RE YOU GUYS READY? LET'S ROLL." Perhaps the most well-known contemporary call to arms, these six words have gone around the world now many, many times. As millions know so painfully well, they were spoken by Todd Beamer, age 32, to his fellow passengers on board United Airlines Flight 93, just before they thwarted the September 11, 2001, hijackers who were planning to fly the plane into a high-yield target in Washington, D.C.-probably the White House or Congress.

On three planes that day, passengers had little or no time to know fear. The jets they were in became instant fireballs as they plowed into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. But on Flight 93, passengers had almost an hour to be afraid. To make cell phone calls. To hear that three other planes had already crashed. To know that almost certainly they were going to die.

How must it have felt for Todd Beamer, young Christian that he was, to look up that 110-foot aisle leading to the cockpit and face death that Tuesday morning? To know that Lisa would have to raise David and Drew and their unborn child without a dad in the house? (A supportive world knows that Morgan Kay Beamer was born on January 9, 2002.) In fact, that expression, "You guys ready? Let's roll," was something Todd's 3-year-old son, David, liked to say whenever the four of them were going out the door for a family outing.

Not Just Frosting on the Cake
There's a powerful passage of Scripture that I'm sure Todd and Lisa studied many times in their seven years of marriage. And at the end of verse 1 are three words that rival "Let's roll" for life-changing power: "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 1:1, NIV).

That's actually a very common Bible expression, and maybe we've gotten to the point, unfortunately, where we glaze over when we read it. Verses 1 and 2 of this Epistle are essentially a preamble, and maybe we tend to see it as: "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, blah blah blah, wherefore, therefore, forsooth, and amen."

In other words, let's get to the first story, Paul. Let's cut to the chase and get to the meat. The concept of "the faithful in Christ Jesus" is like the "dearly beloved" at the start of a wedding. Just frosting on the cake.

But consider more carefully the expression "in Christ Jesus." In the Tyndale New Testament Commentaries for Ephesians, Francis Foulkes says the following about verse 1: "Wherever the Christian may be, in whatever difficult environment, threatened by materialism or paganism, in danger of being engulfed by the power of the state or overwhelmed by the pressures of non-Christian life"-or by armed hijackers, shall we add?-"he is in Christ."

On that doomed airplane, Todd Beamer was in Christ. He was a Christian man, a born-again man who was absolutely secure in his relationship with Jesus. Was he in a "difficult environment" that morning? Of course he was. Was he in danger of being engulfed by evil, by terror? Yes. Was he about to be overwhelmed by satanically inspired forces? Yes. But was he in Christ? Yes, that is exactly where he was. And from the security of that relationship, safe in the midst of overwhelming danger, he made the decision he did.

Those Final Minutes
There was an incredible Newsweek report (Dec. 3, 2001) about Todd and the other heroes on Flight 93 by Karen Breslau, Eleanor Clift, and Evan Thomas. "A band of patriots came together to defy death and save a symbol of freedom," they wrote. But then they told about Todd Beamer. Was he afraid?

Yes. Nobody wants to die, and even though Todd was calm and matter-of-fact as he talked on the Airfone with Lisa Jefferson of (the telephone company) GTE, he was scared of perishing on that plane. Maybe you've heard how this man, who was safe in the arms of Jesus, quietly recited the Lord's Prayer with Lisa. But right after "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen," he cried out: "Jesus, help me!" Yes, he was afraid. Several times in his 15-minute call he cried out for his Savior.

But then they said the twenty-third psalm. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me." A man named Phil Bradshaw, at home in Greensboro, North Carolina, on the phone with his doomed flight-attendant wife, Sandy, could hear Todd and others quietly reciting in the background. And then those six incredible words: "Are you guys ready? Let's roll."

And it's at exactly a time like that when the raw power of Christianity, the wonderful and terrible meaning of "in Christ Jesus," is most real, most evident. "Deliver us from evil." "Thine is the kingdom." The willingness of this man and others to face death, to give their lives for others, takes that expression "in Christ Jesus" out of the realm of unproven, mushy metaphor and enshrines it forever in the hallways of proven truth. Today Todd's widow, Lisa, faces the future because she is "in Christ Jesus." She copes and she ministers and she writes and helps coordinate the Todd M. Beamer Foundation Fund because she has the assurance of reunion, of knowing that the heroes of Flight 93 are safe in the memory of Jesus and that every stolen day, every missed Christmas, will be repaid by a God who never allows His children to be cheated.

Todd Beamer died at 10:06 that Tuesday morning in a Pennsylvania field near Shanksville, and the GTE employee, Lisa Jefferson, had to report her conversation to authorities before she was able to talk to Lisa Beamer on Saturday. Can you imagine what it did for this young widow to hear how her husband had died a hero, had died saying the Lord's Prayer? Had died in Christ? It was "a real uplift," Lisa told reporters. And she knew he was a saved, redeemed child of God. She knew that he was safely in the care of heaven's vast armies, that his place in God's kingdom was forever beyond doubt. Friend, that means something.

Check me on that: it means everything.

A Powerful Metaphor
Foulkes goes on to further demysticize the expression "in Christ Jesus." "This is not mysticism," he says, "but is intended to express the very practical truth that the Christian, if faithful to his calling, will not try to be self-sufficient, or to move beyond the limits of the purpose and control and love of Christ, nor will he turn to the world for guidance, inspiration and strength. He finds all his satisfaction and his every need met in Him, and not in any other place nor from any other source. This description of the Christian's life is implied in the expression being 'baptized into Jesus Christ' (Rom. 6:3), as baptism is the outward sign of entrance into such a life. It also involves the truth that the Christian's corporate existence is in the body of Christ which is His church."

Todd and Lisa had a place in that body; they were faithful members at Princeton Alliance Church in New Jersey. Their Christian lives, their existences, were all bound up in their daily faith, their participation with other believers. It was practical; it was week after week, sitting there in the pews, helping, sharing the load, carrying around cell phones so you could call others and minister to them.

And this is what is promised to all of us: "the faithful in Christ Jesus." Once you come to understand the all-encompassing power of being in Christ Jesus, you will be faithful.

I don't write this to be at all critical of churches with differing practices-but I'm very often thankful to be part of a denomination that baptizes new believers by immersion. What a beautiful and perfect metaphor, where you allow yourself to be totally enveloped in the waves, to be entirely bathed in the water, covered completely. The old life is gone-not just the sins, but the idea, the mind-set, of being self-sufficient, of getting strength from your rising job security, of trying to have your needs met in some alternate, worldly way. You are immersed, completely given over, to this new attitude, this distant and better kingdom. No wonder Paul, himself in awe, I think, writes to his fellow Christians in Corinth: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (1 Cor. 5:17, NIV).

It's as radical as that. And it turns everything on Planet Earth upside down. Now you are the one in safety; your enemies with their box-cutter knives, but without Christ-they're in mortal danger.

I'm sure the surviving relatives of Flight 93, including Lisa, still ask themselves the question Why? Why did God let this happen? Even Christians ask: Why my husband? Why my dad? my son? Why did he get on the wrong plane? Todd's father, though, David Beamer, turns it around with this answer: "I've . . . asked myself many times Why was our beautiful son on that plane? We know why he was on it. The faces of evil-those particular hijackers-they got on the wrong plane."

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David B. Smith is a writer-producer for the Voice of Prophecy radio broadcasts.