{"id":4793,"date":"2025-08-04T09:39:30","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T13:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4793"},"modified":"2025-08-04T09:39:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T13:39:30","slug":"en-in-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/04\/en-in-christ\/","title":{"rendered":"EN: “In” Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u00a0Each weekday in the month of August, we will pursue \u201cprepositional truth\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/em>

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\u2019s history and principles of government, and a filing fee of at least $640.

Then comes the test. It\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201cback to zero,\u201d starting the filing process all over again.

Some of the questions are pretty easy: \u201cWhat city is the U.S. capital?\u201d \u201cWhy are there 50 stars on the American flag?\u201d

Others are not easy at all. According to a government study, not many of the applicants know who served as America\u2019s 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\u2019s probably a good thing that natural-born Americans aren\u2019t required to take \u201crefresher tests\u201d 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\u2019re on the outside looking in, and when admission feels like a steep hill to climb.

What about citizenship in the kingdom of God?\u00a0\u00a0

The pathway to joining God\u2019s family is overwhelmingly simple: \u201cYet to all who did receive him [that is, Christ], to those who believed\u00a0in his name,\u00a0he gave the right to become children of God\u201d (John 1:12).

As we noted last week, \u201cbelieving in<\/u><\/strong><\/em>\u201d in John\u2019s Gospel is often (as here) \u201cbelieving EIS<\/strong>\u201d \u2013 that is, \u201cbelieving into\u201d Jesus, entrusting ourselves to his firm grip.

We should pause and note that the utter simplicity of \u201cbelieving into\u201d Jesus must not suffer \u201cdeath by adverbs.\u201d Most of us have heard at least one enthusiastic preacher suggest that it\u2019s not enough to \u201cjust believe\u201d in Jesus.

According to some, we can\u2019t really <\/em>know God just by surrendering ourselves to him.\u00a0We 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 \u201c-ly.\u201d

The problem with this earnest teaching is that you can\u2019t find it in the Bible.\u00a0The verb \u201cbelieve\u201d never appears with such adverbs anywhere in Scripture.\u00a0 As John puts it with unadorned simplicity, \u201cto those who believed<\/em> in his name\u2026\u201d

When it comes to being in relationship with God, we dare not make difficult what God clearly intends to be easy.<\/em>

As we assume this new relationship with God, another preposition assumes a critical role. The apostle Paul declares that we are \u201cin Christ\u201d (or equivalents like \u201cin him\u201d or \u201cin the Lord\u201d) a whopping 170 times across the pages of his 13 New Testament letters.

Here the English word \u201cin\u201d is the Greek preposition EN<\/strong>.

What does it mean to be \u201cin Christ\u201d?

If you have entrusted yourself to Christ, then you have a dual citizenship.\u00a0You live in a particular community, state, and nation.\u00a0But you also live in him<\/em>.\u00a0Knowing Jesus is like living in another country even while you live in your same old house on your same old street.\u00a0

Every time you are in Home Depot <\/em>you are also \u201cin Christ\u201d \u2013 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\u2019s reality to other people out in the parking lot.

But the meaning of Paul’s phrase plunges even deeper than that.\u00a0

Living \u201cen Christo<\/u><\/strong><\/em>\u201d can be described as a state of being.\u00a0Think of the ways that our thoughts, actions, and emotions are often dominated by other states of perception.\u00a0

Imagine what it\u2019s like, for instance, to be \u201cin debt.\u201d\u00a0Your financial condition feels like a burden you lug around wherever you go.\u00a0Every purchase, every decision, every choice of this dinner entr\u00e9e over that one is shaded by the realization that it will be hard to open your next VISA bill.\u00a0Your debt has become a part of your life, and it goes to bed with you every night when you try to fall asleep.\u00a0

Then there\u2019s being \u201cin pain.\u201d\u00a0

It\u2019s easy to take mobility for granted \u2013 right up to the moment you roll your ankle.\u00a0That\u2019s 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. \u00a0Everything hurts.\u00a0 All the time.\u00a0

Or how about a toothache?\u00a0A painful tooth goes with us to work, to the movies, and to a summer cookout.\u00a0Being in pain<\/em> means our attention is continually diverted to that source of agony.

How about being \u201cin love\u201d?\u00a0Life is beautiful.\u00a0Every problem feels solvable. Hope abounds.\u00a0Tomorrow will be better than today, and the day after that will be better still.\u00a0Being in love is the fountain of youth and the elixir of happiness.

But of course it doesn\u2019t last.

Being \u201cin Christ,\u201d however, does \u2013 all the way from this world to the next.

When we embrace Jesus, every conversation becomes a conversation in which the Messiah takes part.\u00a0Every day becomes a Messiah-day.\u00a0Every problem becomes an issue that the Messiah challenges us to address in his way, with his resources.\u00a0

Think of the power of that little word EN<\/strong>.

Just as our thoughts and feelings can be overwhelmed by the experience of being in<\/u><\/strong><\/em> <\/strong>pain, in<\/u><\/strong><\/em> debt, in<\/u><\/strong><\/em> distress, or in<\/u><\/strong><\/em> love, our eyes can be opened to the fact that being in Christ<\/u><\/strong><\/em> means he is the always-present Lord over our health, our possessions, our emotions, and our relationships.\u00a0

Being in Christ means we live every day as citizens in his domain \u2013 in Jesus\u2019 invisible geography of grace. \u00a0

And we don\u2019t even need to know who\u2019s the postmaster general.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u00a0Each weekday in the month of August, we will pursue \u201cprepositional truth\u201d 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.\u00a0 If you had to take the United States citizenship test, would you… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[485,473],"class_list":["post-4793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-in-christ","tag-prepositions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4795,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793\/revisions\/4795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}