Having established that to be “in Christ” is to be personally united to him, there are several important aspects of this union with him which we need to consider at once.
First, union with Christ is indispensable to our Christian identity. That is, nobody is a Christian without it, although to be sure our perceptions and experiences of it may vary. It is an extraordinary fact that people are still debating what it means to be a Christian. That we should be discussing the implications and responsibilities of being a Christian is understandable, but after nearly two millennia it is not a little strange that there should still be any argument about what actually constitutes a Christian. Yet there is.
The New Testament definition of a Christian is a person “in Christ”. It is necessary to insist, therefore, that according to Jesus and his apostles to be a Christian is not to have been baptized, to belong to the church, to receive Holy Communion, to believe in the doctrines of the creed or to try to follow the standards of the Sermon on the Mount.
The jewel is Jesus Christ himself. To be a Christian is primarily to live in union with Jesus Christ, as a result of which baptism, belief and behaviour slot naturally into place.
From the book Life In Christ.
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