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Each weekday in the month of August, we will pursue “prepositional truth” by zeroing in on a single Greek preposition in a single verse, noting the theological richness so often embedded in the humble words we so often overlook.
If you had to take the United States citizenship test, would you pass?
People yearning to become naturalized American citizens are required to jump through a number of hoops, including five years of permanent residency (or three years of marriage to an American citizen), passing muster with the Department of Homeland Security, rigorous study of America’s history and principles of government, and a filing fee of at least $640.
Then comes the test. It’s administered orally, one applicant at a time, by a federal officer of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
There are 100 possible questions. The officer randomly selects a set of 10. Would-be citizens must come up with at least six right answers. If they fail the test, then swing and miss a second time, it’s “back to zero,” starting the filing process all over again.
Some of the questions are pretty easy: “What city is the U.S. capital?” “Why are there 50 stars on the American flag?”
Others are not easy at all. According to a government study, not many of the applicants know who served as America’s first postmaster general (Benjamin Franklin); just one in eight can identify one of the three writers of the Federalist Papers (Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay); and fewer than one in 10 know what year the Constitution was written (1787).
It’s probably a good thing that natural-born Americans aren’t required to take “refresher tests” in order to retain their citizenship. According to a poll a few years ago, only 41% of your fellow voters could name the three branches of government. The pollsters were not particularly relieved to discover that 59%, at least, knew the names of the Three Stooges.
Citizenship is a precious thing when you’re on the outside looking in, and when admission feels like a steep hill to climb.
What about citizenship in the kingdom of God?
The pathway to joining God’s family is overwhelmingly simple: “Yet to all who did receive him [that is, Christ], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
As we noted last week, “believing in” in John’s Gospel is often (as here) “believing EIS” – that is, “believing into” Jesus, entrusting ourselves to his firm grip.
We should pause and note that the utter simplicity of “believing into” Jesus must not suffer “death by adverbs.” Most of us have heard at least one enthusiastic preacher suggest that it’s not enough to “just believe” in Jesus.
According to some, we can’t really know God just by surrendering ourselves to him. We must entrust ourselves sincerely, or truly, or faithfully, or genuinely, or boldly, or whole-heartedly, or radically, or charismatically, or unreservedly, or some other kind of word that ends in “-ly.”
The problem with this earnest teaching is that you can’t find it in the Bible. The verb “believe” never appears with such adverbs anywhere in Scripture. As John puts it with unadorned simplicity, “to those who believed in his name…”
When it comes to being in relationship with God, we dare not make difficult what God clearly intends to be easy.
As we assume this new relationship with God, another preposition assumes a critical role. The apostle Paul declares that we are “in Christ” (or equivalents like “in him” or “in the Lord”) a whopping 170 times across the pages of his 13 New Testament letters.
Here the English word “in” is the Greek preposition EN.
What does it mean to be “in Christ”?
If you have entrusted yourself to Christ, then you have a dual citizenship. You live in a particular community, state, and nation. But you also live in him. Knowing Jesus is like living in another country even while you live in your same old house on your same old street.
Every time you are in Home Depot you are also “in Christ” – and that should make a difference regarding how you think about impulse-buying, how you relate to the overworked guy in the paint department, and how you demonstrate God’s reality to other people out in the parking lot.
But the meaning of Paul’s phrase plunges even deeper than that.
Living “en Christo” can be described as a state of being. Think of the ways that our thoughts, actions, and emotions are often dominated by other states of perception.
Imagine what it’s like, for instance, to be “in debt.” Your financial condition feels like a burden you lug around wherever you go. Every purchase, every decision, every choice of this dinner entrée over that one is shaded by the realization that it will be hard to open your next VISA bill. Your debt has become a part of your life, and it goes to bed with you every night when you try to fall asleep.
Then there’s being “in pain.”
It’s easy to take mobility for granted – right up to the moment you roll your ankle. That’s when you realize that your aching ankle goes wherever you go, and affects the way you get dressed, reach high for a box of cereal, get in and out of the car, and try to pick up a child. Everything hurts. All the time.
Or how about a toothache? A painful tooth goes with us to work, to the movies, and to a summer cookout. Being in pain means our attention is continually diverted to that source of agony.
How about being “in love”? Life is beautiful. Every problem feels solvable. Hope abounds. Tomorrow will be better than today, and the day after that will be better still. Being in love is the fountain of youth and the elixir of happiness.
But of course it doesn’t last.
Being “in Christ,” however, does – all the way from this world to the next.
When we embrace Jesus, every conversation becomes a conversation in which the Messiah takes part. Every day becomes a Messiah-day. Every problem becomes an issue that the Messiah challenges us to address in his way, with his resources.
Think of the power of that little word EN.
Just as our thoughts and feelings can be overwhelmed by the experience of being in pain, in debt, in distress, or in love, our eyes can be opened to the fact that being in Christ means he is the always-present Lord over our health, our possessions, our emotions, and our relationships.
Being in Christ means we live every day as citizens in his domain – in Jesus’ invisible geography of grace.
And we don’t even need to know who’s the postmaster general.