The biggest little word and the most ubiquitous in Ephesians is the word “in.” It is a preposition denoting position. God’s Word gives our position precedence over our condition, because where we are determines what we are.
Much of spiritual defeat and failure lies in our ignorance of and indifference to this fact. We are so concerned over what we are that we give no thought to where we are. Ephesians primarily emphasizes our position, and shows our condition to be the outgrowth of it. There are but two positions in which men may be: The sinner is in sin, and the saint is in Christ.
In Sin
The sinner is ensphered by and encased in sin. He is at home in sin. He lives and walks in sin.
2:1. “And you, who were dead in sins.“
2:3. “Also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh.“
As sinners, both Gentiles, “you,” and Jews, “we,” share the same position. All were dead in sins. However unequal the status of the Jew and the Gentile may be racially, as individual sinners they are on an absolutely equal footing. There is no privileged class in sin. High or low; educated or illiterate; Aryan or non-Aryan; occidental or oriental; professional or industrial; capitalistic or proletarian; all are brothers born in sin. The only place where all men meet on a common level and share the same position is in their natural birth in sin.
In Christ
The saint is ensphered by and encased in Christ. He is at home in Christ. He lives and walks in Christ.
2:5,6. “God hath quickened us together with Christ and raised us up… and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ.“
Before his rebirth Paul was one of the most bigoted of Jews, thinking himself doing God’s service to imprison and slaughter the Christians. Yet here he uses that word “us,” which includes the Gentile Christians. All barriers are down now; all racial enmity is gone, and Paul is the arch-champion of the equality of all saints in Christ.
As there is no privileged class in sin, so there is none in Christ. Every sinner is a bankrupt and an outcast, and only by God’s unmerited favour, shown to him in Christ, is he ever anything else. One’s nth degree human pedigree; one’s Ph.D. education; one’s multimillionaire estate; one’s highly refined culture; one’s publicized philanthropies; one’s name in Who’s Who avail for nothing in grace. Clergy and laity; the aged believer and the newborn convert; the most noted citizen and the most notorious criminal, saved by grace, all have the same position in Christ. God has no favourites in Christ. Grace exalts all saints to the same high and heavenly position in Christ.
In sin is where all sinners are by nature. In Christ is where all saints are by grace. God is no respecter of persons, either in sin or in Christ.
From “The Wealth, Walk, and Warfare of the Christian” by Ruth Paxson. Read the complete article online.
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