En Cristo
Paul summarizes his corporate understanding of salvation with his shorthand
phrase “en Cristo,” using it more than any single phrase in all of his letters: a
total of 164 times. En Cristo seems to be Paul’s code word for the gracious,
participatory experience of salvation, the path that he so urgently wanted to
share with the world. Succinctly put, this identity means humanity has never
been separate from God—unless and except by its own negative choice. All of
us, without exception, are living inside of a cosmic identity, already in place,
that is driving and guiding us forward. We are all en Cristo, willingly or
unwillingly, happily or unhappily, consciously or unconsciously.
Paul seemed to understand that the lone individual was far too small,
insecure, and short-lived to bear either the “weight of glory” or the “burden of
sin.” Only the whole could carry such a cosmic mystery of constant loss and
renewal. Paul’s knowledge of “in Christ” allowed him to give God’s universal
story a name, a focus, a love, and a certain victorious direction so that coming
generations could trustingly jump on this cosmic and collective ride.
I hope that you will learn and enjoy the full meaning of that short, brilliant
phrase, because it is crucial for the future of Christianity, which is still trapped
in a highly individualistic notion of salvation that ends up not looking much
like salvation at all. All of us, without exception, are living inside of a common
identity, already in place, that is driving and guiding us forward. Paul calls this
bigger Divine identity the “mystery of his purpose, the hidden plan he so kindly
made en Cristo from the very beginning” (Ephesians 1:9). Today, we might call
it the “collective unconscious.”
Every single creature—the teen mother nursing her child, every one of the
twenty thousand species of butterflies, an immigrant living in fear, a blade of
grass, you reading this book—all are “in Christ” and “chosen from the
beginning” (Ephesians 1:3, 9). What else could they be? Salvation for Paul is an
ontological and cosmological message (which is solid) before it ever becomes a
moral or psychological one (which is always unstable). Pause and give that some
serious thought, if you can.
Did you ever notice that in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells the disciples to
proclaim the Good News to “all creation” or “every creature,” and not just to