You are complete in Him…for you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with him in glory. (Col. 2:9, 3:3-4)
Christ has not merely given us a new life because He died, but He has given us HIMSELF – if we are in Him, HE IS our life. This is how we are complete in Him. Everything is within life, and nothing is outside of it – and the Person of Christ constitutes the very life of the believer.
It is difficult for most of us to get away from the idea that because of Christ we are given a thing or classification called LIFE. Or that because of Christ, we are given a thing called, “forgiveness.” But in reality, we are given CHRIST HIMSELF. We are joined to Him and have become ONE with Him in spirit. (I Cor. 6:17) Thus, it is IN HIM that we have life – HIS LIFE – indeed, in Him we have all things freely. (Rom. 8:32)
If Christ is our life then, “we are dead and our life is hid with Christ in God.” Practically speaking, this means that we are dead to living from out of ourselves. We are no longer the source of anything. But rather, we are alive to living by faith FROM OUT OF Christ – He is our resource for all things spiritual and material. Much of the work of the Spirit of God is geared to showing us we are dead and that Christ is our life, and in teaching us how to live by faith in this reality.
If Christ Be in You
And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. (Rom. 8:10)
This is another way of describing the separation in each believer between the new creature in Christ and all that remains outside of that new creation — and remains carnal. When we are saved, we are planted into His death – and we find that our body of sin is dead because of His death for our sin. We are also planted into His resurrection, and this joining of our spirit with Christ makes us alive with Him. The rest of the Christian life is a matter of us coming to walk in the Truth of these finished realities – we have to lose what is dead in order to find Christ as our life.
Note that all of this is the result of CHRIST IN US. Until Christ is in us, there is no separation between life and death in us – but there is only death. Until Christ is in us, there is no means by which we can be set free from untruth, because there no Truth in us. In Christ are all things that are of God, because all of the fullness of God dwells in Him. What an amazing Truth: God is in Christ and Christ is in us. The plan of God: The Father, the only begotten Son, and all of those who are in the Son.