From Dio:

My background:

I never took Christianity seriously as I grew up in Taiwan. It was just a foreign religion to me.
A religion is only for the uneducated and the weak.
And being foreign, Christianity wasn’t interesting to me.

My mother was “religious” because of extreme fear … fear of the darkness and the unknown of the spiritual world. She went to a local temple to burn incense monthly for the sake of appeasing the whatever images in that temple.
My father was not religious. He believed in Confucianism … doing whatever is right in his own eyes. He was a good man, and he wasn’t in need of any gods, so he felt.

They are both dead for a few years now, and I, being the only child of theirs, am the one here to look back and think about these things.

I finished my college study in 1966 in Taiwan and came to the States for further study in the University of Oregon in Eugene in the year after that.
After three years of focused study in the field of Interior Architecture in the School of Architecture, I left Eugene with my wife Clara and our three-week old daughter and moved to San Diego.

It was in San Diego at the end of 1970, my wife and I both were saved. And there we stayed for four years before we moved up to Culver City in 1974 to join the church of Christian Assembly here. There we formed our first course of Christian doctrine and practical life principles.

The Scriptures:

Christian Assembly was a spirit-filled, Scripture-focused fledgling church. Its focus was on the way of the cross and the ultimate goal of the Lord … the New City of Jerusalem. It was a very good church for my wife and my whole family.

The phrase “In Christ” occurred 554 times in 228 verses in the NIV of the Bible.

The book of Ephesians is the book revealing the ultimate purpose of God to me. In its first chapter, we see that everything God does is through and in Christ His Son.

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Praise for Spiritual Blessings in Christ
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love 5 He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that He lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, 9 He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
11 In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory. 13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,

Thirteen times the phrase “In Christ” was mentioned. And this phrase includes almost every essential aspect of God’s ultimate plan for us. I have studied and taught this book over and over many times through the years. To this day it’s still the most profound book to me and it’s my key to unlock many other books in the Bible.

What does this phrase mean to me?

The Old Testament of the Bible is mostly about how God carried out His plan of salvation through the life of the nation of Israel. When God asked His people to remember His mighty work with them, He always emphasized the story of Moses delivering them from their house of slavery Egypt. And the place Moses was leading them into was Canaan, the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey.

And the rest of the OT after that was about how God was dealing with them in their Promised Land. In obedience, they would enjoy all the blessings of the Lord. In rebellion, they would be punished and scattered as exiles all over the world.

It was made clear to me that the OT Promised Land of Canaan is just the foreshadowing of the New Testament idea of “In Christ”.

Studying the scriptures in Ephesians 1 alone would help me realize that everything God ever has in mind to accomplish according to His plan of salvation is conceived in Christ before the foundation of the world. And the ultimate purpose of His plan of salvation also rests in Christ being the center of all things. And the way He accomplishes His plan of salvation is also tightly wound up in Christ.

In the mind of God, Christ is the Beginning, He is the End and He is also everything in between.
And in my own experience, Christ is the Beginning of my eternal life, Christ is my Hope of the glorious future and Christ is also my Center of everything in between.

This Beginning, the Hope and the Center of Christ to me isn’t just an lofty ideal. It is the motivation for my everyday life. It’s what the Holy Spirit leads me on to my goal in life or in death.

My spiritual journey has not been an unwavering sailing due to the circumstances beyond my control and the weaknesses of my flesh. But sooner or later, I’d be called back to face this unchanging image of “I have been born again in Christ”. And the Holy Spirit would restore my mind and my desires again and again to this simple phrase of “In Christ”! And in Christ I’ll ever be … now and forever more!