Series: Understanding Salvation
Lesson Introduction:
One of the most potent truths that will establish a proper sense of identity is the principle of identification with Christ. It answers all the arguments that the enemy and unbelieving believers will level against you, it is the antidote to the voice of the accuser. It’s a worthy truth to ask God to reveal.
Identification with Christ establishes that who you are right now is because you have become one with the death, burial, resurrection, ascension and seating of Christ.
Christianity is Christ. The Christian life is Christ living His life in and through the believer. The life of Christ is reproduced in the child of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is a new life with new relationships. It has a new source––Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul wrote, “Christ . . . Is our life” (Colossians 3:4). Jesus told His disciples, “Abide in Me, and I in you . . . I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15:5).
Romans 6:11 gives us a great principle on living the Christian life. “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” When we reckon on something we accept it as an accomplished fact.
Paul again refers to this identification with Christ in Galatians 2:20. He writes, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
Paul died to the law and was crucified with Christ. He often uses the idea of dying with Christ (Gal. 5:24; 6:14; Rom. 6:8; Col. 2:20) and burial with Christ also (Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:12).
So complete has become Paul’s identification with Christ that his separate personality is merged into that of Christ. This language helps one to understand the victorious cry in Rom. 7:25. It is the union of the vine and the branch (John 15:1–6).
We have learned from Romans 8:29 that God’s goal for His believers is the conformity of our character to the likeness of Christ. Everything that God does in our lives happens to focus on that one supreme purpose. God has selected before hand the goal that everyone who believes on Christ will be conformed to His likeness.
God’s primary concern is our character, functioning the way He intended us to function, i.e. like Christ. He will not give up on that goal. He will keep at it until it’s manifest.
God the Holy Spirit takes our personalities and works in us to produce character that is loving, and full of “joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self–control” (Galatians 5:22–23).
Are we going to be a bunch of robots running around in heaven? No, of course not. We all have different personalities, but He desires that we have the characteristics that make Jesus so magnificent and wonderful.
God’s goal was that Jesus should be the firstborn among many just like Him. What a wonderful place heaven will be! (Rom. 8:29).
Not all of this is new for you who have been walking with Christ for some time. It is just biblical theology of Christian living. It is living the Christian life by grace through faith. You were saved by grace through faith in Christ; you live it by grace through faith in Him.
This new position we have in Christ is a vital union with Him.
We are now identified with Christ. It is an intimate love relationship with Christ brought about by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit in our hearts the moment we repented and believed on Christ. We are new creatures in Christ. This new relationship with Christ has been called by many terms such as the exchanged life, the higher life, the crucified life, deeper life, the abiding life, the Spirit–filled or Spirit–controlled life, the victorious life, the baptism of the Spirit, the identification with Christ, the faith–rest life, etc. What all of them are saying is we have a new position in Christ Jesus. It is the result of God’s free grace the moment we believed on Him as our savior. Now that we belong to Jesus He has provided us a life of spiritual power, depth and victory that is available to all believers. It is not found in some emotional religious experience, but in a daily moment by moment walk by faith in my eternal position in Lord Jesus Christ.
Let’s look for a moment at what this vital union with Christ is not. What I am not saying is summed up quite well in the statement below:
-It is not a new teaching.
-It is not sinless perfection.
-It is not a life of passivity.
-It is not a self–help teaching.
-It is not an undisciplined life.
-It is not a second work of grace.
-It is not a counseling technique.
-It is not an improved “old man.”
-It is not in any way deifying man.
-It is not instant change in behavior.
-It is not wiping out our personality.
-It is not overlooking or approving sinful behavior.
-It is not a guarantee that emotions will line up consistently with truth.
However, the very moment we believed on Christ as our personal Savior we were baptized by the Holy Spirit, and we were placed into the Body of Christ. By being members of the Body of Christ everything that is true of the Head is true of each member of His Body.
“By one Spirit we are all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13). At the same time God the Holy Spirit took up residence in our body and made it His holy temple.
The word baptize means to ”dip,” “to plunge,” “to immerse.” I can illustrate by taking this beautiful new white shirt and dipping or immersing it in this pan of red dye. And when I pull it out of the pan of red dye it is no longer identified as the white shirt. It is no longer a white shirt. It has a completely new identity. It has changed its identity. It is the red shirt. The believer took on a new identity when he was baptized by the Holy Spirit into the Body of Christ. Our identity was changed by our union with Christ. We are now identified as Christians. We are members of Christ. We are no longer old Adam’s family; we have a new family with new identity. Christ is the head of our new family.
One of the most beautiful pictures of identification is found in the Old Testament on the Day of Atonement. The High Priest killed a goat and offered him as a sin offering. Then he took another goat that is called the scapegoat. Aaron laid both his hands on the head of the live goat and confessed all the iniquities of the children of Israel. The idea is all their sins were identified with the live goat. The sin bearer has identified himself with the sins of the people. He was then led out into the wilderness bearing the sin of the people. The goat was led out to die for the sins of the people of Israel.
Christ has made His identification with us as our sin bearer. He so identified Himself with us that when we confessed our sins to Him He took those sins with Him to the cross and died as our substitute on the Cross. He was my sin bearer dying in my place on the cross. 2 Corinthians 5:21 reads, “He (God) made Him (Jesus) who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” When we believed on Christ as our personal Savior all our sins were placed on Him and His death was reckoned as our death. He was so identified with me that God accepted His death as my death.
When the Holy Spirit baptized us we were identified with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension and glorification. An intimate relationship or union was formed with Christ. We became identified with Him.
Our water baptism symbolizes this baptism of the Holy Spirit, which has already taken place when we believed on Christ. When we stepped into the pool of water it was the old life that was symbolically buried with Christ and a new person with a new identity was raised up out of the water. The believer has taken on a new identification with a new identifier. The water identifies the person who was baptized. He is wet from head to toe. We now have a spiritual union with Christ. We have become identified with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection.
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