Get Your Pretense On!

Chapter 3: ”There’s Plenty Good Room” • 69

These kinds of views and issues must be rejected, if you are truly going to live into the truth of the church, who you really are, and get your pretense on regarding being one of God’s elect bride members. Among all the other things you may be as a Christian, you must get your pretense on about being a member of the body of Christ. As amazing as it may sound, you have been chosen by God to live forever in a place that Christ has personally designed and built for you, and all those whom he claims as his own. In the timing of the Father’s own plan, he will return and gather you and all others elected to be with him forever (John 14.1-3; 1 John 3.1-3; Titus 2.11-14). This is your identity and your destiny. To get at this truly, you must begin to see that the church is identified completely with the Son of God, with the person and work of Christ. We are united with him, intimately and permanently. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5.31-32). The easiest way to illustrate this organic connection of Christ to his people in the church is to trace the apostolic claims of our being with him, in him, and through him in the New Testament. Here is a sampling of this critical confession of the apostles for us: You Are “In Christ:”A Member of the Body, Personally Identified with Christ

• We are “ made one in Christ, ” 1 Cor. 6.15-17. • We were baptized into him , 1 Cor. 12.13. • We died with him , Rom. 6.3-4. • We were buried with him , Rom 6.3-4. • We were raised with him , Eph. 2.4-7.