Salvation: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Salvation is a two-sided coin. Heads represents Jesus' coming into the Believer; tails represents the Believer's coming into Jesus. He is in me, and I am in Him (John 15:5). This is a package deal; you can't get one side at a time.
While studying this back in the 1970s, the Holy Spirit showed me that for every verse in the New Testament stating that Christ indwells the believer (Heads), there are ten verses stating that the Believer indwells Jesus or is "in Christ" (Tails). Ten to one! But until recent years, I could count on one hand the number of messages I'd heard on what it means to be “in Christ.”
I've heard thousands of sermons on how to get Christ to come into you and save you. Praise the Lord for those messages! But on the other hand, if the Word is weighted ten to one with "tails" verses, do you see that many Christians are missing some very important truth? A straight diet of salvation messages to the church won't bring us to maturity. God makes that clear to us in Hebrews 6:1: “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance” (emphasis added).
John 3:16 served up in “eighty-seven” ways to the Believer is not God's plan for victory. A Christian will starve on such a milk diet. That teaching won't help me much when I experience an assault on my self-esteem and feel rejected. I need power to resist; I don't need to quote John 3:16. I need to know how to appropriate what "in Christ" (the "tails" side) is about.
Consider a few of the verses that speak of the Believer's being in Christ:
Romans 3:24
...being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;
Romans 6:11
Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:39
...nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 12:5
...so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
Romans 15:17
Therefore in Christ Jesus I have found reason for boasting in things pertaining to God.
1 Corinthians 1:2
To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours...
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
Ephesians 1:4
...just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him...
Philippians 1:1
Paul and Timothy, bond-servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus...
Colossians 1:28
We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.