“I I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and give Himself for me.” Galatians 2:20.
“...but Christ lives in me…” Do we believe this? Do we recognize this as reality? Do we live in communion with Christ? Do we relate to other Christians as people within whom Jesus Christ lives?
Or, do we relegate the idea of Christ living in us as something sentimental along the lines of, “Yes, Joe may have died but he will always live in our hearts”? Do we explain away this statement so that we need not live in its reality? Do we make it a legal fiction, a “positional truth” that is isolated from experience? Is this an organic reality in our lives?
On the night that Jesus is betrayed, as He speaks to His disciples (John chapters 13 - 17), again and again He emphasizes that the Trinity; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; will live in the people of God.
Speaking of the Holy Spirit (John 14:17) Jesus says, “...you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”
Then Jesus says (14:20), “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”
“Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him” (14:23).
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing” (15:4 - 5).
“I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one…” (17:23).
This is relational language, it is organic language, it is the language of life - it is the language of present reality.
The Gospel that Paul heard from Stephen included (Acts 7:48), “...the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands…” Paul will carry the same message to Athens (Acts 17:24), “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands…”
The New Testament again and again portrays God living within His people - He lives within them as individuals and He lives within them collectively; they are the Living Temple, the Body of Christ, the Bride - there is an organic unity between God and His people - to the point that Paul writes (1 Cor. 6:17), “But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.”
Just as Nicodemus had trouble dealing with the idea of being born again (see John Chapter Three), we may have trouble negotiating the truth of “Christ lives in me.” We want to know how this can be just as Nicodemus wanted to know how a person can be born again. They are one and the same, for the new life that comes into us at the new birth is the life of Christ, the presence of Christ, the Person of Christ. Jesus’ response to Nicodemus is His response to us:
“The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).
We tend not to like Jesus’ response to Nicodemus. We don’t like it because it doesn’t explain “how?” We don’t like it because we can’t control it. We don’t like it because we can’t predict it. We don’t like it because we can’t “see” it. Wind can get out of hand, wind can do things we don’t want it to do, wind does not ask our permission to blow this way or that way.
The letters of the New Testament are written to people in whom Jesus Christ is living, in whom the Trinity has taken up abode. God living within His people is a present reality in the New Testament - on Pentecost God came to live inside His Temple, His Bride, His Body - on Pentecost God established His Presence in a Living Temple on this planet. The wind came on Pentecost (Acts 2:2) and perhaps we've been trying to explain it away ever since, to control the wind, to harness it for our own purposes (which is pagan!), to make the wind do what we want it to do. We gather around those who agree with us on how the wind should blow, how it should be harnessed (I speak as a foolish man). We keep a watch on the wind and close the windows if it threatens to interrupt our worship, our agendas, our lives. Others bring huge fans to our gatherings to mimic the wind, we want strong winds every time we gather, and if the real wind doesn’t show up we’ll plug fans in to mimic the wind...once we do it a few times we won’t know the difference.
But our God yearns for relationship with His sons and daughters, and He has come to live within us to fill us with Himself, His peace, His love for us, His love for others, His joy, His wisdom. This is the Gospel, this is where we go when we’ve confessed our sins, asked forgiveness, repented, and confessed Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. The New Testament spends much more time on who we are (saints) as Christians than it does on who we were (sinners) before we met Jesus Christ. If we really believe in the new birth then we believe in new life, the very life of God; we believe that that life is living in us, so that we can say with Paul, “Christ lives in me.”
There are those who have a life they never live...are you living that life today...is Christ in you a present reality?
Go back and ponder the passages in John chapters 13 - 17. Meditate on them. This is the birthright of the Christian, this is the amazing relationship that God has for us...life lived in the Trinity, the Trinity living in us...life with one another in Christ...this is heaven breaking into earth.
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