It’s not surprising that there is a wide range of opinions among New Testament scholars over what Paul means by the little phrase “in Christ.” Views range from the more figurative—to be “in Christ” is akin to being “in the hands of Christ” so that he cares for you—to the more literal and real (or, even spatial)—we are located in Christ like Noah and his family were in the ark.

As I see it, the difference here is the difference between ideas and persons. Is being “in Christ” an ideal membership—like being a member of Costco? Or is it a real communion of personhood—like a marriage?

Ideas and persons couldn’t be more different. Ideas are static and motionless. They can’t respond. Persons are dynamic. Persons arrive in unexpected places in time and speak.

A few years ago I attended a talk given by Bonhoffer scholar Andrew Root and he used this video to get at the difference between an idea and a person. (This is the video I showed.)

The idea of Robinson Cano is easy to boo, but when he arrives in his concrete personhood things change.

God arrives in the person of Jesus Christ. The communion that he establishes is deeply personal and intimate. It is real participation between you and the person of Jesus. He shares in your personhood and you share in his.

As Bonhoeffer put it: 

It is not written that God became an idea, a principle, a program, a universally valid proposition or a law, but that God became human.

Paul encounters the person of Jesus on the Road to Damascus and this breaks open his previous ideas about who God is and what God desires. And as Paul encounters Jesus’ person, Jesus shows Paul that he is in union with other persons.

Paul had not seen the world through the person of Jesus until this moment. His world was previously filled with ideas of people (dirty gentiles, idolaters, blasphemers, etc.) but not real persons.

After his encounter with Jesus, the rest of Paul’s life is focused on the personhood of his neighbors—especially his gentile neighbors. Paul had no problem recognizing the personhood of a low-status, female slave like Lydia or a high ranking Roman proconsul like Sergius Paulus.

Paul established what Douglas Campbell calls “strange friendships” that transgressed the barriers of race, gender, and class. Paul was able to see the people he met as persons rather than ideas or labels.

Why was he able to do this? What gave him this flexibility? It was the fact that he was “in Christ.” Campbell explains: Paul was an effective missionary because he was “in Christ” rather than under the law. And so were the people he met. They, too, were in Christ, whether they knew it or not. High status or low status, Jew or gentile, slave or free, male or female—all are in Christ and so Paul could go wherever the wind of the Spirit blew.

In short, he was all things to all people only because he was “in Christ” and “Christ is all and in all.”

Paul realized that this is what God has always been up to: making persons. Giving a face to the faceless. He desires to make us children! His own children. But to be a child of this personal God we must be made personal. And that happens only through relationship and communion.

I’ll leave you with one of my all-time favorite quotes from Hans Urs von Balthasar, which I think gets right at the heart of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ:

After a mother has smiled at her child for many days and weeks she finally receives her child’s smile in response. She has awakened love in the heart of her child…

What else could the incarnation be except the smile of God on humanity that is awakening love—and so making us personal again?

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