The Completing Ministry of Paul, Message 3

My Great Delight in God's Word

The Completing Ministry of Paul, Message 3

The Indwelling Christ

In the message 2, we saw the big picture of what Paul's completing ministry is, along with all the 3 mysteries unravelled through this ministry. Now we are going a little bit deeper into the first mystery, God as our content, with the main focus on the indwelling Christ.

Christ is both in heaven and in us

Christ, as the mystery of God, really is mysterious. He is 100% God and also 100% man. It is impossible to fully comprehend this. And another mysterious truth about Him is that now He is at the right hand of God, and, at the same time, within us. How can that be? It is so mysterious, is it not?
As most Christians know very well, Christ ascended to heaven after His resurrection. And one day, which is very soon, He will come back again. The apostles' creed summarises this very well. I'm sure many saints can quote it by heart. The part of the belief in God the Son (Anglican version) reads like this:

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

It is a nice bible-based simplified list of our belief concerning our Lord Jesus. And it also is a useful tool to check whether one's faith is well aligned with God's word or not. However, these 10 lines can never cover all the mysteries of God in Christ, can they?
According to the creed, Christ now is in heaven, at the right hand of the Father. That absolutely is biblical. Moreover, the Scripture tells us that He is ministering us through prayer. He is interceding for us! What a wonderful Christ we have!

Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. (Romans 8:34 NKJV)

And what about the Scripture saying that Christ is within us, being our hope of glory? The bible also is very clear about this.

To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27 NKJV)

This truly is a mystery, is it not? Christ is there in the heaven at the right hand of God, interceding for His beloved children. And at the same time, He is here within us, being our life-giving Spirit and our Comforter.

We are God's many abodes.

When I read about the dilemma, I recalled the thing that one of my beloved brother in Christ once shared with me. It was about "mansions" that Christ said He would prepare for us.

¹ Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.
² In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. (John 14:1-3 NKJV)

According to this bible passage, Christ told His disciples that the Father had got many mansions and Christ was going to prepare one place for them. And one day, He would take us to that place, where He and them were going to be together.
The common interpretation of this passage says that the mansions are our places in the heaven, given that God is in heaven, and thereby His house should also be in heaven. And our Lord Jesus has gone there at His ascension, and has been preparing the places for us. The places are so sure that we need not to be worried about where we are going to stay in heaven. We will by no means homeless there. And one day, Christ is coming back to take us to that place. He and us will be together forever. This is so encouraging, is it not?
This way of interpretation sounds very logical and relevant to other parts of the bible, does it not? And it nicely fits with the fact that Jesus now is in the heaven at the right hand of God. While interceding for us, He may also preparing the places for us. However, some questions may be raised according to this interpretation. Am I going to stay in an apartment in the heaven? Is He building huge buildings so that there will be enough rooms for us all? Can He not build it within in few milliseconds just by speaking a word? Why has He spent thousands of years building it?
Let's have a look at the passage again in the context. In the previous 2 chapters (John 12-13), Jesus directly told His disciples about His death, Judas' betrayal, and Peter's denial. And here in John chapter 14, Jesus was consoling them with His revelation about the coming of the Holy Spirit as the Helper or Comforter (John 14:16). This was accomplished after His resurrection and His ascension, when the Holy Spirit came upon them (Acts 1:8). The other comforting truth is that both God the Father and Christ Himself would come to them, and make Their home with them (John 14:23).
Furthermore, the context is not associated with the heaven at all. Jesus was not talking about where the disciples were going to stay after Christ's second coming. Even when Thomas asked where He was going and how he and all the other disciples could know the way, the Lord's answer was not that He was going to the heaven and He was the way to the place. Christ answered He was the way, the truth and the life to the Father, not to the heaven!

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." (John 14:6 NKJV)

So His focus was not at His second coming. His focus was at His resurrection, when He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45).
Now let's put all the jigsaw puzzles together. God's house here refers to His temple (John 2:16,21), and we together, as the Church or Christ's body, are His temple (1 Corinthians 3:16). The many mansions, which can be literally translated as dwelling places or abodes, actually are all the members of the Church. We are the dwelling places of God.
Applying this to the context, Christ was going to prepare a place for us, so that each of us would be a part of His Body, becoming His temple, his habitation, His house. Christ has been building us up to Himself, and we will eventually see the New Jerusalem as the finished building.
Christ had to go to the Cross, so that He would come back again at His resurrection. We know from the bible that the Comforter who once was with His disciples came back to them again. But this time, He came to them not as the Comforter with them anymore. Instead, He became the Comforter within them!
Brothers and sisters, Christ now is not only our Immanuel, meaning God with us, but He also is God in us, the hope of glory! His going to the cross brought about His coming to us and His indwelling within us, so that He and us may be together forever (John 14:3).

Paul's prayer that Christ may dwell in our hearts.

We now know that Christ has made us God's abodes and has indwelt within our spirit. And what is next? Let's learn from one of the prison prayers of the apostle Paul in Ephesians 3.

¹⁶ that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,
¹⁷ that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
¹⁸ may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height ---
¹⁹ to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19 NKJV)

Briefly, at our regeneration when we received the Lord to be our Saviour, our spirits were made alive, and the Triune God came into our spirits. God's Spirit and our spirits became one. That was only the beginning of our spiritual journey. The next step is that we are to gradually allow Him to dwell in the other part of our body - our hearts (3 parts of our souls - mind, will and emotion - plus conscience). This is a life-long process, generally called sanctification, leading towards Christ-likeness. Ultimately, at Christ's second coming, our whole beings will absolutely be like Him. This is called glorification.
As the centres of our beings are our hearts, we need to deal with them by allowing Christ to make His home in them. The apostle Paul prays that our spirits (inner man) may be strengthened with might through His spirit, because this is the means whereby Christ spreads within us from our spirits to our hearts and makes home in them. This is the crucial step whereby Christ becomes our persons.
Jesus says that if we abide in Him and He in us, we will bear much fruit (John 15:4). What is the fruit that He is talking about? It is the spiritual fruit in Galatians 5:22-23, consisting of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. All the 9 items are clearly seen in the life of Christ. They are His characteristics. And they will also be ours, if His home is made in our hearts and He thereby becomes our persons.
Ephesians 3:18-19 further tells us that the more our hearts are occupied with Christ, the more we will be able to comprehend His love, and the more we will be filled with all the fullness of God! We are going to be the corporate expression of the Triune God! Is this not what God's economy is - that God becomes one with us, and expresses Himself through us to this world?
Lord Jesus, may You strengthen us through Your Spirit within our spirits, and may You make Your home in our hearts. May You reveal your love, which passes our knowledge, to us, and may You fill us with all the fullness of Yourself.

Further reading

• The Holy Word for Morning Revival: The Completing Ministry of Paul, week 3.

• The Holy Bible Recovery Version, Footnotes of John 14:1-3.

Thirayost Nimmanon (Tony)