It has to start here

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (II Corinthians 5:17).

The gospel proclaims a new creation: a new tree — union with a new root — being grafted on to a new stock. This is not to improve the old, but to be translated into a new position.

Take another illustration. Here is a man, let us suppose, who has failed in business. He is not only hopelessly insolvent; his credit is gone, and his name is disgraced. All efforts of his own to retrieve his position are utterly fruitless; he is beyond all hope of recovery in that direction. But hope comes to him from another quarter. Let us suppose he is taken into partnership by one whose name stands high in the commercial world. He becomes a partner in a wealthy and honorable firm. All his debts are paid by that firm, and the past is cancelled. But this is not all. He gets an entirely new standing. His old name is set aside, forgotten, buried forever. He has now a new name. In that name he transacts all his business. His old name is never again mentioned.

We have here a faint shadow of what the gospel bestows. To be a believer in Christ is to have passed out of our old position — to lose our old name — and to take our stand on an entirely new ground. We are baptized “into the name of the Lord”; we are “in Christ.” This is not a privilege that comes to the believer by degrees; it is complete and absolute at once. And the moment the transition takes place, the believer stands, not on the ground of probation, but on the ground of redemption.

This truth is fundamental. The “in Christ” of standing is the foundation of all practical godliness, of all Christian service. We must start here, or we cannot take a single step in the way of holiness.