individuals gather together in one place to worship God. This has its own validity, but a worshiping congregation must possess a community life which is both secular as well as religious. It is this need that is driving Christians to create what have come to be called ​“para-parishes” where the secular sharing of common life, whether in terms of a common occupation or a common neighborhood, provides the basis for congregational unity.

The Evangelism Department of the World Council of Churches, in one of its monthly letters, puts the matter thus:

This question of the witness to the Gospel of the corporate life of a congregation becomes acute when it faces the prospect of opening its doors to the outsider. The outsider is already frequently a sharer in group life in the secular world: a labor union or a work group or a teenage gang, or a neighborhood athletic club. There he finds the reward of fellowship ; he is known by name, is accorded the dignity of being permitted to speak and to be listened to. Ultimately, to be sure, none of these fellowships may satisfy his deepest needs. Rootlessness, and the fate of the wanderer, and suffering the loss of personal freedom in subjection to the power structure of a technological society, hover in the background. But every congregation is called upon to become a fellowship so clearly witnessing to Christian brotherhood that it can witness as from community to community.… What has the fellowship of Christians in a congregation to offer by way of witness that can differentiate it from community life in the secular world?

Real Belonging

The issue is plain (is it not ?)… Love is the very method of inheritance. It is the way by which one enters into and abides in the world-embracing love of God. ​“The man who loves his brother lives and moves in the light.” ​“We know that we have crossed the frontier from death to life because we do love our brothers.” (1 John 2:10; 3:14)

Love is the way by which one enters into and lives in the light. It is the way by which one passes from the sphere of death into the sphere of life. It is the way by which one comes to the knowledge that this transition from darkness to light, from death to life, has taken place in one’s life.…

The Church and the churches cannot live their life or fulfill their mission without effectively expressing the Church’s solidarity with the world as well as with fellow Christians. In both these spheres there is necessity for common action and also for common life; for programs of work that involve cooperation and collaboration, as well as for social structures within which there can be real belonging to one another.

QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION

1. Take a minute to think about your own understanding of Jesus Christ as ​“personal” savior. Was this invitation communicated to you as a shared inheritance in God’s kingdom or as an individual journey with individual goals and outcomes?
2. In your faith community, are divisions between people more or less prominent than in the secular communities you take part in? Are people given ​“the dignity of being permitted to speak and to be listened to”? Do people take care of each other with thoughtfulness and generosity as well as they do in secular community groups?