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Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 1:30; Gal. 1:16; 2 Cor. 13:5; Col. 3:4; Gal. 2:20; 4:19; 2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:29; Phil. 1:20-21; 3:21; Col. 1:27; 1 John 3:2
First Corinthians 1:30 says, “Christ...became wisdom to us from God: both righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” According to the grammatical construction of the original text, wisdom is the sum total of righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; these three items added together equal wisdom. Humanly speaking, we do things according to wisdom. Righteousness, sanctification, and redemption are God’s way of doing things because they issue out of God’s wisdom, which is Christ. God has made Christ wisdom to us as the way for our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption so that Christ may become everything to us.
God has made Christ our righteousness so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). With regard to righteousness, the emphasis is on our justification and salvation in the past. Our justification is not merely because of what Christ has done; Christ is our justification. Christ is our righteousness so that we may be justified and acceptable to God.
God has made Christ our sanctification to be our sanctifying life, power, and living. With regard to sanctification, the emphasis is on our sanctification and victory in the present. Everything in a sanctified life, including faith, love, meekness, humility, patience, temperance, goodness, and godliness, is Christ Himself. Christ is our sanctification so that we may live a sanctified life and walk on a sanctified path. When we live out sanctification, we live out Christ.
God has made Christ our redemption so that our whole being, especially our body, may be delivered from the corruption of the old creation and may enter into the glory of the new creation by the power of His life. With regard to redemption, the emphasis is the redemption, the rapture, and the transfiguration of our body in the future. Hence, Christ is also the redemption of our body. Christ will not merely redeem our body; He will be our redemption.
Christ is the righteousness that God has given to us for our past, the sanctification that we are experiencing in our present, and the redemption in our future. When we obtain and experience righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, we gain and experience Christ. Righteousness, sanctification, and redemption are God’s way, His wisdom, so that we may fully partake of Christ as our everything. This is the central purpose of God’s plan. This is His intention in creation, and this is the highest attainment of His redemption.
God makes Christ everything to us by revealing Christ in us through the Spirit (Gal. 1:16). God does not give Christ to us, the believers, in a bodily form so that we can see and touch Him in an outward way. Rather, Christ became the Spirit so that He could be known and received in our human spirit. The Spirit reveals Christ to us and makes Christ real to us in our spirit. Christ enters into us and grows in us through the revelation of the Spirit. Daily the Spirit reveals the fullness of the Godhead and the riches of His life so that we may know, experience, and gain Christ in a deeper way until He is formed in us.
The greatest and highest blessing that we have obtained in God’s salvation is Christ being in us. When we believed into Christ, He immediately entered into us (cf. 2 Cor. 13:5). This is explicitly confirmed in God’s Word, and this is also proved and confirmed by our experience. After receiving Christ, some believers sense that Christ is in them as comfort and satisfaction. Some new believers sense that Christ is regulating them and forbidding them to sin, and others sense that Christ is enabling them to overcome enticements and temptations that they previously could not overcome and to endure sufferings and trials that others cannot bear. Some new believers also sense that Christ is leading and instructing them to walk on the proper path. Those who belong to Christ can sense His presence within them, especially when they are lonely, sick, or in danger.
Some people might say that the believers’ sense of Christ being within them is only psychological, not a reality. However, we should ask whether idol worshippers ever imagine that an idol is within them? Do those who revere the sages ever imagine that one of the sages is in them? Idols and sages cannot enter into us, because they are not living. Hence, men do not imagine or perceive that an idol or a sage is within them. However, Christ is the living God, and He can enter into us as the Spirit. Hence, we can sense His peaceful, joyful, bright, powerful, divine, and glorious presence. This is not our imagination or a psychological effect. This is a spiritual reality, which is as real as electricity in an electric appliance.
Christ is living in us. Even though our nature is corrupt, our flesh is filthy, our living is a failure, and our conscience is under condemnation, it is a divine fact that Christ is in us. Can we say that Christ is not in us? Second Corinthians 13:5 says, “Test yourselves whether you are in the faith; prove yourselves. Or do you not realize about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you are disapproved?” Because we are in the faith and approved, we have Christ in us.
The main significance of Christ being everything to us is that He is our life (Col. 3:4). He is much more than the One who delivers and assists; He is our life, nature, person, and innate character so that He may become our content and our everything. In addition to having our natural human life, God has given Christ to us as our life so that we would no longer live by our own life but, instead, would take His life as our life and His nature as our nature. Consequently, Christ becomes us, and we become Him; that is, He and we are not just the same, but we are one. He is our inner content, and we are His outer appearance. He is our life, and we are His expression. Just as Christ has the life and nature of God and lives because of Him, Christ becomes our life and nature so that we can live because of Him (John 6:57). When we take Him as our life and live by Him, those who touch us outwardly sense that Christ is our inner content.
Christ is in us as our life. This means that He wants to live in us (Gal. 2:20). We should not only take Him as our life; we should also let Him live in us. All the fullness of the Godhead is in Christ. Hence, when He lives in us, He abides in us and expresses all the riches of the Godhead from within us. This can be compared to the growing and spreading of a vine through its branches.
As believers, we all face a problem when it comes to Christ living in us. Even though we are saved, we still have our own views and concepts concerning how to be a Christian. Some believers think that a Christian should be humble and meek, and others think that a Christian should be loving, sympathetic, and generous. Other believers think that a Christian should have proper behavior and be righteous in everything. There are believers who think that Christians should be zealous to preach the gospel. Others believe that the children of God should be simple and plain in their adornment. There are many concepts concerning how to be a Christian. Even though we are saved, we are controlled by our concepts, and we try to cultivate in ourselves what we think a good and proper Christian should be. However, being a Christian is not a matter of self-cultivation but of letting Christ live in us and live out from us. A Christian should have surpassingly excellent virtues, but these virtues are not the result of self-cultivation. These virtues are the issue of allowing Christ to live in us and to live out from us. Our virtues should be Christ, that is, Christ living out from us.
Self-cultivation is a natural human concept, but living out Christ requires spiritual revelation from God. For example, a sister who is irritable and has a bad temper often has a natural concept that she needs to be delivered from her temper. She does not know that God’s intention is for her to live out Christ, not for her to be delivered from her temper. Since she is short of divine revelation, she will strive to improve herself according to her concept. Knowing that she is weak and unable to improve herself, she also will pray to the Lord for help. In her actual experience, however, she cannot improve herself, and the Lord does not answer her prayer for help. Instead, He allows her to fail until she is disappointed with herself and no longer tries to improve herself. At this point she can receive revelation from God to see that being a Christian is not a matter of improving oneself but of living out Christ. God’s desire is not for Christ to help us improve ourselves. God’s desire is for Christ to live in us so that we may live out Christ.
Christ is not only living in us but also being formed in us (4:19). Christ being formed in us is for the purpose of His being our life. He has been born in us through the Spirit, but He still needs to grow in us. As long as we afford Him the opportunity, He will cause the riches of the Godhead to grow and be formed in us, just as all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him.
The expression being formed does not only mean that Christ is in us to be our life so that we may have His nature and power. It means that He is growing in us so that all the riches of the Godhead may become our life and our living. Even though we have the human life and nature, God wants Christ to grow in us until He becomes our life and nature. God wants Christ to develop in us until He is fully grown and formed in us. In order for Christ to be formed in us, we need to know Christ as the Spirit, and by the Spirit we need to deny our self through the cross and live by Christ.
Christ is our life, He lives in us, and He is being formed in us so that we may be transformed into His image (2 Cor. 3:18). If we take Him as our life, live by Him, and let Him grow and be formed in us to become the essential element in every part of our being, we will be transformed into His image to be like Him in life and nature, including in our mind, emotion, and will. This is the principal work of the Spirit within us. On the one hand, the Spirit reveals Christ in us so that He may become everything to us through our knowledge and experience of Him. On the other hand, the Spirit transforms us into the image of Christ, from glory to glory, through our knowing, experiencing, and gaining of Him as our all. With Christ as the mold, the Spirit is working within us and regulating us from without to conform us to the image of Christ so that we may be like Him (Rom. 8:29).
Christ is not only being formed in us; He is also being magnified in us (Phil. 1:20). To be conformed is to have a maturity in life such that everything of Christ becomes our inward element. To magnify Christ is to have a manifestation in our living such that everything of Christ becomes our outward expression. We need to let Christ be formed in us and be magnified in us at all times. Christ must be our inward life and our outward living; He must be our inner element and our outward expression. Our outward expression should always be a magnification of Christ.
God wants Christ to be formed in us and to be magnified in us so that we can say, “For us, to live is Christ” (cf. v. 21). When we take Christ as our life, live by Him, let Him grow and be formed in us, and let Him be magnified in us and lived out of us, we will be able to say that for us to live is Christ. Then our nature will be constituted with Him, and we will have His likeness and be completely one with Him. Thus, our living and our moving will be His living and moving; that is, our living will be His living again on the earth. Then we will be so one with Him that people will see Him when they see us. When He was living on the earth, He was one with the Father, and when people saw Him, they saw the Father. This is the meaning of Christ being in us. This is God’s purpose in having Christ live in us. God wants all that Christ is and has to be fully expressed through us.
Christ may be our life and our everything, we may have His nature and likeness, and we may be able to say that for us to live is Christ; however, we still have not entered into His glory, and our body has not been redeemed and delivered from the old creation. Entering into His glory is still a hope to us. When our hope is realized in the future, we will enter into the glory of Christ; that is, we will gain Christ and enjoy Him in a deeper way. Hence, our hope is a hope of glory, which is Christ Himself. Now He is in us as our life and our everything, but in the future He will swallow up all the death in our being by the power of His resurrection life so that our body will become immortal and glorious. We will be brought fully into His glory, and He will be fully glorified in us. Today He is the hope of glory in us (Col. 1:27), but in the future He will be the reality of this glory expressed from us.
We have the life of Christ in us so that we may be the same as He is in life and nature, but we do not yet fully express His glory; that is, we are not exactly the same as He is in our body and appearance. When we obtain the hope of glory, He “will transfigure the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of His glory, according to His operation by which He is able even to subject all things to Himself” (Phil. 3:21). Then our bodies will be fully delivered from everything of the old creation, and we will enter into the fullness and glory of the new creation. We will be like Him in glory from within to without (1 John 3:2), that is, in life and nature and in body and form. Inwardly we will have His life and nature, and outwardly we will have His image and glory. He and we will be completely the same in life, nature, image, and glory. He will be one with us, and we will be one with Him. He will be our ultimate enjoyment, and we will be the expression of His fullness. This is the ultimate consummation of Christ in us. This is the highest goal that He desires to attain in us.
John 14:21 speaks of the Lord manifesting Himself to those who love Him, and verse 23 speaks of the Son and the Father making an abode with those who love the Son. If we want the Lord to manifest Himself to us and make an abode with us so that we may experience Him, we must love Him. Loving the Lord is the prerequisite to experiencing Him. Loving the Lord is also the ultimate basis for enjoying Him. To believe in Him is to receive Him into us, but to love Him is to have Him manifest Himself to us and make an abode with us in our experience. The Gospel of John reveals both our believing in the Lord and our loving Him. After we believe in the Lord, we need to love Him. It is regrettable that many people have believed in the Lord, but they do not love Him. He can manifest Himself to us only because we love Him, just as He appeared to Mary the Magdalene because she loved Him (Mark 16:9; John 20:1-18). Furthermore, if we love the Lord, He will make an abode with us so that we may know and experience Him. We can pursue Him because we love Him, we can experience Him through loving Him, and we can enjoy Him by loving Him. Our heart must love Him and be open to Him. May the Lord draw us!
In Philippians 3:8 Paul speaks of counting all things to be loss on account of “the excellency of the knowledge of Christ.” Paul suffered the loss of all things and counted them as refuse so that he might gain Christ. This indicates that if we want to gain Christ and experience Him, we must know Him, and if we want to know Him, we must pay the price to pursue Him. We must suffer the loss of all things, counting them as refuse. Because Paul pursued in such a way, he was able to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, and he was able to gain Christ in his experience (v. 10). If we truly love Christ, we will recognize the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. We will also despise all things in order to pursue after the knowledge of Christ so that we may gain Him.
Second Corinthians 3:18 says, “We all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.” Because we love the Lord and pursue Him, we should open ourselves to Him in order to behold His beauty. If we would remove all our veils and behold Him with an open heart, we will reflect His glory and be transformed into the same image from glory to glory.
John 15:5 says, “He who abides in Me and I in him.” If we want the Lord to abide in us, we must abide in Him. Our abiding in Him is the condition for Him to abide in us. Abiding in the Lord means that there is nothing between us and Him and that we are in constant fellowship with Him. When nothing is between us and the Lord and we are in constant fellowship with Him, we will experience Him abiding in us.
Ephesians 3:17 speaks of Christ making His home in our hearts through faith. Christ’s dwelling in us is related to faith. The more we believe that He dwells in us, the more we will experience His dwelling in us, which will result in His making His home in us. When we love Him, seek to know Him, fellowship with Him, and abide in Him, we often sense that He is dwelling in us. However, there are also times when we do not sense His indwelling, even though we love Him and do not have any barriers between us and Him. At such times we need to believe that He dwells in us. As long as we love Him and do not have any barriers separating us from Him, His indwelling is a reality in our experience. Hence, we must believe in the fact of His indwelling us and ignore our feelings. Even if we do not sense that He is dwelling in us, we must still believe that He is dwelling in us. If we would ignore our feelings and believe that He dwells in us, we will experience His dwelling in us. Eventually, He will make His home in us.
Romans 8:9 says, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not of Him.” This verse shows that Christ and the Spirit are inseparable. The Spirit of Christ is not only Christ’s representative but His transfiguration. We experience Christ as the Spirit. When we live in the Spirit of Christ, we live in Christ, and when we walk according to the Spirit of Christ, we walk according to Christ. Therefore, if we want to touch Christ, experience Christ, and live in Christ, and thereby obtain Him, we must walk according to the Spirit of Christ and set our mind on the Spirit of Christ, that is, walk according to and set our mind on the Spirit. When we walk according to the Spirit, we obey the anointing in us, and we abide in Him and enjoy His riches (1 John 2:27).
Galatians 2:20 says, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” In order to experience Christ living in us, we must see and acknowledge that we have been crucified with Him. The Spirit reveals not only Christ to us but also the cross so that we may experience Christ through the cross. Christ died on the cross for us, and the cross enables Christ to live in us. We experience the cross by the Spirit, and we experience Christ through the cross. Only when we stand in the position of our co-crucifixion with Christ can He become our experience. Only when we no longer live can Christ live in us. May we acknowledge our co-crucifixion with Christ and thus deny ourselves, handing all our rights over to Him and letting Him be our life and live in us. May we truly say, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me!”
Colossians 2:6 says, “As therefore you have received the Christ, Jesus the Lord, walk in Him.” To walk in Christ is to act and live by Him. Since we have the Lord Jesus as our life and have Him living in us, we should no longer act or live according to ourselves. We should let Him live by taking Him as our life and walking in Him. This is the way that we afford Him the opportunity to be our enjoyment within and our expression without.
Romans 13:14 says, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” This means that we should put Him on outwardly so that He is manifested through us. If we live in Him and act and walk by Him, He will be manifested and magnified through us. We should not do anything that will prevent Him from being manifested through us. Just as we should be filled with Him inwardly, we should put Him on outwardly. Then we will gain Him and even become Him, both inwardly and outwardly.
Furthermore, we should await the Lord’s coming, when He “will transfigure the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of His glory” (Phil. 3:20-21) and will lead us into His glory so that we may fully gain and enjoy Him (Heb. 2:10). As those who love Him, take Him as our life, live in Him, and magnify Him in our bodies, we should await His coming and love His appearing (2 Tim. 4:8). This should be our heart’s desire and our living, as those who expect to enter into His glory and enjoy Him.
