"In Christ"

Does the illustration illustrate?

Two contradictory statements were made at Bible readings by different speakers. I place them side by side and ask for your kind comments thereon.

The former of these statements was made some twenty-five years ago; the second much more recently. Which is right? Can you think of any illustration that sets forth more perfectly the meaning of the expression "In Christ"?

I should not care to weaken the thought that we have found a hiding place in Christ. The Old Testament abounds with many beautiful expressions that present the Lord as our refuge and strong tower, and every soul that has felt the burden of guilt, or has passed through great sorrows and temptations and has fled to Him in these times of stress, knows what a blessed hiding place He is. So that we may still gratefully sing,
"Thou blest Rock of Ages,
I'm hiding in Thee."

But this is not what is meant by the New Testament term, "In Christ," and I should agree with statement No. 1, that whoever so interpreted it did not understand the full meaning of the unspeakable blessing of being in Christ. The second statement carries us further than being simply hidden to being hidden in the accepted Man, but it does not illustrate the fact at all, for the hymn book, though hidden in a larger and better book, remains what it was before, perhaps filthy and dilapidated, its condition is in no wise changed, though it is now completely hidden from the eye. That is not what God has done for us. He has placed us in Christ for His own pleasure as well as for our blessing, and that does not mean that He has hidden us out of His sight, but that He has put us where He can look upon us with satisfaction.

I cannot give an illustration which will perfectly illustrate the meaning of being "in Christ." Even the illustration sometimes used of the change of the grub into the butterfly does not fully serve, for, while in that phenomenon there is a change of condition and sphere of life, yet the life of the butterfly was in the grub before that change came about. The subject is an important one, and unless we understand something of what is involved in it we shall remain in bondage to the law of sin and death, hence I shall endeavour to comment upon it as it comes before us in the Epistle to the Romans, and it may help us to appreciate it better if we see the great contrast given there between being "in Christ" and out of Him.

To be out of Christ means to be in Adam, or in "the flesh" as our Epistle puts it, that is, to be in the natural condition in which we came into the world, a condition marked by self-will and enmity against God. We learn in the early chapters of Romans that all were in this condition, whether the degraded heathen, the proud philosopher, or the religious Jew. They were all alike in Adam because they all belonged to the fallen race of which he was the sinful and fallen head. He, too, was in them, for the life and nature that he had was in them, and they showed it by their deeds, for "all have sinned," and because of this condemnation and death came upon all, and no member of that race ever appeared to break the terrible entail that lay upon it. That is where all who are out of Christ are to this day; it was where we, who are now in Christ, all stood before the sovereign mercy of God reached us and set us in this place of favour. If I set out the condition clearly before our eyes it may help us to appreciate the great deliverance.