Union with Christ | Galatians 3:26-29
Brian Hedges | October 22, 2017
If someone were to ask you the question, “What does it mean to be a Christian,” I wonder how you would answer that question? If they were to ask you to define a Christian, I wonder how you would answer that question. How would you describe yourself as a Christian?
You might say something like this; you might say, “Well, the fact that I’m a Christian means that I believe certain things. I believe that Jesus is the Christ, I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus is the Son of God, I believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead; I believe the Christian faith.”
You might say something like this; you might say, “To be a Christian means to be a follower of Christ. So when I say that I’m a Christian I mean that I’m a disciple. I try to obey Christ; I try to follow Christ; I try to pattern my life after his life, to imitate him.”
Or you might say something like this, “Well, you know, being a Christian means I belong to a family; it means I belong to this thing called the church. So I’m a member of a church and I go to church and I live life with this group of people and we have this in common, our common heritage and our common faith, our common practices, and so on.”
And all of those would be entirely biblical ways of answering the question; slightly different ways, but wonderful ways of answering the question, “What does it mean to be a Christian?” Those are all true and they’re all biblical.
But one could argue that the apostle Paul’s preferred description of a Christian is someone who is in Christ. Someone who is in Christ. If Paul were asked the question, “What does it mean to be a Christian,” Paul would probably have said something like this: “To be a Christian is to be a man who is in Christ, or to be a woman who is in Christ.” In fact, he describes himself in just that way in Second Corinthians chapter 12, verse two.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the word “Christian” appears only three times in the New Testament, but the phrase “in Christ” and its equivalents appears something like 165 times in Scripture. It’s dominant in Paul’s thinking that to be a Christian is to be someone who is in Christ.
New Testament scholar Richard Longenecker writes, “Being in Christ is the essence of Christian proclamation and experience. Without treating the ‘in Christ’ motif we miss the heart of the Christian message.” To be a Christian is to be someone who is in Jesus Christ.
That’s what the text we’re looking at this morning is about. We’ve been looking at the book of Galatians, we’re now just over the halfway mark in the series. We’re going to be a total of 16 weeks, and I think today is the ninth week in the letter to the Galatians, and we’re right at the end of Galatians chapter three. I just want to read a short passage this morning, verses 26 through 29 of Galatians chapter three, and focus on this theme of union with Christ. What does it mean to be in Christ? Let’s look at the passage; Galatians chapter three, beginning in verse 26.
Paul says, “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.”
This is God’s word.
Now, let’s ask some questions about this passage. Let’s ask what, why, and how. What does it mean to be in union with Christ? What is union with Christ? That’s the first question; let’s just get some definition for what we’re talking about. Then, why is this so important? If Paul talks about being in Christ over 100 times in his letters, it must have been important. Why is it so important for us to understand our relationship to Jesus in terms of union with Jesus, being in him? And then thirdly, how do you get this? If it is so important, how do you get to be in union with Christ? How does that take place? So, three very simple questions; what, why, and how.
I. What Is Union with Christ?
First of all, what? What is union with Christ? The first thing I want to do is just show you union with Christ in the text. Look at these italicized words. You have a reference to this in all four of these verses.
In verse 26: “For in Christ Jesus,” there’s the phrase, “you are all sons of God through faith.” This is very straightforward. Paul just says, “You are in Christ Jesus, and this is how you are sons of God.”
Then in verse 27 he says something slightly different. We’re going to investigate this; what does he mean by this? He says, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” So really he says two things there: you were baptized into Christ and you put on Christ.
Then in verse 28 a marvelous statement about the distinctions that tend to divide human beings, and Paul says that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for all are one in Christ Jesus.” There’s the phrase again, talking about the unity that we have as members of the body of Christ, as believers in Christ, the unity that we have in Christ Jesus. We are all one in him.
Then in verse 29 the wording is different. He says, “And if you are Christ’s,” or, “If you belong to Christ.” So the idea here is being possessed by Christ, belonging to him, and if you are Christ’s “then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”
So you see really clearly in all four of those verses, and this is a thread that runs through the letter to the Galatians. So the phrase “in Christ” appears nine times in this letter, and at least seven of those times it has in mind this particular idea of being united to Christ, being in Christ. So, we’re sons in Christ, we’re baptized into Christ, clothed with Christ, one in Christ, we belong to Christ, we are heirs in Christ. All of this language is getting at a very simple but profound idea of what it means to be in union with Christ.
If I could give it to you in one sentence it would be this: Union with Christ means that you are in Christ and that Christ is in you. Union with Christ means that you are in Christ and that Christ is in you. Keep that pair of thoughts in your mind this morning as we work through this passage. You are in Christ, and Christ is in you.
Now, it’s interesting that Scripture doesn’t so much give us the definition as it gives us pictures, and this reality of union with Christ is so powerful, it is so profound, that it takes lots of different pictures to get the idea across. So here are some of the pictures.
First of all, the vine and branches. You remember John chapter 15, where Jesus talks about how he is the vine and we as his disciples are the branches, and if we abide in him we will bear fruit. The image is very simple, isn’t it? If you lop a branch off from a vine it cuts the flow of sap from the vine and the vine’s not going to bear any fruit. The branch is completely dependent on the vine for its life, for its energy, for its sap, for everything that will produce fruit. And in the same way, our lives are completely dependent upon Christ. Every good that we could ever possibly do as Christians is dependent on Christ. You remember that Jesus says, “Without me you can do nothing.” So there’s a deep, intimate relationship here of the believer to Christ. We are in Christ.
Here’s another one of the pictures, that of a head with its body, the members of the body. You see this in lots of places, but, for example, in Ephesians chapter one. In the same way as a branch separated from the vine has no life, a body without a head is dead, right? A body without a head is a corpse. And in the same way the body of Christ without Christ as the head has no life. Christ is the one who gives life to the body, he’s the one who directs the body. This image carries the idea of Christ’s supremacy over the body as the well as the intimate relationship we have with him.
Peter uses yet another image, that of a temple and the cornerstone. The stones of the temple, living stones, he says in First Peter two, that are being built up into this temple for God, but Christ himself is the chief cornerstone. And of course, the cornerstone of the temple was a large stone. It wasn’t a small little block; it was a large, huge stone. You’d have to move it today with a crane or something, it was so large; and that stone would give shape to the rest of the temple. Think also of the image of a foundation. Well, Christ is all of that to us.
And then there’s also the image of marriage, a husband and a wife. You remember how Paul talks about this mystery in Ephesians chapter five, this one-flesh union of the man with his wife, but he says, “This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church.” So in a very profound way, just as a man and a woman are joined together in holy matrimony, they experience this special physical union but also a special legal union, a covenantal union where they are bound together by name and by law; in the same way we have a very special relationship with Christ. We are the Bride of Christ.
Now when we look at all these metaphors, it shows us there are really two dimensions to this union with Christ, two ways of thinking about it, two aspects of it. There is a positional aspect. This is the legal aspect. This is what Christ does for us.
So when you think about the believer being in Christ, we often use that language to describe the positional aspects of our relationship with Christ. This emphasizes the objective, already-complete accomplishment of Christ on our behalf, his finished work. We think about what Jesus did for us. He died for us, he was buried for us, he was raised for us, he was seated at the right hand of God for us, and Scriptures goes on to say that we were crucified with Christ, Galatians chapter two, verse 20; and that we have been buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life, Romans chapter six; and that we have been seated with Christ in the heavenlies, Ephesians chapter two. The things that Christ did for us we did with him; we participate in his work, and this is our position as believers.
But union with Christ is not merely positional; it is also very personal. This is the second aspect. It’s personal, and that’s why these metaphors are not just legal metaphors, they are organic metaphors. A vine and branches, that’s organic. The branch doesn’t have so much a legal relationship to the vine, but an organic union with the vine, the branches in the vine. The vine is flowing into the branch, the life of the vine in the branch. So it’s not only that you and I are in Christ, but that Christ is in us. It’s not just what Christ does for us, it’s also what he does in us. So this emphasises the personal, existential relationship we have with Jesus, our deep dependence on him. Again, without him we can do nothing. So our whole lives as believers is marked by this profound relationship with Christ. We are in him, and he is in us.
That is perhaps why this image of marriage is such a profound image for union with Christ. We’ve talked a lot in recent weeks about the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation, and of course Martin Luther was the early champion of these Reformation truths, especially the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
But it’s really interesting, when you look at Luther’s writings, that his first full-length treatment of the doctrine of justification is not a theological treatise on justification; it’s a little book he wrote in 1520 called The Freedom of the Christian. It’s essentially a book that talks about the believer’s marriage relationship with Christ. He chooses a very powerful image, a powerful picture of the believer’s relationship with Christ, and he uses that to describe this exchange, that all that belongs to Christ has been given to us, and all of our sins have been imputed to Christ.
Well, union with Christ is vitally important. We’ve seen some definition of it; it means that we are in Christ and Christ is in us and these various pictures of it.
II. Why Is it Important?
Now let’s ask the question, why? Why is it so important? Why is it so crucial for us to understand this doctrine of union with Christ, but not only to understand it, but to actually participate in it?
The reason it’s so important is because without it, without union with Christ, nothing that Christ does for us would be of any benefit. The Reformer John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion said, “We must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value to us.”
Now that’s a really profound statement. Jesus did so much, but Calvin is saying that if you’re separated from Christ it has no value to you. The only way that you get what Jesus did is if you’re somehow united to him. You have to be connected to him, you have to be joined to him, you have to be united to him so that you’re in him and he is in you.
We begin to understand the importance of our union with Christ when we look at how Paul describes the things that we receive through union with Christ, the benefits that we receive through union with Christ. Let me point out five of them that are pretty clear here in the text and in Galatians.
(1) First of all, we receive a new record. If we are united to Christ, we receive a new record. This, of course, has to do with our justification. We’ve talked a lot about that, so I don’t need to say a lot about it this morning, but just remember that in chapter two verse 16 Paul says that we have believed in Christ in order to be justified in him.
We believe into Christ, and that’s the language. The preposition is the Greek word eis (εἰς), and it carries the idea of believing into something. We believe into a new relationship, a new status. We believe in Christ in order to be justified.
You remember how Paul says in Romans chapter eight, verse one, “There is therefore now no condemnation,” for who? “For those who are in Christ Jesus.” So this is the solution to the problem of human sin and guilt.
Do you ever have a guilty conscience? Do you ever feel troubled by your sins? The only solution to your sins is to have your sins forgiven and to be credited with the righteousness of Christ, the record of Christ, and you get that new record by being united to Christ.
Charles Wesley said it so well:
“No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus and all in him is mine.
Alive in him, my living head,
And clothed in righteousness divine.”
You see the connection to union with Christ? No condemnation, because I’m alive in him! I’m alive in him, and I’m clothed with his righteousness. You get a new record; you get Jesus’ record, so that when God looks at you what he sees, if you’re in Christ, is not your sins; he sees Jesus’ obedience, he sees Jesus’ righteousness.
(2) But we not only get a new record, we also get a new life. So it’s not just legal imputation of righteousness, but we get the very life of Christ inside of us. We get the Holy Spirit. We get Jesus living in us! Remember, union with Christ means that you are in Christ and it also means that Christ is in you.
This is exactly what Paul’s talking about in Galatians two, verse 20, when he says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
You see, when you become a Christian it’s not simply that you get your sins forgiven, as glorious as that is, but Jesus takes residence in your heart through the Holy Spirit. The spirit of Christ comes inside and begins to change you, then, from the inside out. In fact, this is so crucial that Paul will say in Romans chapter eight that "you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells inside of you, and anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to Christ." If you don’t have the spirit of Christ, it doesn’t really matter what you say you believe; if you don’t have the spirit of Christ you don’t belong to Christ. The Holy Spirit has to take residence inside our hearts; the spirit of Christ. There has to be a new life, and this new life is a life which changes everything.
And so along with this justification and a new record there is transformation, there is change from the inside out, as Jesus lives out his life through us, through his Spirit dwelling within us. So there’s a new record, there’s a new life.
(3) Number three, there’s a new freedom. There’s new freedom. You see this in chapter three, verse 25, which we looked at briefly last week, and you remember the whole preceding passage in Galatians chapter three, verses 15 through 25, is about the law and what is the purpose of the law. We saw that the law is this prison warden that locks us up. It is this guardian that has this temporary, provisional nature until we come to Christ.
In chapter three, verse 25, reading into verse 26, this is what we read: “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.” So what Paul is saying is that before Christ, under the law, but now that Christ has come, through faith in Christ, not under the law, but in Christ. Being in the law, that’s one status, but being in Christ, that’s a new status. So to be in Christ is to be free from the law. You’re not under the law anymore if you are a Christian, if you are in Christ.
Now, Paul will also make very clear, and we’ll see this especially in Galatians chapter five, that this freedom is not only freedom from something, it’s also freedom in something, and it’s freedom to something. It’s freedom from the law and it’s freedom in the Spirit, and it’s freedom to love, and love is the fulfilling of the law.
So the idea is that the Holy Spirit, when he takes residence in our hearts, we are set free from the law, but the Spirit then begins to change us from the inside out so that we live new lives of freedom, and that’s not freedom to do anything that the flesh wants to do; it’s freedom, rather, to love our neighbors as ourselves. It’s freedom to live and to love as Christ has loved us. It’s freedom to be what God intended us to be.
(4) So we get a new record, we get a new life, we get a new freedom, and then, fourthly, we get a new family. We get a new family. This is, perhaps, the dominant note that Paul sounds here in these four verses. You see it in verse 26, “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.” You’re sons of God through faith.
Now the Greek word here is not the word “children,” it’s the word “sons,” but Paul here is of course not excluding females. In fact, what Paul is saying here is pretty radical, because in ancient cultures sons almost always had the exclusive rights of inheritance. The sons were the ones who inherited the property. It wasn’t that it was all evenly distributed among all the siblings, it was the son; in fact, it was the firstborn son who would receive everything. What Paul is saying here, and he’s very clearly including both men and women, because in just a moment he’ll say there’s no male or female, he’s including both men and women; he’s saying that women in the body of Christ, females in the body of Christ, have the same rights as the males; they have the rights of sonship. They have the inheritance.
So, as Tim Keller and others have pointed out, we can’t flatten out Paul’s imagery here or we lose something. In the same way as all men who are in Christ are part of the bride of Christ, and we relate to Christ as our husband; so all women who are in Christ are sons of God through Christ and relate to God as Father.
Look at verse 28, then, this very clear statement where Paul gives us three pairs of distinctions. He says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek,” those are racial distinctions, “there is neither slave nor free,” those are class distinctions or economic distinctions, “there is no male and female,” there are gender distinctions, “for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul uses similar language, of course, in Colossians chapter three, verse 11, and First Corinthians chapter 12, verse 13.
But what is he saying here? Why is he saying, “Neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female”? What’s his point? Well, this is of course not the obliteration of all distinctives, as if Christians cease to belong to particular ethnic groups once they come to Christ. You still belong to your ethnic group, whatever your background is. This is not saying that we become gender-neutral once we become Christians. We still have our genders; we’re still either male or female.
Rather, Paul is saying two things. He is saying that these distinctives simply have no bearing whatsoever on our fundamental identity in Christ. They have no bearing whatsoever on our status in Christ. We are equal, and we are equal before God in Christ, regardless of any other distinction, and he is showing that the importance of these distinctives are radically relativized in the church. So that when Paul writes a church that’s made up of both slaves and free men, Paul doesn’t critique slavery head-on, but what Paul does is he relativizes it, and he says, “Masters, treat these slaves as your brothers.” The slaves are to remember that their masters have another master; they have a Master in heaven.
Now, we have to remember that when Paul wrote this he’s not writing in a culture characterized by race-based slavery. He’s writing to people who are perhaps indentured slaves, who were slaves for a period of time as they were paying off a debt, or something like that. So we can’t think of this slavery as exactly the same as in our own tragic history. But what Paul is doing, nevertheless, is he is relativizing these distinctives, and he is saying, “What really counts is not your economic status, what really counts is not whether you’re male or female, what really counts is not whether you’re a Jew or a Greek,” and especially that in this letter. “It’s not whether you have the marks of circumcision or not; what matters is are you in Christ? If you’re in Christ then you’re all one in Christ.”
And then, look at verse 29, “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” So there’s family language again. Here Paul is coming back full circle to the argument he began in verse seven of this chapter, where he says that “it is those who are of faith who are the sons of Abraham.” Then, you remember that he has called Christ the seed of Abraham, the offspring of Abraham, and now he’s saying, “You’re all the offspring of Abraham.”
I like the way one recent book on the doctrine of adoption puts it in its title, we are all Sons in the Son. We are "sons in the Son." If we are in Christ, then we have the privileges of sonship that belong to Christ. We are heirs together with Christ, and we belong to God’s family, we belong to Abraham’s family, and all the promises God made to Abraham, as we saw last week, those promises are given to us in Christ.
(5) If we’re heirs, that means we’re heirs of an inheritance, right? That leads to the fifth thing: that means we also have a new future. If we are in Christ, we have a new future. We are heirs. As Paul puts it in Romans chapter eight, “We are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him,” and that means that everything that God has promised in Christ for our future, that belongs to us if we are God’s heirs. A new heavens and a new earth, a resurrected body, glorified humanity, all tears wiped away, all sorrows done away with once and for all. Someday when we’re completely free from sin, body and soul, reunited with God himself, seeing Christ face to face; all of that, it’s ours. And an eternity of life with God in eternal joy. That’s our inheritance; that’s your inheritance if you are in Christ. If you’re not in Christ, it’s not your inheritance, so you need to be in Christ; you need to be found in Christ.
That will lead us, in just a moment, to our third point, but I want to make one more comment here. The foundation of all of this that we’ve been talking about is this marvelous exchange that we have with Christ where we are in Christ, Christ is in us, and all that belongs to Christ is given to us.
I want you to hear how Luther describes this in that book I referenced, The Freedom of the Christian. This is really beautiful. Luther said, “Faith unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage, indeed, the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage, it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly, the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own.
“Let us compare these,” he says, “and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul’s. For if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride’s and bestow upon her the things which are his. Here we have a most pleasing vision, not only of communion, but of a blessed struggle and victory and salvation and redemption. Christ is God and man in one person. He has neither sinned nor died and is not condemned, and he cannot sin, die, or be condemned. His righteousness, life, and salvation are unconquerable, eternal, omnipotent. By this wedding ring of faith he shares in the sins, death, and pains of hell which are his bride’s. As a matter of fact, he makes them his own and acts as if they were his own and it is as if he himself had sinned. He suffered, died, and descended into hell that he might overcome them all. Now since it was such a one who did all this and death and hell could not swallow him up, these were necessarily swallowed up by him in a mighty duel, for his righteousness is greater than the sins of all men, his life stronger than death, his salvation more invincible than hell. Thus the believing soul, by means of the pledge of its faith, is free in Christ, its bridegroom; free from all sins, secure against death and hell, and is endowed with the eternal righteousness, life, and salvation of Christ, its bridegroom.”
Isn’t that amazing? What Christ has is given to us as his bride, and all that we had, all of the debits, all the liabilities, all the sin, all the problems, Christ takes as our husband. This is a marvelous union, and it’s vital to our Christian lives.
III. How Do We Get This Union?
How then do we get it? How do we get this union? How is it that you’re united to Christ?
It’s important for us to understand that there are both eternal and experiential dimensions to this union with Christ. So, for example, Scripture describes how we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, in Ephesians chapter one. So, all the way back into God’s eternal plan, God contemplates us in Christ. So there’s a sense in which if you’re a believer in Christ you have always been in Christ in God’s plan. Okay? So there are eternal dimensions to this. But here is also an experiential dimension where you actually come to be united personally to Christ, and that’s what I want to focus on here.
So, how do we enter this union experientially? I want to give you three answers that come from the text and just kind of tease out what Paul is saying here.
How do we enter into union experientially?
(1) Number one, and most fundamentally, through faith in Christ. It is a union that comes through faith in Christ. As I’ve already said, Paul in Galatians 2:16 says, “We also have believed into Christ Jesus.” We believed into Christ; that’s the idea conveyed by the preposition there. I think what Paul means is that when we believe we enter into a new status, a new relationship, this relationship, this connection, with Christ. We believe into Christ.
This is fundamental to everything else, so that without faith there is no union. If you don’t believe in Christ you’re not united to him, and it’s by believing that you get connected to him. So everything else I say from here on depends on this. You can only be united to Christ if you believe in Christ, but if you do believe, as surely as you believe in Christ you are in him and he is in you. To believe in Christ is to be united to him. So that’s the first thing that Paul says. We have believed into Christ.
(2) But then notice in verse 27. He says something really curious here. He says, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Baptized into Christ. What does that mean? What does it mean that you were baptized into Christ?
Of course, when we think of baptism we rightly think of the ordinance or the sacrament of water baptism, where we are immersed in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, or as the book of Acts often puts it we are baptized in the name of Christ. But Scripture will often describe it in this way, that we are baptized into Christ, or we are baptized into his death, as in Romans chapter six.
This is what I think Paul means. I don’t think he means that the mere act of going into the water is what secures this union. I don’t think he means that, precisely because there are examples of people in Scripture who are baptized who are not in Christ. So you take Simon the sorcerer in Acts chapter eight; he’s baptized, but he’s not in Christ; he’s not a Christian. So the act of baptism does not bring you into Christ.
But on the other hand, baptism is very significant, and it’s significant in this way: the baptism, the act of being baptized, is what seals and signifies in your own heart and conscience that you have truly believed in Christ and that what Christ has done for you counts as yours. I like the way the Puritans used to put it. They said that just as the preaching of the gospel is gospel for our ears, so the sacraments is the gospel for our eyes. The gospel for our eyes.
When a person is baptized, they are living in the flesh, they are living out the story of the gospel; they are being baptized into the water and raised out of the water just as they have been baptized into the death of Christ and raised to walk in newness of life. The sign and the reality are joined together. Now faith is what secures this, so without faith there is no union with Christ. But the baptism is important as the seal of what we have believed.
This is how the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, I think very helpfully; it asks, “How does holy baptism signify and seal to you that the one sacrifice of Christ on the cross benefits you?” How does baptism show you this? How does baptism seal to you that this sacrifice is actually beneficial? Here’s the answer: “In this way Christ instituted this outward washing and with it gave the promise that as surely as water washes away the dirt from the body, so certainly his blood and spirit wash away the impurity of my soul, that is, all my sin.”
That’s a wonderful testimony to one’s own conscience. When you have believed in Christ, you have trusted in Christ, and you are plunged into that water, and as surely as that water immerses you, so surely are you in Christ, you are immersed into Christ. You are buried with Christ. And as surely as you come up out of that water, so surely have you been raised with Christ to walk in newness of life. That’s why Paul will use language like this and say, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have,” and here’s the third image, “put on Christ.”
(3) Here’s the third image, the image of clothing. You have put on Christ, or you have clothed yourself in Christ. Isn’t it interesting? From the very beginning, from the fall of man, God has been in the business of providing clothing for people. Remember Adam and Eve, naked in the garden, they sin, they feel shame, they are conscious of their nakedness, and what does God do? He says, “The fig leaves won’t suffice; the fig leaves won’t cover you. This takes a sacrifice.” An animal is slain and they are clothed in the skins of this animal.
Scripture often uses this imagery of clothing. In fact, in church history the imagery of clothing is closely connected with baptism. Fairly early in the history of the church, probably by the second century at least, when believers were baptized they actually would be stripped of their old clothing and they would be given a new set of robes. That new robes would signify the newness that they had in Christ, this new status that they had in Christ. Some speculate that maybe this was already happening by the time Paul wrote this letter.
I think what’s very clear is that Paul sees our relationship with Christ in terms of being clothed with Jesus, clothed in Christ, and perhaps he’s echoing the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 61, verse 10, where he said, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me in the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.” It’s a picture of what has happened to us if we’re in Christ; we’ve been clothed with Christ, we’ve been covered in Christ.
You just think for a minute, what’s the purpose of clothing? Well, it covers nakedness, so it hides shame, it identifies us; we wear clothes that somehow identify us in some way. Some of us have to wear uniforms in our jobs or at school. But even if not in that way, we wear clothes that express something about personality, our temperament, our gender. The clothes protect us from the elements, right? Especially up here, right? You need a good winter coat. You know, it took several years for me to realize this, and finally I bought something from L.L. Bean that actually was warm. You have to get warm clothes if you’re going to live in the north!
And then clothes also are a way of adorning and beautifying ourselves, so we wear clothes that look nice, we wear clothes that we think look well on us. So maybe you remember that book - I can’t even believe I’m saying this, but you remember the book back 30 years ago, Color Me Beautiful? My mom read this; that’s how I know about this. It was all about finding your color. Are you winter or summer, and you wear the color that works for you. So we try to wear clothes, at least some people try to wear clothes that actually complement their skin tone and hair color and all of those things.
Well, in the same way, being clothed in Christ does all these things for us! Being clothed in Christ covers your nakedness, it covers your shame, covers your sin. You are clothed in the robe of righteousness. It identifies you as one who belongs to Christ. It protects you. If you are sheltered in Christ, if you’re clothed in Christ, you are protected from everything that would assail you. And it beautifies you. It beautifies you! If you’re clothed in Christ you’re beautiful to God the Father, so that when he looks on you, what he sees is not your sin; what he sees is his Son.
Let me close in this way. One of my favorite poets is the English poet George Herbert, and one of my favorite poems by Herbert is poem that is simply called “Aaron”. “Aaron”, named after the high priest Aaron in the book of Exodus. It’s really a reflection on the gospel that’s built around the imagery of a high priest’s clothing as it was described in Exodus chapter 28. It’s an amazing poem, a really beautiful poem, and I want to just read it to you and kind of explain what Herbert was saying, because I think it’s a beautiful illustration of what Paul is saying here as well.
The first verse describes the holiness that God requires of me if I’m to be one of God’s priestly people. Herbert says,
“Holiness on the head,
Light and perfection on the breast,
Harmonious bells below,
Raising the dead
To lead them unto life and rest.
Thus are true Aarons dressed.”
Then in verse two Herbert describes how we have fallen from this holiness through our sin. Now it’s not holiness on the head, but,
“Profaneness on my head,
Defect and darkness in my breast,
A noise of passions
Ringing me for dead
Unto a place where is no rest.
Poor priest! thus am I dressed.”
It’s the complete opposite of the first verse.
Then in verse three he describes the need for a substitute, for someone else to take our place. He says,
“Only another head,
I have another heart and breast,
Another music
Making live, not dead,
Without whom I could have no rest.
In him I am well-dressed.”
Right there you’re beginning to get a glimpse of Christ the Priest, in whom we are clothed or dressed.
Verse four, then, makes this explicit, makes it very clear that Christ is the substitute. Verse four says,
“Christ is my only Head,
My alone only heart and breast,
My only music
Striking me e’en dead,
That to the old man I may rest
And be in him new dressed.”
And then in the fifth verse he exults in this reality, this glory of being newly dressed in Christ’s righteous, priestly garments. Here’s verse five:
“So holy in my head,
Perfect and light in my dear breast,
My doctrine tuned by Christ,
Who is not dead,
But lives in my me while I do rest.
Come, people; Aaron’s dressed.”
Let me ask you this morning: are you well dressed? I don’t mean are you wearing designer-label clothes, I don’t mean if you’re wearing clothes that match whether you’re a winter or a summer or autumn or spring. What I mean is this: have you put on Christ? Have you put him on? Are you dressed in his robes? Are you dressed in his righteousness, so that when God looks at you he sees Jesus? Are you identified in Christ? Are you imitating Christ? Are you in Christ and is Christ in you? Are you united to Christ?
If you are, then you have all the privileges and blessings that belong to a Christian. A new record, a new life, a new freedom, a new family, a new future. If you’re not in Christ this morning, you can be right now by believing in Christ, and I invite you to do so. Let’s pray.
What language shall we borrow to thank you, our Friend, for this thy dying sorrow, your anguish without end? When we contemplate what you have done for us, Lord Jesus, we come up short for words, we don’t know how to express our gratitude; we don’t know how to express the wonder that we feel when we consider the reality of being found in Christ and of you, our Lord Jesus Christ, indwelling our hearts by your Spirit. So we simply say thank you, we say that we love you, that we adore you, we praise you, we’re grateful to you. We want to live our lives for you. As you have given yourself to us, so we want to give ourselves to you.
As we come to the table this morning, that’s exactly the exchange that we come to make. We come by faith to lay hold of all that you’ve done for us and to say, “Yes, I believe it; I lay hold of this; this is for me.” We come to give ourselves to you and to say, “Lord Jesus, take my life and let it be holy, consecrated to thee.” So as we do come now, may we come believing and may we come trusting, may we come with gratitude and may we come giving ourselves to you.
And Father, I pray that you would bring anyone who is not in Christ this morning, I pray that you would bring them to the Son and that you would do so through the power of the Holy Spirit, even in these moments. We pray it in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
