The seventeenth-century minister Thomas Jacomb once wrote of Romans 8, “From first to last, it is high gospel.”[1] Beginning with “no condemnation” and ending with the assurance that nothing can separate us from God’s love, it is one of the most magisterial and encouraging chapters in all of Scripture. In his message “No Condemnation in Christ,” Alistair Begg begins a short tour through its profound depths, helping us to grasp the solution to the predicament of sin, the relationship between freedom and the law, the call to walk in newness of life by God’s Spirit—and, in this excerpt, the significance of being “in Christ”:
You know that Paul actually doesn’t use “Christian” at all in his writings. He refers to the believer as being “in Christ.” Classically, perhaps, 2 Corinthians 5: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new [have] come” (2 Cor. 5:17 NIV 1984).
So this is the real question, isn’t it? …
… When Paul writes to the Ephesians and he begins with that great paean of praise of the amazing electing grace of God, he’s way up in the heights, and then you get to the thirteenth verse, and he says, “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation” (Eph. 1:13 NIV 1984). Are you in Christ? When were you included in Christ? Well, one answer to that is “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). …
… Becoming a Christian is a bit like getting married, you know.
… Imagine that it’s Christ and you standing at the front of the church, and God the Father is conducting the ceremony. And He says, “Son, do you take this sinner?”
And He says, “I do. I died for her.”
“And sinner, do you take this Savior?”
“I do.”
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[1] Thomas Jacomb, Sermons on the Eighth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, (Verses 1–4) (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1868), 12