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Pastor Tyler Lynde opened our new series, In Christ, with a simple yet startling claim: what if half of the good news about your relationship with Jesus has been hiding in plain sight? Most of us can readily say that Christ is in us—that by the Holy Spirit, Jesus dwells within and transforms us from the inside out. Tyler gently pressed us to see the other side of the gospel coin with equal clarity: we are in Christ. That distinction, he argued, stands at the very heart of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and reshapes how we see ourselves, how we face temptation, and how we live in the world.

Before Ephesians talks about marriage, parenting, church life, or spiritual warfare, Paul takes three chapters to announce who we already are in Jesus. Tyler has structured the series the same way—this fall we will look at In Christ: Identity, and next year we will turn to In Christ: Purpose. The order matters. Behavior flows from identity. If we flip the order, we slide into the exhausting treadmill of trying to earn what has already been given. Tyler confessed that he, too, sometimes drifts back toward measuring himself by performance, and he invited us to let Ephesians renew our minds so that obedience becomes a grateful response rather than a desperate bid for approval.

To work this out, Tyler introduced an old Christian phrase: union with Christ. The early church spoke often about this reality because it embraces both truths: Christ in us and us in Christ. He used a nautical picture to capture the difference. Christ in us is like the engine of the boat—the empowering, transforming presence of the Holy Spirit working within. Us in Christ is like the anchor—the steadying truth of a secure position that does not change with the waves. This positional reality means that Jesus truly represents us before the Father. Through grace, every victory Jesus won is counted as ours. Scripture does not treat us as distant spectators to Christ’s work; it says we were crucified with him, buried with him, raised with him, and seated with him in heavenly places. Tyler lingered here: this is not poetry or wishful thinking. It is the steady ground beneath a believer’s feet.

From that frame, Tyler took us into the opening lines of Ephesians. “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” For Tyler, these words aren’t boilerplate—they are loaded with identity-forming truth. Paul first names himself: an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. That’s not résumé padding; it’s a reminder that his authority and message come from the risen Christ himself. Tyler walked us through Acts 9, where the ascended Jesus confronted Saul on the road to Damascus. The voice from heaven—“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”—reframed Saul’s entire life. Blinded, humbled, and waiting, Saul was visited by Ananias (who understandably expressed a few reservations to the Lord before going) and was commissioned as a chosen instrument to carry Christ’s name before Gentiles, kings, and Israel. Tyler noted that this wasn’t Paul’s idea or ambition; it was God’s will. That matters when we read Ephesians. We are being addressed by a man sent by Christ, shaped by suffering, and emboldened by grace.

Then Paul names his recipients: the saints in Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus. Tyler smiled at how shocking that word “saints” can sound to us. We tend to reserve it for a rare few, usually after they’re gone, based on extraordinary deeds. But Paul uses it to describe ordinary believers—men and women set apart by God, holy in Christ before they have done one thing to prove it. To be a saint is not to nail a spiritual performance review; it is to be consecrated to God by the finished work of Jesus. That’s positional language. It tells you who you are. From that identity, holy living follows.

The second title—“faithful”—is not, first of all, a pat on the back for consistency, though Tyler affirmed that reliability and trustworthiness matter deeply. Here the word points to those who believe, the believing ones who have placed their confidence in Jesus. We are not called faithful because we never waver; we are called faithful because by grace we have leaned the weight of our lives on Christ, who lived the perfect life, died bearing our sin, and rose to make us new. This is how the door into the family is opened—by repentance and faith in Jesus—not by effort, pedigree, or promise of future improvement.

Tyler took a moment to place Ephesians in its historical setting. Paul loved the Ephesian church. Acts 20 preserves a tear-filled farewell in which Paul reminds the elders how he served among them with humility, tears, and trials, teaching publicly and house to house, declaring repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus. He warns them about fierce wolves and commends them to God and to the word of his grace. Paul spent up to three years with the Ephesian believers, established a school of instruction there, and later set Timothy—his son in the faith—as an overseer. Ephesians may have been a circular letter intended for multiple churches in Asia Minor, but it bears the marks of a shepherd who poured himself out for this flock.

With author and audience in view, Tyler drew our eyes to Paul’s greeting: grace and peace. Even the words themselves hint at the Jew-Gentile unity God was bringing about in Christ—charis with echoes in Greek circles, shalom at home in Hebrew ears. Grace, Tyler said, is God’s divine assistance for daily living—God’s ability in me to do what I cannot do in my own strength. Grace is not just the unearned favor that opened the door of salvation; it is also the present-tense power of the Holy Spirit who teaches us to say no to sin and yes to God. If Christ in us is the engine, grace is the fuel that keeps it running.

Peace, on the other hand, is the consequence of being in Christ: a settled rest in the soul that persists through changing circumstances. Tyler described it as the peace of God that stands guard over hearts and minds in Christ Jesus—peace that does not evaporate when a diagnosis comes, when accounts dwindle, or when relationships are strained. We enjoy peace with God through justification, and then we learn to walk day by day in the peace of God as we carry everything to him in prayer. In the language of union with Christ, grace highlights Christ in us; peace highlights us in Christ. One empowers; the other anchors.

Tyler delighted over Paul’s phrase “God our Father.” He noted how the combination of words resists distortion. God by itself might feel high and unapproachable; father by itself might become casual or sentimental. Joined together with that little possessive pronoun our, the transcendent One who inhabits eternity is confessed as intimately near and personally committed to his people. This is family language. To say “our Father” is to remember that in Christ we have been adopted, welcomed, and secured. We belong.

From beginning to end, Tyler returned to a core pastoral burden: we must not reduce Christianity to self-improvement with a religious gloss. Paul doesn’t start Ephesians by giving orders; he starts by naming identities. He calls us saints. He calls us faithful. He locates us in Christ. He invokes grace and peace for people who already belong. Tyler pointed out that Paul’s letters use the phrase “in Christ” again and again—164 times across his writings, with more than 30 occurrences in Ephesians alone. That repetition tells us something. If we lose sight of our position, we will make our performance the centerpiece. If we live from identity, obedience becomes the fruit of love; if we live for identity, obedience becomes the price of admission. Only one of those is the gospel.

Tyler illustrated the representative nature of Christ’s victory with a simple scene from the US Open. Even individual champions, microphone in hand, instinctively share the moment with their team—coaches, family, friends—“We did this together.” How much more does Jesus, the true champion, count his people as sharing in what he has accomplished? We weren’t swinging the sword on Calvary, but in God’s redemptive economy, we died with him, were buried with him, rose with him, and now are seated with him. That’s not wish fulfillment; that’s union. If in Adam we were born dead in sins without the power to make ourselves alive, then in Christ we have been made alive, transferred into a new family with a new inheritance and a new name. You are not simply trying harder in the old creation; you are a new creation, and Jesus is your representative head.

All of this matters profoundly when life presses in. The first half of Ephesians will ground us in who we are; the second half will call us to walk worthy of that calling—in our marriages, our homes, our churches, and our warfare against the schemes of the enemy. Tyler wants us to grasp that order. You do not pick up the armor of God as an anxious orphan scrambling for approval. You fasten the belt of truth as a beloved son or daughter standing in a victory already won. You do not love your spouse to earn favor; you love because you are rooted and grounded in love. You do not parent to prove yourself; you parent from the peace of God guarding your heart. Identity first. Then obedience. In Christ names both the position that anchors us and the power that propels us.

Tyler closed by drawing us back to the very first words of the letter and inviting us to let them set the tone for the weeks ahead. An apostle sent by the will of God writes to saints and believing ones, pronouncing grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. That greeting is not small talk; it is the air we breathe as we learn to live in Christ. As this series unfolds, the aim is not to arm us with a few tips but to renew our minds until it becomes instinctive to see ourselves the way heaven sees us. Christ is in us. We are in Christ. The engine is running. The anchor holds. And from that place, everything that follows in Ephesians—and in our lives—can flow as it was always meant to.