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In Galatians 4:19 Christ is presented as the One who is formed in the believers.
In Galatians 4:19 Paul says, “My children, with whom I travail again in birth until Christ is formed in you.” Paul considered himself the begetting father and the Galatian believers his children begotten of him in Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 4:15; Philem. 10). The word travail refers to painful toil in childbirth. In this metaphor Paul likened himself to a mother who gives birth to a child. He had labored in this way to regenerate the Galatians when he first preached the gospel to them. Because they deviated from the gospel that he had preached to them, he was toiling again in travail until Christ would be formed in them.
When the Galatian believers were regenerated through Paul’s preaching of the gospel to them the first time, Christ was born into them but not formed in them. Here the apostle was travailing again that Christ might be formed in them. To have Christ formed in us is to have Christ fully grown in us. First, Christ was born into us at the time we repented and believed in Him, then He lives in us in our Christian life (Gal. 2:20), and, finally, He will be formed in us at our maturity.
According to the context of the book of Galatians, to have Christ formed in us is to allow Him to permeate our being and saturate our inward parts. When Christ occupies our inner being in this way, He is formed in us. In order to have Christ formed in us, we need to drop everything other than Christ Himself, no matter how good these things may be. Even things which come from God and are scriptural may not be Christ Himself. Although the law was given by God, it must be set aside so that all the ground in our being may be given over to Christ. We need to allow Him to saturate every part of our inner being. He must occupy us and saturate our mind, emotion, and will. To have Christ possess our entire being is to have Him formed in us.
In Ephesians 3:17 Paul prayed that “Christ may make His home in your hearts.” The heart includes the mind, the emotion, the will, and the conscience. To let Christ make His home in our hearts means to allow Him to make His home in all these parts of our inner being. For Christ to make home in our hearts, He needs to be able to settle down within us. This is to have Christ formed in us.
To have Christ formed in us is to allow the all-inclusive Spirit to occupy every part of our inner being. The law should not have any room in our mind, emotion, or will. All the ground within us must be for Christ. We need to allow Christ to occupy us fully. He should not only spread into our mind, emotion, and will; He should actually become our mind, emotion, and will. We should let Christ be our thought, our decision, our love, and everything to us. This is to have Christ formed in us. Everything other than Christ must diminish, and Christ must become everything to us in our experience.
To have Christ formed in us is to have Christ mingled with our whole being. In every part of our being — our mind, emotion, will, conscience, and spirit — Christ should be mingled with us. Christ must saturate us and permeate us until He is completely blended with us; then He will be formed in us. This indicates that He desires to have a very subjective relationship with us.
Paul’s word about Christ being formed in the believers implies that we are being constituted with Christ. Christ is living in us, He is being formed in us, and He is becoming our constitution. To have Christ formed in us is a living, organic matter. Christ is now living in us so that we may be constituted with Him organically. He intends to constitute our whole being — our mind, emotion, and will — with Himself. Eventually, our whole being will be constituted with the element of Christ. This means that He will constitute every part of our soul so that we may have His form, His image, in every part of our being.
For Christ to be formed in us means that His element is being constituted into us. In other words, His being is becoming our being, and His constitution is becoming our constitution. This is a matter not merely of the element of Christ being within us but of having the element of Christ constituted into us. To be constituted with Christ in this way involves a process of organic transformation and formation. In this process something living — Christ with His element — is being constituted into, wrought into, our being. The New Testament reveals that Christ is deeply related to our being. This is not merely a concept, theory, or theology; it is a divine fact that we need to experience in full.
The word formed in Galatians 4:19 corresponds to the word image in 2 Corinthians 3:18, where Paul tells us that we are being transformed into Christ’s image. This image is a form. Christ must be formed in us so that we may express Him by being in His image. As the living One, Christ with His element is working within us organically, constituting our being with Himself so that we may have His form and express His image.
In keeping with this, Paul used the words transformed (2 Cor. 3:18) and conformed (Rom. 8:29). Christ’s being formed in us depends on our being transformed into His image. If we are not transformed into His image, Christ has not been formed in us. Moreover, our being transformed into His image and His being formed in us cause us to be conformed to His image. Our being conformed to His image is the issue of His being formed in us.
Romans 12:2a says, “Do not be fashioned according to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind.” This verse tells us that we should not be conformed to the age but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Our mind is the leading part of our soul, and as it is renewed, our will and emotion are automatically renewed. To have Christ formed in us is to have the three parts of our soul — our mind, emotion, and will — renewed. To have our mind, emotion, and will renewed is to have Christ saturate our mind, emotion, and will. To be renewed is to replace the self and the world in our mind, emotion, and will with Christ. If we are renewed in this way, Christ will be formed in us, and every part of our inner being — our mind, emotion, and will — will bear the image of Christ.
However, most of us do not yet bear the image of Christ in our mind, emotion, and will. At times we may think noble thoughts, but frequently in our daily life our mind may express the self with the world. We may love, laugh, and weep by the self, rather than by Christ; this indicates that Christ has not been formed in our emotion. Many times when Christians speak, their speaking is full of the self and the element of the world. The reason for this is that the self and the world are formed and expressed in them. We can never be an expression of Christ until He saturates our entire inner being, replacing the self and the world in our soul with Himself. Then our inner being will bear the form, the image, of Christ.
According to Paul’s usage in the New Testament, the word form refers to the outward expression of the inner being (Phil. 2:6). What we are is expressed in our form, that is, the outward expression of our inner being. If we are full of the self and love the world in our inner being, our outward form will be the self and the world. The choices we make in our daily living will express the self and the world. If Christ replaces the self and the world in our mind, emotion, and will, we will have the form of Christ. The Galatians were occupied by Judaism; thus, in their outward form they expressed Judaism. Therefore, Paul had to suffer like a mother, travailing for the Galatians until Christ would replace the self and the world in them with Himself.
For Christ to be formed in us, we need to let Him occupy every part of our soul: our mind, emotion, and will. He should occupy our thinking, our consideration, our love, our hatred, our happiness, our sorrow, and our intention. As Christ increasingly saturates our soul, eventually He will invade our body, dispensing Himself into our entire being. We then will be fully permeated with Him; He will be formed in us, and we will be conformed to His image.
Christ needs to be formed in us in order that we may be sons of full age and heirs to inherit God’s promised blessing and that we may mature in the divine sonship. He matures in us for us to be heirs (Gal. 3:29) for the full enjoyment of the Triune God as our inheritance (Eph. 1:14; 1 Pet. 1:4). The Holy Spirit is the pledge of this inheritance (Eph. 1:13b-14a).
The book of Galatians reveals that God’s intention is for Christ to be wrought into His chosen people that they may become sons of God. In order to be God’s sons, we need to be permeated and saturated with Christ. Christ must occupy our entire being. The Galatians, however, were distracted from Christ to the law. Hence, Paul told them repeatedly that it was altogether wrong to leave Christ and return to the law. The believers should come back to Christ, who is both the seed who fulfills God’s promise to Abraham and the good land, the all-inclusive Spirit, to be our enjoyment. As believers in Christ, we need the full enjoyment of this blessing, the full enjoyment of the life-giving Spirit. We need to be saturated, possessed, and fully taken over by this Spirit.
Christ has been born in us; that is, He has been revealed in us. He is now living in us, and He will be formed in us unto maturity. We must stress this marvelous truth in the ministry of the word and must experience it in our daily living. May the Lord bring us into the experience and enjoyment of Christ who has been born in us, is now living in us, and will be formed in us unto maturity in order that we may be sons of full age, heirs of God’s promised blessing, and may mature in the divine sonship.
