Christ in You

Colossians 1:27

The gift of God the Holy Spirit in the new birth is the gift of life; and the life given is Christ himself. The life of the Lord Jesus Christ begins in us. Every heaven born soul can say with the inspired Apostle, “Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20). Paul asks, in 2 Corinthians 13:5, “Know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you?” Our Savior says to all who are born of the Spirit “I (am) in you” (John 15:4). Christ dying for me is my redemption and justification, the solitary basis of my hope before God; but God the Holy Spirit declares that it is “Christ in you” which is “the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

            I recently read a good tract on the new birth. It was published anonymously many years ago. The author wrote, “The unanimous testimony of the Word of God is that when one is born again the Lord Jesus Christ comes in and becomes the life of that one.” That is exactly what our heavenly Comforter tells us in Colossians 3:4. — It is “Christ who is our life.” That is the meaning of Peter’s declaration that we are “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). No sinner has hope before God until Christ takes up residence in him.

            Christianity is not religion. Christianity is life. It is Christ himself living in us. He came to redeem us, to justify and sanctify us by his blood, that he might come in the saving operations of his Spirit to sanctify us by his grace to give us life (John 10:10). He does so by taking up permanent residence in us. It is written, “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:12). “For me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21).

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