God In Us

INTRODUCTION
Confessing that God the Son was incarnate as the baby Jesus is once of the church’s non-negotiable beliefs, however offensive it is to high-minded reason. But the church has often placed a wrong stress on the incarnation, as if God becoming man were in itself sufficient for our salvation or as if the presence of God in human flesh by itself sanctified, redeemed, and glorified fallen mankind.

Against this, the Scriptures teach that our salvation is accomplished by the Son’s incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and gift of the Spirit. Christmas is the beginning of our salvation, but Pentecost is its end. The Spirit encloses the whole process, since He is the agent of the incarnation and the gift poured out at Pentecost. But the work is not done at Christmas, when God dwells in the man Jesus. The work is only done with the Spirit is poured out and God dwells in the disciples of Jesus, in the body of Christ. This is one important way to tell the good news of Christmas: God the Son has become incarnate so that through His death and exaltation He can secure the gift of the Spirit for His people, so that God might be in us.

THE TEXT
“I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

CHRIST AND THE SPIRIT
How can “Christ live in me”? The answer of the NT is that Christ lives in us through the work of the Spirit. The Spirit is the agent of the incarnation and the Spirit also “accompanies” and “guides” Jesus throughout His ministry. This point is especially prominent in Luke’s gospel, where the Spirit that comes on Jesus at His baptism impels Him into the wilderness, empowers Him for miracles and battle with Satan, and fills Him with wisdom for verbal conflicts with the Pharisees.

The Spirit’s work in the gospels is a key prerequisite to Pentecost. By “accompanying” the man Jesus throughout His ministry, the Spirit becomes “Christomorphic,” takes on a “Christlike” shape. When He comes at Pentecost, He comes as the Spirit of Jesus, and the presence of the Spirit is therefore the presence of Jesus. The Spirit “in us” is also Jesus “in us.” As Paul says, Jesus has become “life-giving Spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45) so that we can say that “the Lord [Jesus] is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17).

CHRIST FORMED IN US
Through the Spirit of Christ we are conformed to Christ. Christ in us through His Spirit ensures that Christ will be evident in us, in the way we live. Paul spells out what this means in Galatians 4:19-20. In verse 19, he addresses the Galatians as “my children,” though he had previously been insisting that they are “sons of Abraham.” But if we think Paul is addressing the Galatians as a “father,” we are mistaken. He describes himself as a mother, in labor to give birth to the Galatians.

There are several dimensions to this imagery:
-First, the image of labor obviously has to do with pain and anguish, and describes the difficulty of Paul’s ministry among the Galatians (Genesis 3; Isaiah 13:8; 21:3).
-Second, Paul writes these words to a church that is already in existence, one that is already “born” in some sense. Yet Paul describes himself as still being in labor with them. His labor, with its connotations of struggle and pain, does not end when the church is up and running, but continues until the Galatians reach full maturity.
-The reason why the labor continues, thirdly, has to do with the goal of his labor. Paul’s goal in his ministry is not merely to see churches up and running. The goal of Paul’s labor, the “child” that he wants to bring forth, is “Christ.” The goal of all his struggle, all his perplexity, all his hard words is to see Christ reflected in the life and character of the members of the church.

There is also a corporate dimension to this. The Greek phrase “in you” can mean “in each individual one of you,” but the preposition can also have the connotation of “among.” Paul wants to give birth to a community whose life together reflects the life of Christ. He wants to give birth to the body of Christ (cf. Galatians 3:16).

US IN GOD
Jesus also talks about the mutual penetration of Father and Son in John 17, and extends the notion to include us in that communion. He prays for “those who believe in Me through their word” (vv. 20-23):

A. [I ask concerning] those who believe in Me through their word
B. that they may be one
C. even as Thou, Father,
D. art in Me,
D’. And I
C’. in Thee
B’. that they may be in us
A’. that the world may believe that Thou didst send me.

This shows that there is a “mutual in-dwelling” of God and the church and the church and God. God dwells “in us,” but we are equally dwelling “in Him.”

In this context, Jesus also says that He has given the glory that He had from the Father to His disciples (17:22), and this glory is given to us so that the church may be one even as the Father and Son are one. The glory is connected particularly with the Spirit and that Father and Son share, and have now shared with us. And that Spirit-glory, dwelling in us and enabling us to dwell in God, manifests Himself in the world. What does it mean for God to dwell in us? It means that the glory, or the beauty, of God is in us and shines through us. And this beauty and glory is the means by which God intends to attract the nations to Himself.