The Purity of the Soul's Intention Consummated in the Consciousness of Christ's Indwelling

It is a mistake to dwell always on the elementary truths of pardon for the past, of ever-present help for the present, and of the imitation of Jesus Christ for all time to come. It is also a mistake to be always dwelling upon sin, and looking in upon ourselves to discern how far we have been cleansed from it. No physician of eminence would be foolish enough to turn the thought

of his patients inwards on their symptoms 35 and ailments. If he be a wise man, he will speak hopefully and brightly to those who visit his consulting-room, and fill their minds with suggestions of speedy recovery. So with the life of the soul. The more we can turn people’s thoughts away ‘from their emotions, or the rapid changes of temperament and experience, to the unchanging Christ, the more likely we are to help them into a bright and holy walk with God.

We all of us need more of an overwhelming consciousness of our Lord’s indwelling to deliver us from our self-consciousness, to free us from the fascination of evil, so that He may be more literally present to us than our dearest and closest companions.

It is pleasant to read that incident told of the Rev. George Bowen of Bombay. One

of his class-mates relates that he was preaoe sent when that man of God was praying with a few of his friends. Suddenly the lights went out, but Bowen startled them by saying: “Fellows, do you know I have got a more real sense of the presence of Christ with me in this room this evening than I have of the presence of any of you!”

It has been truly said that the presence of Jesus Christ will blast out of life a thousand things that it cannot abide, and the man who wishes to enjoy it must make choice between the things of Christ and the things that are not tolerable to Him. When once Jesus Christ has become Lord of all the consciousness of our lives, a thousand temptations die away because they find no response; there may be a susceptibility, but there is no desire, no kindling of the soul,

no going forth of passion.

The indwelling of Christ was forepromised. — In John xiv. 23 the Master said, uniting Himself in one pronoun with the Eternal Father: “We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him”; and it is interesting to know that the Greek word there translated abode is the same as occurs in xiv. 2, where it denotes the mansion He has gone to prepare. He promises us a mansion in glory, and then tells us that He will make His mansion within the heart that loves Him.

In His High-Priestly prayer, it was our Lord’s reiterated request that His disciples should share the mystery of His own inner life; that as the Father was in Him, and He in the Father, so He should be in each disciple, and the disciple in Him,

Anything short of this is to miss the esaesssgm sence of our holy religion. It is not primarily a system of doctrines, however orthodox; it is not a set of maxims of morality, however elevated; it is not an energising power enabling us to realise the ethics of our Lord. Christianity, as our Saviour sketched it before He went back to the Father, must be a “fe. No other religion allies itself, as Christ’s religion does, to a human Person eternal and Divine. It was this which He promised; it is this that He is prepared to fulfil. If you have not realised it, ask Him that not one good thing may fail of all that He has promised, but that in your experience also His anticipations may be fact. The indwelling of Christ ts by the Holy Spirit — The Lord Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, but He indwells the human heart through the Divine Spirit, just as the sun which is located in the heavens sparkles in the eye of the child, and on the crest of the wave, by means of the far-travelled beam that leaps the abyss and threads the vault of night.

In Ephesians iii. 17, we learn from the Apostle’s prayer, that it is only as we are strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man that Christ can dwell in our hearts by faith; and from Romans viii, g-11, the parallelism between the verses teaches us that Christ in us is equivalent to the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead.

Hence we are wont to say that they who have most of Christ have most of the Holy Spirit; and certainly one symptom of having received and being infilled by the sevenfold grace of the blessed Paraclete is a very deep, definite, and blessed consciousness of the indwelling Christ.

The indwelling of Christ was one of Paul’s two secrets — He accounted himself the trustee of the mysteries of God, and that in a particular sense. He was entrusted with the sacred charge of two of them. The first he Otten. a B pitsinus dil Casta’ he Gentiles should enter the Church, the Bride of Christ, on an equality with the chosen people; that they should be fellow-heirs and fellow-members of the Body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus. Secondly, in Colossians i. 27, he explains that God has been pleased to make known to him “the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles” — Christ within, the hope of glory.

As Ezra entrusted the holy vessels to the priests and Levites, bidding them carry them untarnished across the desert, so the Apostle held that he had been commissioned by Christ to carry these two great truths, until, in the hour of death, he should pass on the holy charge to Timothy, and others whom he had trained.

The indwelling of Christ does not imply any extinction of Personality. — The soul is the seat of that personality. There the attributes and qualities gather, which make any one of us distinct from all others, so that Isaiah is Isaiah, and Ezekiel Ezekiel; and each of the evangelists is marked with his particular and characteristic style. When the presence of Christ takes possession of our inner life, it no more obliterates our personal traits than does the entrance of

light alter the furniture of the rooms into which it pours. There is a change in the pivot, in the impulse and inspiration, in the axis around which the personality revolves; but there is no obliteration of what is characteristic.

By his original nature man was made to depend on God. His soul, as we have seen, was central — on its upper side opening through its spirit to the unseen and eternal; on its under side opening through the body to the earthly and material. It was evidently the Divine intention that man should hearken only to those bells that ring in his soul from above, and be oblivious to those that ring from below. Alas for man! he refused the upper and chose the under; he turned from the Divine and the eternal to make himself as God; he substituted the

human pivot and centre for the Divine,

This was the Fall; and the reversal of this fatal choice is Redemption. When God once more becomes all in all, the enthroned King of the inner life, though there is a change in the ruling power, all the characteristic life of the soul continues — the same crowds throng the inner thoroughfares and market-places, — there is the old stir of life, though all is now under the domination and control of the Eternal Spirit.

The indwelling of Christ ts a mystery. — The word mystery is Greek, and means a secret which cannot be understood by the reason of the natural man. Just as the miraculous birth of our Lord was a mystery to the mother that bare Him, so the miraculous indwelling of Christ by the Spirit eludes the prying eye of intellect, though it can be apprehended by the childlike heart. Christ hidden in the soul — here

is a mystery {indeed; and in this sense every Christian is a mystic; though every mystic is not a Christian. Only let us be thankful for the revelation of the mystery which hath been kept in silence through times eternal, but now is manifested, and made known unto all the nations, according to the commandment of the Eternal God (Rom. xvi. 25, 26).

The conception of this wonderful indwelling of Christ seems less mysterious when we remember that we are not primarily bodies, but souls in bodies, that the body at the most is only the implement and weapon of the spirit, the dial-plate on which it registers its decisions.

The indwelling of Christ ts independent of our

consciousness. — In 2 Corinthians xiii. 5 the

Apostle goes so far as to say that if Jesus Christ is not in us we are reprobates; and his teaching is corroborated by such graphic similitudes as the comparison of the vine, of the human body, and of the close affinity between husband and wife.

Oh, dare to believe that Jesus Christ gives not His gifts, but Himself; that He is within, not because of any merit on our part, but because nothing else will satisfy His heart of love! When the fire of emotion burns low, and faith gets dim, do not wait to be overtaken by the emotion of Christ’s indwelling, but dare to affirm again and again, “He is in me; I do not realise His indwelling as I would; my soul does not respond to it as I desire; but nothing can ever alter the blessed fact that He

whom the Heaven of heavens cannot contain, has stooped to become the denizen of those depths of my nature which lie beneath the surface, as the great deep of the ocean beneath the surge of the waves.”

As the Shechinah indwelt the Most Holy Place, even when the curtain prevented the priests from catching the rays of its supernatural splendour, so we must believe that deeper than consciousness, often veiled from our view in the shrine of our deepest being, the Son of God literally indwells and reigns.

The indwelling of Christ ts made known by a distinct revelation — Galatians i. 16 seems to place this beyond doubt, for this passage can hardly refer to the Apostle’s conversion when he was stricken to the ground by the supernatural glory “of that light.” Its

more obvious reference is to some subsequent disclosure of the Divine purpose. Perhaps as he was kneeling in the temple, the revelation of Christ being within his soul burst upon his view, and the Apostle knew that his body was indeed the precinct of the Temple of the Holy One.

Is there not something similar to that in our experience? It is when we enter into the deepest meaning of His Cross, when we, too, say, “Not our will, but Thine be done”; when we are prepared to go all lengths with the Lord, that the veil which hangs between us and Him is rent, and we see Him, the inspiration of whose indwelling had often filled our souls, but whom we had not beheld.

There are many symptoms of this indwelling. — John vi. 55 tells us that it is productive of a great hunger, so that the soul which is most conscious of Christ within feeds eagerly on His Body, which is bread indeed, and His Blood, which is wine indeed. 1 John iti. 24 tells us that the soul which He indwells is an obedient one; 1 John iv. 15, that it falters not in its confessions; 1 John iv. 16, that it faints not in its love. “My soul,” says the Psalmist, “follows hard after Thee, and Thy right hand sustains me.” How often we have found ourselves in the company of those who have been unable to pronounce our shibboleth as we do! But as we have marked the indications of the soul’s close following of God, we have felt the outflowing of a Divine love.

The knowledge of this mighty mystery breaks in glory — The Apostle expatiates on

the glory of the mystery. As the mystery D of light breaks in the glory of the rainbow, as the mystery of the hidden root breaks in the glory of the flower, as the mystery of love in the maiden’s heart breaks in the radiance with which she greets her lover, so when the soul apprehends that it is really one with Christ, there is a lightsomeness, an elasticity, a blessedness which tell of the glory which has come in full tide. The glorious fact of Christ’s indwelling enriches the soul — The Apostle speaks of the riches of the glory of the mystery (Col. 1. 7). The indwelling Saviour does not rob us of any of those natural gifts and graces with which we are endowed, but surrounds them with an atmosphere in which they become most vigorous. Just as the common plants of our northern climate burst out with new

profusion when transplanted to southern climates, so a very ordinary intellect, imagination, and emotion will obtain an altogether new potency and beauty as soon as this truth is apprehended.

Gradually the light of this glory will possess us. In the early morning the sunrays strike upon the side of a deep well, ilumining it for only a few yards from the earth’s surface, but as every hour advances, and the sun rises in the heavens, the beams strike lower down the well-side, revealing more and more of it, until when the sun stands in mid-heaven the beams strike perpendicularly downward, and the whole well to the bottom is illuminated. So it is with this blessed consciousness. It may be faint and feeble to-day, but, if you yield yourself to it, it will grow and deepen

until the whole being responds to it, and all its inferior kingdoms become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ. Then the prayer of the Mediator shall be realised: “] in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in one.”

It is in the undivided and pure heart that the Saviour finds His home. If we subor= dinate all desires and hopes, all aims and ambitions, to His government and for His glory, He will assuredly come to abide. If we confess that other Lords beside Him have had dominion over us, but that by Him we desire to make mention of His name alone, our whole body shall be suddenly filled with the light of His indwelling.