Paul says, "and be found in Him." What does it mean, "to be found in Christ?" That was Paul’s desire, and therefore, it ought to be ours.

"To be found in Christ," means to realize your full identity and completion IN HIM. It means that because you lose your life for His sake, you find yourself, because of your identification with Him. "To be found in Him," is, in fact, the summation of all that human beings truly desire, and really, is the final outcome of what God is doing through the Redemption.

I am not here talking about salvation. That, of course, starts it all. Without salvation, nothing in this passage applies to us. Paul was saved, yet said he desired these things, indeed, said he did not yet perfectly attain them. So we are talking about something AFTER we are saved, that involves a growing and a becoming in Christ. It is, in fact, something God wants for all, but is something which is almost never talked about today.

If you simply consider those words, "to be found in CHRIST," you will see that right away we are talking about something so totally OTHER THAN what we would consider, "normal" – we are talking about something for which we have no frame of reference. This is not some sort of, "positional Truth," or about some fancy way of saying we are saved. No. Paul is describing a relationship into which God wants to bring us with Himself through Christ – a relationship wherein we have a consciousness that it is, "not I, but Christ in me."

The words, "to be found in Christ," raise the question, "Found by WHO?" Well, by God, first of all. And then by us. And then by others. And if you will notice, "to be found," implies that we are NOT found before that, but were lost. Perhaps not lost in the sense of eternal death, but lost in the sense of not really knowing where we were. Many of us don’t know where we are in Christ, God’s will, or what the purpose is for our Christian living. Once we are, "found in Him," all those things get settled. We know all of them because we know Him.

Insanity is the product of being detached from reality. Thus, everyone outside of Christ is, to varying degrees, insane, because if they are not in Christ, they ARE detached from THE REALITY. You cannot know anything unless you know it from God’s standpoint – by seeing it with Christ as the backdrop.

This is also true about our own self-realization. You cannot know who you are until you are found in Christ. Why? Well, because you really aren’t anyone until you are IN HIM. He completes each and everyone of us, and until we are in Him, we aren’t what we are supposed to be. We may paste names and terms on ourselves to try to complete ourselves, and even try to fill the void with the things of this world, but only Christ can complete us. Once He does, then we are who we are supposed to be – and consequently, we come into a realization of who we are, because there is now someone there to realize.

Now, we do need to understand: "To be found in Christ," has nothing to do with self-esteem – indeed, it has to do with the crucifixion of it. Neither does it have to do with personality development or psychology. It is not a matter of us getting the things we want so we can be happy. This is vital to see because it might sound like those things to some. What I am talking about here has absolutely nothing to do with anything you and I normally consider will make us happy or complete. For, "to be found in Christ," means I must first LOSE my identification with everything else. I must come to the Cross.

Psychology tries to rid us of low self-esteem, and give us high self-esteem. God seeks to bring us outside of those two options completely, and to set us free from ourselves, period. The goal of the Holy Spirit is to so center us on Christ, that in doing so, we actually become everything God intended.

Note the irony: It is by leaving ourselves alone and focusing on Christ that we find ourselves. By "leaving ourselves alone," I mean that we stop fretting and fussing over everything that is wrong with us, and stop trying to make ourselves presentable to God. We never were presentable to God, and never will be. Once we are found in Christ, however, we see that we ARE accepted of Him – but only because of Jesus.

In order to be identified with Christ you have to lose identification with everything else. You literally have to come to where you don’t know who you are or what you are – and you have to willingly surrender to the fact. This isn’t a game. That’s about being stripped of all that you used to identify yourself – and that is an ultimate depletion. For Christians, this most often means what it meant for Paul: We have to be stripped of all that we were using to make ourselves righteous and presentable to God. We have to recognize that we are totally naked before God.

There comes a time in the life of a person who God is drawing to this where they hit a wall. It is a dead end and they know it. This dead end is not like other dead ends. This dead end is a place where it is going to be God doing it, or it just isn’t going to be done. At that point, the person no longer has any argument to present to God. They have already said all the prayers and cried all the tears, and have become totally depleted by trying to find God, and by trying to find answers. They have failed and hit the wall. They no longer have excuses to offer. They have no assets to present, and no reason to offer God as to why He ought to help them. And there is no longer anything in them which wants to try to cut a deal with God about anything. Up to this point, all that stuff seemed reasonable and expected – or so they thought. But when you hit this wall, you realize that there is just YOU – standing there naked. And there is just God. You are at His mercy, and He must take the initiative. You have nothing you can do.

Most of us still think that we need to present something to God about ourselves that will give Him reason to help us, or bless us, or save us. For some of us, we try good works. Sometimes we think that if we keep this principle or law, that God will spring into action for us. For others, maybe we present a good attitude to God, thinking that this will convince Him. Some of us even try, "faith." We tell God, "I believe You, so this surely must obligate You to respond to me." We have all kinds of bantering and bargaining we do with God. The day will come, however, when God will no longer, in His mercy, go along with this type of thing. He wants to bring us into greater Truth. He will make us to see that there never was anything we presented to Him that gave Him reason to love us. He loved us only because it is His nature to do so. In short, God doesn’t need a reason to love you. He has all the reason necessary in Himself: He IS love.

What I am talking about here is coming to the place where you really do declare spiritual bankruptcy. You will be utterly shocked at how totally empty you are – and how there is nothing about you which commends you to God. I’m not talking here about reciting Bible verses to God like, "In me dwells no good thing." Rather, I’m talking about SEEING THIS about yourself in a way that is utterly impossible unless God is doing it. You will see yourself as totally NAKED. There is no lower place to come. But the good news is that you will know that the only answer is to stand naked before God – and fall upon His mercy. NOW we are getting somewhere! This is where God wants to bring us – because it is here that we begin to lose ourselves, so that we might be found in Him.

Now, the interesting thing about this is that you are actually glad when it happens. There is something freeing about coming to the place – and I mean REALLY coming to the place – where you finally realize that there isn’t a thing you can do to help yourself. That realization somehow takes off of you the frustration of trying to figure out what to do. There isn’t anything you can do, and you know it. But you also realize, in a way that all of the teachings on the subject could not convey, that this place is where God has brought you. Your realization of your own spiritual bankruptcy has shattered something in you of self-will and unbelief. And when the dust clears, there is Jesus standing there. Now you understand what it means to be completed by HIM, and to be found in HIM.

What is being described here is, of course, losing your life to find it. This is a major crisis where a person comes to the Cross of Jesus Christ, perhaps long after they are saved, but comes as a disciple, not a sinner. This is a point at which you can NEVER ARRIVE until God brings you. You cannot get there by wanting to. It’s a process to get there. A process which is terrible and suffering. But in the end, you get freedom you never dreamed possible.

I am convinced that until a person reaches this place in Christ, there is no possible way to know what it is like. It can be described, and even formalized in teaching and doctrine. But it is never what you think. The realization of it is more wonderful than you can imagine – but the build up to it is more terrible and causes more suffering than you can imagine. We are talking about DEATH here -- of everything that makes us tick as RELIGIOUS people. But we are also talking about LIFE here that is experienced only by going through the death.

Do you want to be found in Him? Then you must lose yourself. Do you want to be complete in Him – in a way that is experienced? Then prepared to be shown just how incomplete you are. Any of us can memorize these teachings and doctrines. But to actually experience these things will tear down everything about us so that God can build something into His image and likeness.

The NORMAL relationship between Jesus Christ and ourselves is to be one of our total reliance upon Him. We were MADE dependent creatures, and if we try to function any other way we become distortions of what God intended. Thus, if I surrender fully to Christ, and lose myself in Him, I am then becoming a NORMAL human being. This will result in, not distortions, but total spiritual health and wholeness. It will mean that whoever I am will come out in fullness. But not because Christ has grabbed me and re-fashioned me. No. Rather, it is because I have entered into a union with Him wherein I have become COMPLETE. I have been FOUND IN HIM.

Get the distinction. Most of us think that Christ does things FOR US, and makes us better people. We usually think of this in terms of Him acting UPON US. But this isn’t it. Christ doesn’t do things for us, or act upon us. He completes us with HIMSELF. We are joined in an identification with Him, and He completes us in everyway.

So we see that we are not merely FOUND because of Christ. We are FOUND IN CHRIST. We aren’t simply acted upon and made complete by His power. We are completed IN HIM – by His very Person. There is a reason why the church is called the Bride of Christ. God is picturing a union and a relationship which completes us. Likewise, there is a reason why the church is called the Body of Christ. What term could better picture that we are IN HIM?

Paul said, "I want to be found IN HIM." And then he went on to describe what would be the accompanying results:

First, Paul would see that he had NO righteousness of his own. But Paul is not talking about the fact that he desired to understand doctrine or theology better. No. Paul was talking about hitting that wall – about really seeing that he had no righteousness of his own. Do we have any frame of reference for what it is like to see that about ourselves? Any at all? To stand before God with NOTHING? Yet that is what Paul desired. We’d desire it too, if we only knew the nature of things. Paul actually counted everything about himself that he might have used to make himself righteous as DUNG – and he wasn’t pretending. It really was DUNG. Paul was calling things what they were. And yet it was THIS realization that enabled him to, "win Christ, and be found in Him."

Second, once Paul was stripped of his own righteousness and merits, he could live in the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ. You see, we toss these things around like they are merely theological concepts and doctrines. Or, "positional Truth." But Paul knew the reality. THAT is what he is talking about here.

Paul didn’t stop there. He went on to list other results of being found in Christ:

Thirdly, "to know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings." You cannot know the power of the resurrection until you come under the power of the Cross: By "being made conformable to His death." And that is, of course, what this is all about, isn’t it? It is about entering into the fellowship of His sufferings on everything – and having it register in you and do a work in you. Then the resurrection power is able to flow through you.

God doesn’t hand out, "buckets," of resurrection power like it is a present, and tell us to go use it. No. No only would this destroy us, but it would never glorify Christ. There is always a cause and effect here. If you want to know the power of His resurrection, you have to count all things about yourself as lost – and be stripped of all YOUR POWER. If you want to be strong, you must be made weak. These are not just words. It is reality. Are we prepared to be made weak? Do we realize the COST of such a work of the Cross in us? Yet that is the only way it is possible to know the power of His resurrection.

See, when we read that we can know the power of His resurrection, we make it mean the literal resurrection which will happen someday, or make it mean that we are generally raised with Christ. Read the passage and you will see that these things don’t fit in as interpretations. Paul is talking about the power of the resurrection NOW, in him and through him. It is just that simple.

Paul ends the passage by saying that he is still in this process. This proves he is not talking about the event of salvation or the fact that it is finished. He is talking about something possible NOW – through the work of the Holy Spirit.

For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And you are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: (Col 2:9-10)

If we want to be COMPLETE in Christ, we are going to have to warm up to the fact that we are INCOMPLETE without Him. This fact is revealed right back in the garden of Eden. Before his sin, Adam was, "naked and unashamed." To be naked means to have no assets in and of yourself for living. You are NAKED of all things. But – and this is the point – Adam was naked but not ashamed. What does that mean? It means that despite being naked, Adam was NOT CONSCIOUS of it. Indeed, nakedness was so NORMAL for Adam that he was perfectly COMFORTABLE in this condition. What made this possible? GOD HIMSELF completed Adam. That’s the key. Because Adam’s was in union and oneness with God, he was completely naked, but totally completed. There was no sense of need, or of incompleteness.

This condition of being, "naked and unashamed," speaks of God’s original design for man. It points directly to the RESULTS of Adam being in the relationship with God that God originally intended. God made man a totally DEPENDENT creature. It is WHAT WE ARE – the KIND of creature man is. You don’t have to try to be dependent, nor can you escape the fact. Rather, you must decide who or what you will be dependent upon. God made man to be dependent upon HIM, resulting in being complete IN HIM. God intended man to find his life, and his fulfillment, and everything else IN HIM. As long as Adam did this – symbolized by partaking of the tree of life – Adam was spiritually alive. He was complete in God. He was naked – and unashamed.

Adam’s sin was essentially that he declared independence from God. He chose to no longer be dependent upon God. This choice was wrapped up in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – which was a deliberate declaration to decide for oneself what was good and what was evil. When Adam sinned in this way, his union with God was broken, and thus, he was now spiritually dead. He was totally incomplete. He was, "naked and ASHAMED."

Now can we see why Adam, after the sin, is so tormented by his nakedness? Before the sin, Adam was naked and UNASHAMED – because he was completed by God. But after the sin, Adam was naked and ASHAMED – because he had rejected God. What we discovered is what I said earlier: Man is MADE dependent. Adam was naked both before and after his sin. It’s just that after the sin he found out that he had lost the only Person who could complete him – his very life. Thus, we find Adam trying to FIX his nakedness, and substitute for God, by using fig leaves.

Fig leaves are anything we use to substitute for Jesus Christ. They are what we use to cover our true condition without Christ. Some people use ugly fig leaves like drug addiction or immorality. Others use pretty fig leaves like religion and self-righteousness. But fig leaves are man’s use of anything of this life and this world – and can never restore what was lost.

And what was lost? Life. Because God Himself was rejected – and all life is in HIM. The solution therefore is LIFE. But first things first. There is a problem which must be dealt with before we can receive new life. That problem is the OLD MAN in Adam. He is still trying to cover his nakedness with fig leaves. So God must first show us that we are naked, and that those fig leaves will not do. Indeed, God must show us that we have sinned by trying to do for ourselves what only He can do. God must convict us of the sin of unbelief – of the sin of living independent of Him.

Thankfully, God doesn’t peel off all the fig leaves before we can get saved. No, He simply makes us aware that we have tried to complete ourselves with fig leaves, instead of coming to Him. THAT is the sin of unbelief. And God often shows this sin to us by giving us a glimpse of our own nakedness so that we can see the hopelessness of our condition, and the folly of our unbelief. Then we can come to Him. We will then spend the rest of our lives in a process wherein God takes away the fig leaves and moves us into a greater relationship with Himself.

Can we see from all of this that right from the start God made man to live in dependency, harmony, union with HIM, and Him alone? Can we see that only in God is there completion for any of us? It does not matter how comfortable a person might feel apart from God. When we die, all the fig leaves are coming off. We will find ourselves naked. And if we do not have Christ in us, we will have NOTHING to complete us. Eternity in the condition of being, "naked and ashamed," awaits those who reject Christ in favor of fig leaves.

Thus, we see in all of this that in order to become complete in Christ, we must first confess that we are naked and incomplete. We must confess that we have spent our lives trying to compensate for our nakedness with fig leaves. This is SIN – and nothing more than a living out of the independence and rebellion that we are born with in Adam. But the good news is that once we see the Truth, we can once again turn, and put our full dependency in Christ. Isn’t that what FAITH IS? Sure. Faith is exactly that: Reliance and dependency. Therefore, we see that in Christ, things come full circle. Through the new birth we are restored to the original condition and relationship that God had in the beginning: We are naked and unashamed. We have nothing of ourselves – but are so complete in Christ that we are not even conscious of it.

Christianity is, "Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Col. 1:27) We are likewise IN CHRIST by being "planted together with Him," in the likeness of His death and resurrection. (Rom. 6) Jesus also said that He is the Vine, and we are the branches. Can we see a theme here? We see that if we are IN CHRIST, we really are, well --- IN CHRIST! ONE WITH HIM. There really is a spiritual oneness and a union.

Again – and this is so vital to see – we are not simply GIVEN eternal life. Eternal life is the result of being in HIM – and He is LIFE. In short, Jesus Christ has not merely given us eternal life, righteousness, or blessings. He has given us HIMSELF. That is why we have all those other things. They are of HIM – in us and through us.

You cannot divorce ANYTHING about Christianity from the Person of Christ. It is by our oneness with Him that we possess all things. That is why we are complete in Him. It is why we are found in Him.

Do you want to be a complete person? Then come to the Cross. Come to Christ – not just for salvation – but for everything after that. You will lose everything – but find that it is all worthless anyways. But you will gain all things – Christ Himself. You will BE FOUND IN HIM.

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. (Col. 3:3-4)

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