We are In Christ: His Death and Resurrection are Our Experience for the Church Life

After Noah built the ark according to God’s divine revelation and instructions, he and his whole family entered into it – together with the animals – and God shut the door behind them.

As we build up Christ in our experience day by day, working out our own salvation by enjoying Christ, loving Him, talking to Him by calling on His name, and living Christ, God puts us in Christ and shuts us in Him.

We are now in Christ, shut in Him, with no way to escape. Hallelujah, Christ is our salvation, we are in Him, and we cannot get out of Christ! No one can snatch us out of Christ’s hand and out of the Father’s hand.

Now in Christ we enjoy and experience whatever He experiences, just as Noah and his family experienced what the ark has experienced. We experience Christ’s death by being in Christ, just as Noah and his family experienced the flood by being in the ark. We experience Christ’s resurrection by being in Christ, just as Noah and his family experienced the ark resting on the mountains of Ararat.

Now, in resurrection, we have a new life with a new living – we now live in the church life in resurrection, just as Noah and his family had a new life with a new living on the new earth!

Stay in Christ. Abide in Him. Enjoy Him. Experience Him. Let Him work Himself into you. Just abide in Christ, and you will experience His death and His resurrection, living a God-man life in resurrection in the church life for the building up of the Body!

Whatever Christ Experienced is Also Our Experience by Our Being in Him

The ark of Noah in Gen. 8 was a type of Christ. The ark passing through the death waters of God’s judgement was a type of Christ passing through death, under God’s judgement. The ark resting on the mountains of Ararat (Gen. 8:4) typifies that Christ didn’t remain in death but was resurrected out of the death waters.

Christ is the only One who entered into death, passed through death, remained in death for three days, and then came out of death in resurrection. He deliberately went to death, entered into death, remained in death, and got out of death in resurrection because He Himself is resurrection and of resurrection! Christ walked out of death – death was not able to hold Him (Acts 2:24).

Furthermore, in His resurrection Christ became the life-giving Spirit so that He may impart, dispense, and distribute all that He is and has done into His believers (see 1 Cor. 15:45). Christ is now in resurrection – and even before He died, He was resurrection and of resurrection (John 11:25; Rev. 1:18)!

The most wonderful thing concerning all the processes that Christ went through is that, just as Noah and his family experienced everything that the ark experienced by virtue of being in the ark, we also experienced Christ’s death and resurrection by virtue of being in Christ!

We as believers of Christ are in Christ, and we were crucified and resurrected together with Christ (1 Cor. 1:30; Eph. 1:4; Rom. 6:6; 2 Cor. 5:14; Gal. 2:20a; Eph. 2:6; Col. 2:12; 3:1). Whatever the ark experienced was also the experience and history of Noah and his family; whatever Christ experienced through His death and resurrection became our experience and our history by our being in Christ!

Because we are in Christ, His experience is ours! Christ was crucified, buried, resurrected, and ascended, and we were put in Him before all these happened – we also were crucified with Him, buried with Him, resurrected with Him, and ascended with Him!

When Christ was crucified, we also were crucified. When Christ was raised, we also were raised together with Him by being in Him (Eph. 2:6; Col. 3:1). Hallelujah!

Experiencing Christ’s Death and Resurrection by Being in Christ Today

How can we experience Christ’s death being applied to our natural being and our flesh? How can we experience Christ’s resurrection life today so that we may live a God-man life in the church life? 1 Cor. 1:30 tells us clearly that it is of God that we are in Christ Jesus!

We don’t have to pray, “Lord, crucify me! Crucify my lusts and my passions!” or, “Lord, resurrect me!” as if we are begging the Lord to do this or that for us. We can experience Christ’s death and resurrection with their effectiveness by being in Christ! And we are! We are in Christ today, and we simply need to abide in Him!

Whenever we turn to our spirit and contact the Lord, whenever we are one with Christ, He as the Spirit applies the death of Christ to our being – exactly to the area that needs the death of Christ. When we abide in the Lord, He spreads into our entire inner being as resurrection life to bring the life which death cannot overcome into our mind, emotion, and will.

The Lord today is waiting for us to “run out of breath”, give up in our natural life, and cease asking in our natural man for Him to do this or that for us – and then He will show us clearly: You are In Christ!

Just as the Lord Jesus had to wait until Martha ran out of opinions in John 11, and then He raised Lazarus from the dead, He is waiting for us and suffering as we utter opinion after opinion, and eventually He will impart Himself into us as resurrection life.

The effectiveness of Christ’s death and the power of His resurrection today are in the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit (which Christ became through His resurrection), and whenever we are one spirit with the Lord, whether we feel it or not, the Spirit applies to us Christ’s experiences which become our experiences!

May we be those who do NOT seek any experience outside of Christ or without Christ – our genuine Christian experience is the experience of Christ in His death and in His resurrection by being in Christ, one spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17)!

Seeing a Seed of the Church Life in the Story of Noah

This whole week we will be getting into the deeper meaning of Noah and his family’s history after they got out of the ark, since in Genesis 8:1-9:17 we can see a seed of the church life. The new life and living that Noah and his family had after the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat is a type of the life of the believers in resurrection in the church life!

Noah and his family passed through the flood (which typifies the death of Christ) by being in the ark (a type of Christ), and the living they had after the flood signifies the living of the church in Christ’s resurrection.

We need to see a crucial lesson concerning the church: the church exists in the resurrection life of Christ. Nothing natural does the Body life allow. Many human organizations and societies and missions exist very well in the realm of the human natural life, but the church is an exception.

We are in the church life in reality when we pass through death and live in resurrection life of Christ. The church can exist only in Christ’s resurrection life. This is why we need to live one spirit with the Lord all the time, so that we would have a new life with a new living – Christ living in us – for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.

Whenever we experience Christ’s death and His resurrection by being in Christ, we are in the church and we live the church life. “The living of the resurrected people after the resurrection was the church life” (Life-study of Genesis, p. 425).

Lord Jesus, thank You for making us one spirit with You through our regeneration! Hallelujah, we are now IN CHRIST! God put us in Him, and in Christ we can enjoy and experience all that He went through. We can experience Christ’s death and resurrection being applied in us by simply being in Him! We are in Christ! Lord, keep us here, enjoying You by being one spirit with You, so that we may experience all that You are and have gone through. May we experience Christ’s death and resurrection by virtue of being in Christ for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration (besides the Word of God and my Christian experience): bro. Ron Kangas’ speaking in this message and portions from, Life-study of Genesis (msg. 31), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on the Crystallization Study of Genesis (1), week / msg 12, A Seed of the Church Life and a Shadow of the Kingdom.
• Further reading: see msg. 25 in Life-Study of 1 Peter (by Witness Lee).
• Hymns on this topic:
  # What a wondrous fact, I’m crucified with Christ; / Of my flesh and passion I’m relieved; / What a glorious fact, with Christ, the Lord, I live, / Resurrection life in Him received.
  # Buried with Christ, and raised with Him too; / What is there left for me to do? / Simply to cease from struggling and strife, / Simply to walk in newness of life. / Glory be to God!
  # Death cannot hold the resurrection life! / … / Oh, may I know this resurrection life, / In every kind of death its pow’r outpoured, / In my experience ever realize / This life is nought but Christ my living Lord.