Good morning, brothers and sisters.
Let us read a verse in John 14:18.
I will not leave you orphans;
I will come to you.
Let us pray.
Lord, we want to again give You thanks for the incredible sacrifice on our behalf through Jesus Christ. We thank You for giving it to us, so that we can stand in the good of it even right now, before You, knowing that You love us, that You want to speak to us, and tell us how much You have for us.
Lord, that is what we are asking. We are asking that You would tell us how much You have for us, and that faith would be mixed with what You tell us. May You get what You want—Your pleasure. May You be pleased with the outcome of everything.
In Christ Jesus, we pray. Amen.
I do not know what I did there, but I did something wrong.
The brothers asked me if I would do this section about Christ in you. Usually, I am not given something specific to speak on, but they asked me this time. It is a little nerve-wracking. I think it is this week and next week; is that right?
I teach at a math-science high school, even though I do not teach math or science. A good science teacher gives a lecture and then a lab. Well, today we will have a lecture, and next week we will have a lab.
This morning, I have been asked to speak on Christ in you—not us in Christ, which Roger did a few weeks ago. But I want to tie it in somewhat with that.
This is very, very important. Yet it is not a truth to be held out singularly. It is one of the many strands of truth woven into our salvation. It is a big thing, but it does not stand by itself, even though we are going to look at it by itself. It belongs to something much bigger.
A. W. Tozer wrote this in The Incredible Christian:
The doctrine of the divine indwelling is one of the most important in the New Testament, and its meaning for the individual Christian is precious beyond description. To neglect it is to suffer serious loss. The apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesian Christians that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith.
Now, that is A. W. Tozer, who was a pretty spiritual man, and that was his assessment of what we are going to consider here. I am not A. W. Tozer, but we still have the Word of God, and that is what we want to look to. What does the Word tell us?
To call this merely a concept is not right. We are looking at a revelation—at doctrine—but doctrine by itself does not suffice. A doctrine that has revelation attached to it brings life, and that is really what we are after. That is what God is after too.
God is not simply saying, “Here is a doctrine. This is what we believe. Let us set up our list of things that we believe in.” Everything God tells us is for the purpose of giving life.
Today, I want to give you a teaching, and then I want to give you an exhortation.
This truth about Christ in us must first be seen as a need, and then as a provision. It has to be seen in that order.
Let us look at Christ in you as a need—something that you need personally.
We talked about being in Christ a few weeks ago. One thing I have found about being in Christ is that, when you are in Christ, you are at rest. This is where we are to start our journey to the Celestial City, as Bunyan would say: at a place of rest.
We are to rest in His love. What does that mean? We have been reconciled forever—not merely reconciled for today. How long does reconciliation last? Until I sin next? No. We have been reconciled forever, and we are to rest in that.
We are giving thanks to God for what He has done for us and resting in that truth: that He has taken away our sins; that He loves us so much that He sent His Son for us; and that His Son bore the punishment—the wrath of a holy God—for us.
So today we can rest. We can start from a place of rest.
We are to rest fully in the work accomplished for us in Christ. Colossians 2:13-14 says:
And you, being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you, I say, did He make alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses;
Having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us: and He hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross.
We are to rest in that work. There is nothing we have to add to it. We can completely rest.
A man sitting in a chair has all his weight held up by that chair. It does not matter how much he weighs. He is perfectly at rest because he is trusting the chair to hold him up. It is the same way for us. We are to be fully trusting, letting all our weight go—just leaning back—and trusting in the work of Christ for our atonement.
We are to rest in His righteousness for us. The picture is of the prodigal son coming back. Not only is the father happy, but even the dog is happy he is back. But notice what is being carried to him: the robe.
The righteousness of Christ is for us. We are to rest in that. We do not have to have our own righteousness, because Christ has become for us the righteousness of God. I do not have to do good works to keep God happy. God has given me robes of righteousness to wear in His presence.
We are also to rest in His choice of us. Consider your calling. There is nothing that keeps God from choosing us. He does not say, “Well, you do not have a college education. I am sorry, you cannot be in the kingdom of God.” Or, “Oh, you work construction? Sorry. We only take engineers.”
But look whom He has chosen: the weak things, the base things, the despised things. Does it say He does not choose the good ones? No; it says there are just not many of them, because they do not see their need for salvation.
Isaiah 43:1 says:
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and He that formed thee, O Israel: fear not, for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name, thou art Mine.
These are wonderful things, and they are the things we are to rest in.
But now you are probably thinking, “Where is the need? You told us that Christ in you must be seen as a need. I do not see any need in these things.”
If we have everything, why do we need to come to a place of need?
We can choose to live in positional truth. We can choose to live, as I will say, on the sunny side of grace. Is there a dark side of grace? No. But what do I mean by the sunny side of grace?
It can become a Laodicean Christianity: “I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing.” Therefore, we do not even need the Lord. We have all the doctrine, all the teaching, good teaching, all these things. Who needs anything?
We can just come to church, come to meetings, do this and that, and everything is fine. We can go on automatic-pilot Christianity. “Oh, today is Wednesday—we go to the prayer meeting. Oh, today is Friday night—it is the off Friday. No meeting tonight.”
Do you understand what I am saying?
But something really negates full grace. What is grace? According to Strong, grace is “the divine influence on the heart and its reflection in the life.”
Many of us look at one definition of grace: unmerited favor. There is nothing wrong with that, but that is only half of grace. Grace is not limited to unmerited favor. That unmerited favor is meant to have an influence on you.
God did not mean merely to forgive your sins and give you favor so that nothing would happen. He gave it to you so that you would respond to Him. Rich was talking about relationship. That is what God wants: a response.
He does not just want us to say, “Oh, thank You very much. I will be on my way.” He wants a response.
The divine influence on the heart is reflected in life, including gratitude—thankfulness for what has been done for us.
Grace is supposed to affect us in such a way that we want to give God something back because we are grateful. We want to respond to Him. We want to show Him what He means to us.
“He saved me. He has given so much for me. He loves me.”
So we go about asking, “Lord, how can I please You?” This is the response that God wants.
In Psalm 15, David comes to a place of asking God questions. “Lord, You have been so good to me. Who can abide with You? Who can dwell on Your holy hill?”
God answers:
He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness,
And speaketh truth in his heart;
He that slandereth not with his tongue,
Nor doeth evil to his friend,
Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor;
In whose eyes a reprobate is despised,
But who honoreth them that fear the Lord;
He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not;
He that putteth not out his money to usury,
Nor taketh reward against the innocent.
He that doeth these things shall never be moved.
That is quite an order, is it not? When the Lord tells us these things, we are just like the Israelites at Mount Sinai: “Everything You say, I will do.”
It is true, because we want to please Him. He has done so much for us. We say, “No, that is not too hard. I will set my heart to do those things.” We go out to do them because we want to show God that we love Him.
But then we take a second look at the hill. We go about nine psalms ahead—to Psalm 24:3-4:
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in His holy place?
He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart;
Who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity,
And hath not sworn deceitfully.
The first question was, “Who may dwell?” Now it is, “Who may ascend?” What happened to David? He must have gotten down the hill somewhere.
You have these lists of things, and you are trying: “I want to do this.” Then all of a sudden you find out that you are not doing those things. You have fallen off the hill. So David asks again, “Lord, who may ascend?”
Brothers and sisters, which one of us can ascend the hill of the Lord?
By really inquiring of the Lord—“Lord, I want to please You. I want to do something”—the Lord reveals something to us. Do you know what He reveals? He reveals us.
Romans 7 can seem like the most depressing chapter in the Bible, because it really speaks of us. But the end of it is wonderful.
For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.
For that which I do I know not: for not what I would, that do I practice; but what I hate, that I do.
What a discovery. This is us. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Romans 7:18-19 says:
For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not.
For the good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I practice.
A need has been revealed. It has not been created; it was always there. We simply did not know it. We think of ourselves more highly than we should because we think much better is in us.
So Paul ends up saying:
O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?
Notice that he does not say, “What shall I do to deliver myself from the body of this death?” This is the great revelation. All of a sudden, it comes out: there is nothing within me that can do it. I have to look outside myself.
“Who will deliver me?”
We find ourselves in what Bunyan called the Slough of Despond. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian is on his way to the Celestial City and gets stuck in the mud. But I think Bunyan misplaced it. I think the Slough of Despond is within the gates.
If we try to go up that hill in ourselves, we get to the place where we say, “I cannot do it.” Then we despair because all we know is to look to ourselves. That is natural. God has to reveal something to us.
What does God reveal? He reveals His provision: Christ in you.
What does that mean—Christ in you? This is part of the gospel.
Many times, we think of the gospel simply as this: Jesus came, Jesus died, Jesus rose again, and our sins are forgiven. But God never planned forgiveness to be the final stroke of the gospel. He never planned it that way.
The plan is that He would have sons like His Son. The opening of the door to that accomplishment is the forgiveness and judging of our sins.
We have to come to see our own need. Otherwise, especially for younger folks, it can feel like: “Well, I have been saved, and now there is nothing else to do.”
It is like the Far Side cartoon where the fellow is sitting on a cloud in heaven and says, “I should have brought a magazine.”
But that is not it.
Maybe you have not tried to please God. Maybe you say, “I have been given everything. Why do I need to do anything?” Maybe you have not seen what a wretch you are.
I am not saying you should dig around trying to discover what a wretch you are. But if you are going to go on with the Lord, you will discover it. You will find out, and you will despair—but there is hope.
He has given Christ to be in us, not merely on the cross. He is to live in us.
John 15:4-5 says:
Abide in Me, and I in you.
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me.
I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from Me ye can do nothing.
Notice that it does not simply say, “He who abides in Me.” We often say, “We need to abide in Christ.” That is true. But there is another side of the coin: I must abide in you.
That is not optional. It is imperative. Otherwise, you have a half salvation. You do not have the full salvation. It does not mean you are not saved; it means that all that has been meant for you is being missed.
Christ in us is the power of God to please Him. It is the power of God. “I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” (Romans 1:16).
This must be entered into by faith. It is not merely that I know Christ is in me. Will I put my faith in the fact that Christ is in me? Will I live out of that life? That is another story, but it is for us to do.
Galatians 2:20 says:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
Christ lives in me. How does that happen? Nicodemus asked, “How can a man be born again?” I cannot explain all the mechanics of it, so to speak, but I know this: if you were put into Christ, if you were put into the vine, then the vine is put into you.
When a branch is grafted into a tree, it is not merely attached to the tree. The life of the tree comes into the branch.
We have a new life in us. It is not my old life dressed up. It is not my old life pushing harder. It is a new life, a different life—a life that, in one sense, is not ours and yet now is ours.
The old life says, “The good that I would I do not.” That is our story. “I want to do good, but I do not do it. I do not know why I cannot do it. I start out to do it, but then I do not. I do the very things I do not want to do.”
“Oh, I want to read my Bible, but the Dodgers are on.” The Dodgers need new life too.
But we have been given a new life. What does that new life look like?
For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for His good pleasure.
—Philippians 2:13
Christ in you is not passive. This is not a passive life: to will and to do.
Sometimes we think Christ is in us like He is riding shotgun—He is just along for the ride, while we are putting the power behind everything. But that is not it. His being in us is to be our very life. It is Him willing in us. It is Him doing in us. And we respond to that will.
Christ in you is the power of God that enables you to live unto Him. It is something within, not something forced from without: “Here are the rules, boy.” That is not it. It is within.
Christ in us is the new creation.
This old creation has been around for more than fifty years, and I am used to the way I work. Imagine that tomorrow morning I wake up and I am a bird. I look at myself and say, “Well, okay, I am a bird.” But I bet I would go about my day just like normal. Why? Because that is what I am used to.
I would get out of bed and walk into the kitchen. I would not even hop, though birds usually hop.
We have to understand this: the new creation is a new nature. We have been given a new nature. But it is not as though, all of a sudden, boom—we know it. We have to learn the new nature, because it is not natural to us. We have to learn how it works, and then we have to put faith in it.
In Disney’s The Sword in the Stone, Wart was turned into a bird, and a hawk was coming after him. Wart was trying to get away by running. Merlin was saying, “What are you doing? You are a bird! Be a bird!”
Then he flew, and he got away.
It is the same with us. We hear that Christ is in us, but we do not understand that it is a whole new nature. We have to let that new nature have its way in us.
When the new nature urges us or moves us toward something, we are to go along with it. Then we find out that we can fly. We are no longer earthbound.
How many of us live a Christianity that is earthbound? We are meant to fly. We are meant to live by this new nature.
“Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).
Christian hope is something you expect. I do not merely hope that school ends quickly; I expect it to end quickly. I am already starting to pack up. That is my hope: something that is going to happen.
We have a new life in us. It may begin very small, like a fertilized egg. But no woman who discovers she is pregnant expects that life to remain as it is. It does not look anything like us at first, but it will grow.
We have been given a life that looks like Christ. It starts very small, but it is meant to come forth into maturity.
God has implanted in us a life that is to come out in a spiritual man—a whole person, one who is responsible. A. W. Tozer was a responsible man. He was responsible to God and responsible to the people of God whom he served.
That is the end God is after.
First John 3:2 says:
Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is.
That is the hope we have. We shall be like Him.
The hope of glory is the hope of satisfaction. When I look at myself, and at what I think God wants of me, how can I be satisfied? I am never satisfied.
But the hope that “He who began a good work in you will perfect it” gives me what it takes to go on. Now I am not trusting in myself. I am looking to the Lord and saying, “I do not see it yet, but because You have promised, I will keep going.”
I want to leave you with a question:
Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
—1 Corinthians 3:16
Do you not know this? Do you not know that the Spirit of God is in you, that the life of Christ is in you?
We can take any message and any teaching, and it all depends on what we do with it. We can take this verse and say, “Okay, I am the temple of God. Now I have to make sure I do not do this, this, this, this, this, and this.”
Then, all of a sudden, we take it by the letter, apply it to ourselves, and get a form of legalism.
Legalism will do one of two things. It will either puff us up until we become unmerciful Pharisees—critical in every way—or it will make us so depressed that we never know the joy of the Lord, and we remain in that Slough of Despond.
That is what happens when we take the letter.
But if we hear the teaching by the Spirit, what can happen?
For some of us, someone simply has to tell us: “I did not know. I did not know the Lord dwelt in me.”
Remember those men at Ephesus? Paul asked them, “Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed?” They said, “Nay, we did not so much as hear whether the Holy Spirit was given” (Acts 19:2).
Some of us are like that. We live as though we only had the baptism of John, which was unto repentance, but we do not know that there is anything else.
Part of that is because we do not read the Word—or we do not read the Word and think about what it is saying.
Someone has to tell us, just as Mary was told, “You are going to have a child.”
I have known girls, because I have taught school, who did not know they were pregnant. Today we have so much technology that we can tell all sorts of things, but it was not always that way. Some people did not know until certain signs began to show up.
So here is a word to you: Christ lives in you.
Christ lives in you. You need to think about that. What does that mean?
The interesting thing about receiving this by the Spirit is that, when a woman becomes aware that she is carrying a child, something changes. If she truly cares for that child, she may stop smoking, drinking, using drugs, or doing other things that would harm the life within her.
It is not merely because someone told her she should not do those things. It is because, all of a sudden, she is aware of a life in her, and she begins to care for that life.
That is the idea of Christ living in us. Christ living in us is not a law; it is a life. It is that life which moves us either not to do or to do.
My wife had gestational diabetes. She loves fruit—especially strawberries. But when she had gestational diabetes, she could not have those things. She could have said, “To heck with it. I am eating them.” But she had concern for the life within her, so she stopped. It was hard for her, but she did it. Why? Because she loved the life that was in her.
So it is the same with us. Some of us need to hear it: Christ is in you.
There are also some among us whose Christian lives feel barren. We may say, “I know all this stuff, but what good is that for me?” We stop there and say, “I have failed, and that is it.”
Let us consider Joshua 15. Caleb had taken Hebron. His daughter, Achsah, came to him and said, in effect, “You have given me land in the south—the Negeb. It is barren. Give me a blessing.”
She did not need merely an experience; she needed life.
What was her father’s response? “Kill more giants?” No. He gave her springs.
Those of us whose Christian lives are barren should not merely go to God complaining, “This is it. I am sorry; this is just the way I am.” We should go and say, “Father, give me a blessing. Give me springs.”
Do you think He will not? Perhaps you do, because you think you are not worthy. But you are on the wrong step. It has nothing to do with being worthy.
“Father, give me springs.”
This is your inheritance, brothers and sisters. Christ in you is your inheritance. It is not something worked for or earned. It is something we have been given.
Ask the Father: “Please bless me. Get me out of this barren land. Give me springs—give me springs or else I die.”
He gave her springs.
Others of us get along in life, and as we get older, we look back and say, “I have wasted my life. It is not merely that my Christian life is barren; my life has been a waste. I have given nothing to God. I have nothing to show for anything.”
Consider the woman at the well in John 4.
When Jesus asked her for a drink, she said, “You do not have a bucket.” He answered:
If thou knewest the gift of God, and Who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.
Sometimes we come to the Lord saying, “Lord, my life is a waste.” Do not think that I am not like you. To hear Him ask us for a drink can seem almost like He is joking or mocking us. “You know what I am like.”
But the Lord responds: “If you knew Who I am—if you knew the gift of God for you—instead of asking whether I am mocking you, you would ask Me for a drink.”
We can get caught in the idea that we have to earn everything. We figure that we are saved, and then we have to earn everything else ourselves. We are on the wrong foot.
The Lord says, “If you knew Who I am, you would ask Me.”
We can ask the Lord for refugees in China. We can ask Him for the conference. But when it comes to saying, “I am dying,” we think we have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and do something. The Lord says, “Why do you not just ask Me?”
Jesus says that whoever drinks of the water of the natural well will thirst again. Is that not the story of our lives? But whoever drinks of the water He gives will become a spring.
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.
—John 4:14
That is an artesian well. The water just comes up. It may not look very impressive outwardly, but what matters is what is coming out of it.
Water draws the thirsty. People who are thirsty are drawn to water.
This is what the Lord says for us: rivers of living water. Why? Because He is in us. He is inexhaustible. You can never stop Him from flowing.
Let us come back to the hill again.
Have you ever read Hinds’ Feet on High Places? Notice how the hind is in the rocky places. How did it get there? God made it so that it could do that.
Habakkuk 3:19 says:
The Lord, the Lord, is my strength;
And He maketh my feet like hinds’ feet,
And will make me to walk upon my high places.
This is what it means to have Christ in us. It is the ability to please God.
He has given us a life that pleases Him, and He wants it to be worked out. We are to respond. That is all He asks of us.
So I tell you: Christ is in you. Think of that. You are all pregnant.
Think of it in that sense: you are all pregnant. Are you aware of it? That is the question.
May the Lord open your eyes to that today.
For this reason, I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen.