Bruce Collins, Evangelist

The personal website of Bruce Collins

Christ is in us? Really?

Meditation for the week of September 16, 2012

Then Jesus turned, and seeing them following, said to them, "What do you seek?" They said to Him, "Rabbi" (which is to say, when translated, Teacher), "where are You staying?" (John 1:38)

Wouldn’t it be nice If we could invite God into our homes for dinner tonight?  I sometimes wonder if the disciples really realized that they were in the presence of their Creator when they were being discipled by the Lord Jesus.  However, we cannot spend time with the Lord in the way the disciples did and we cannot have the Lord in our homes as a guest tonight.  The reason is that He is going to be in our homes as a permanent resident if we have really become believers in Him.  He will be present in the person of the Holy Spirit.

I find it remarkable that the Lord came into this world to dwell among us or tabernacle among us (John 1: 14).  He tabernacled or lived in a world that by and large did not want Him.  The world would not accept the fact that if we are worshipers of God we are worshipers of the Lord Jesus.  By rejecting Christ, the world rejected God.

We are told by Paul that upon believing the Holy Spirit comes to indwell each one of us.  Ephesians 1:13 says that we were sealed with the Holy Spirit of Promise.  Romans 8:9 says that the Holy Spirit dwells in those of us who are believers; and if we do not have the Holy Spirit, we are not the Lord’s, that is we are not saved.  But to prove that God is dwelling in our bodies after we are saved, Paul says our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  1 Corinthians 6:19 says, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?”  I know that it is really the Holy Spirit that has come to be the permanent resident in us and because of us, He resides in our homes .  However, if the Holy Spirit is God and if the Lord Jesus is God and if God is God, then I think that having the Holy Spirit indwell us is the same as having Christ indwell us. It is also the same as having God indwell us.  But now God dwells in a place where He is wanted.  We can grieve the Holy Spirit, that is we can distress Him or make Him sad, but He still dwells in us.  Think of it, Christ and God in the person of the Holy Spirit has come to take up an adode in our bodies of clay.  I would say that makes us pretty special if we are truly believers in Him.

The Lord also dwells in the church.  Again it is really the Holy Spirit dwelling there but that means that the Lord and that God dwell there.  Speaking to the Corinthian church Paul says, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you (1 Corinthians 3:16)?”  That is pretty special too except there are churches where this must not be true.  In Revelation 3:20 the Lord is on the outside of the church door knocking and asking for permission to enter.  Corinth had a lot of problems but Paul said that the Lord was dwelling there in the power of the Holy Spirit. The church of Laodicea in Revelation 3 had become so blinded by their material wealth and earthly success that they didn’t realize that they were worshiping in their own power and that the Lord wasn’t even present.  He wanted to be there but they had shut Him out.  They had lost their power and discernment.  They had been pretty special, but now they were a bus without an engine and they were going nowhere.

Paul says in Colossians 1:27 that one of the things hidden in the old testament that is now made known in the new is that Christ is in us. If he is dwelling in us, we certainly don’t want to be arguing with Him, we should want to be enjoying His company.  We should also want to enjoy the times when we are in a church meeting where it is obvious that the Lord is there leading the worship and teaching the saints through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Likely  we have all been in churches that are going through the motions and where they seem to have lost their focus and power. That makes the ones where the Lord is obviously present pretty special.

The Lord should not have to “make himself at home” as a guest would in our homes.  He should feel that our homes are His home.  We should be honored to have Him wanting to make His abode with us.

Bruce Collins

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