Sunday July 27 In Christ

Galatians 3 v 15 - 29

Sermon

Today is a very special day for us as a church family, and for Ian, Natalie and Hannah and your broader family.

Today we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promises to Ian and Natalie. We come to celebrate the string of miracles which led to Ian and Natalie becoming parents to Hannah.

Today, to use Paul’s language to the Galatians, Hannah is being baptized into Christ, and will be clothed with Christ.

“In Christ” is one of those phrases we hear often and understand seldom.

So this morning I want us just to explore for a few minutes what it means to be baptized into Christ, what it means to be in Christ.

The Apostle Paul lived in 3 different worlds.

His first world that Paul lived in was that of Judaism. Paul grew up a Jewish boy. Like every orthodox Jewish boy, Paul was circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. On the eighth day Paul received the symbol that had been instituted when God had made the covenant with Abraham.

I say symbol, because circumcision was the symbol of God’s promise.

God had Promised Abraham that he would be prosperous, he would own land and have many descendents.

Paul understood that promise God made to Abraham to apply to him, as one of those descendents of Abraham.

Paul walked the earth feeling he was in some way different, he was in some way better, because he was chosen by God.

He must have been quite bright because Scripture tells us he became a Pharisee and studied under one of the most revered rabbis of his time, Gamaliel.

The first place where Paul found his identity as a person, was that he was a descendent of Abraham, a Jew.

As a Pharisee, Paul persecuted Christians until he met the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus.

Lying in the dust next to the road, blinded by the bright light Paul saw when Jesus appeared, Paul fell in love with Jesus, and his life was never the same.

From a Jewish perspective, to be “in Christ” meant God has chosen you to be a part of His chosen people, God has set you apart for an inheritance from Him.

You are a recipient of the promise God made to Abraham.

Paul goes on to say that the children of Abraham are those who believe in God as Abraham did.

The second world Paul lived in was a Roman world.

You may recall that on a trip to Jerusalem, Paul went into the Temple and was arrested because they accused him of bringing non-Jews, who weren’t allowed, into the Temple.

The Roman commander tried to settle the riot Paul was causing so he ordered that Paul be stretched out and flogged. AT that time Paul declared that it was unlawful for him to be whipped, because he was a Roman citizen.

Immediately they stopped what they were doing.

In the time of Paul, Rome was so powerful that wherever a Roman citizen stood, because of his citizenship of Rome, it was technically like he was in Rome.

A Roman citizen could stand in the middle of Jerusalem, and the laws that governed his life were no longer Jewish laws, but Roman.

When a Roman citizen was in a foreign place, to reach out your hand against that Roman meant you were reaching out your hand against Rome. To attack a Roman was to attack the nation.

It is like wherever Paul was on earth, he was a citizen of some other world which had greater authority in his life.

Wherever a Roman citizen was, he was “In ROME”

Paul carried that understanding over to what it means to be “In Christ”.

Wherever a Christian stands on earth, we are “In Christ”. There is nothing on earth that can separate us from the love of God, because we are in Christ.

For Christians, even though we live on earth, we are already citizens of heaven. Paul says we are in this world but we are not of this world.

We live here, but we don’t belong here. In Paul’s understand, for Christians heaven must come to earth.

Jesus prayed, “Let Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

Wherever you stand on earth, the kingdom of God is there.

Remember how even in Jerusalem, Roman rules applied. For Christians, no matter where you stand on earth, the rules of heaven apply.

In the world, the aim of life is to survive, to get as rich as you can, to have what you want, even if it hurts others.

But in Christ, the aim of life is to love God and to love others as yourself.

When Paul declared he was a Roman, every other distinction disappeared. It no longer mattered that he was a Jew, it no longer mattered whether he was rich or poor, strong or weak. All that mattered was that he was a Roman citizen.

Paul says in Galatians, when we are in Christ, there are no longer the distinctions of being Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. Everyone becomes equal.

The other day on the radio a politician was speaking who said, “In South Africa we strive for racial equality and gender equality.”

The moment she said it I thought, then you have fallen short of the kingdom of heaven coming to South Africa, because God strives for economic equality.

When we are in Christ, if someone raises their hand against you, they raise their hand against the kingdom of God. Paul says, “you don’t need to take revenge, leave space for God.”

Paul seems to understand that we don’t need to wait until we die to receive eternal life, when we are in Christ we have received it already.

But Paul also lives in a 3rd world, which is a Greek world.

Paul lived in a world where going to the theatre was common practice.

The theatre in Paul’s day was spectacular. Actors would get dressed up in outfits according to the role they were playing.

Today we watch a movie and say, “There goes Brad Pitt, or Denzel Washington”.

But in Paul’s day the actors were totally hidden from the audience. They would dress themselves up in clothes, and then put on wigs and masks until nothing could be seen of themselves.

In Galatians 3 Paul says we have clothed ourselves with Christ, and the metaphor Paul is using is of the theatre. Paul is saying we need to totally look and act like Jesus.

Max Lucado in one of his books asks, “What if one morning Jesus woke up in your bed, and lived your life for 24 hours. What if Jesus lived your schedule. Your boss became His boss, your mother-in-law becomes his mother in law. Your health doesn’t change, your circumstances don’t change, the only difference is that Jesus will live in your shoes.

Are you enough like Jesus on Monday, that if He took your place on Tuesday people would not go into shock.

Paul says we are to be clothed, hidden in Jesus.

So how do we start to be, “In Christ”.

For Paul the Jew, in the first covenant it meant being circumcised. But in the New Covenant it means being baptized.

For Paul the Roman, becoming a citizen of heaven means we need to die to our old world, we need to count it all rubbish.

For Paul said heaven doesn’t begin when we die, but the start date is moved forward to the day we die to our old self and come alive to Christ.

For Paul, our new citizenship begins the day we are baptized, because in baptism we die, we are buried, and the new person emerges from the water. It is as we emerge from baptism that we can say, “I am a new creation, a brand new person. The old me has died and I have been born again”.

For the Paul the Greek, it is in baptism that we are clothed with Jesus. We take His nature, His character. We become like Him.

The beauty of citizenship is that it is passed on from parents to children.

Ian and Natalie have been baptized. They have died to self and are alive in Christ. Wherever Ian and Natalie stand, they are “In Heaven”, they are “In Christ”.

And so this morning, we come to include Hannah in their covenant with God.

Hannah will grow up in Christ. Hannah will grow up under the protection of all of heaven.

Hannah will grow up with her citizenship not here in South Africa, or on earth. Hannah will grow up a citizen of heaven.