The Truth and Experience of God’s Salvation

Lesson Twenty Three

GOD’S SALVATION - CHRIST’S LIFE-GIVING RESURRECTION (4)

III. God’s Salvation

C. The provision of Christ’s life-giving resurrection

4. Opens the way for Christ to live in us to be our life – Eph. 3:17a; Col. 1:27; 3:4a

Burden to Impart:

Christ’s life-giving resurrection has caused a dramatic change in God’s relationship with man. Now that Christ has resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit, He is able to get into us and live in us to be our life. He can enter into us as the Spirit and make His home in our hearts through faith. It is not a matter of trying to do good or trying to please God, but rather to receive the life-giving pneumatic Christ into us to live in us as our very life.

Memory Verse: “To whom 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,“
(Col. 1:27)

Facts to Teach:

1. When we receive the resurrected Christ, He dwells in our spirit to be our life and person. As such, He is our hope of glory. As our hope, He begins from our spirit. Our spirit is not only regenerated and made living; it becomes life. When we believe in Christ, He as the divine Spirit of life comes into our spirit and mingles Himself with it; the two spirits thereby become one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). Our spirit becomes not merely living, but life.

2. Christ can live in us through His resurrection. His living in us is entirely by His being the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). The Spirit is the very One whom we receive as life and in whom we should live.

3. If there were no Spirit of Christ, or if Christ were not the Spirit, there would be no way for us to be joined to Him and to belong to Him. However, Christ is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). He comes to be in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22) and to be one spirit with us (1 Cor. 6:17).

4. Christ Himself comes to dwell in our spirit (Rom. 8:10) to impart Himself, the embodiment of the processed Triune God, into us as resurrection life and power to deal with the death that is in our nature (v. 2). Thus, we may live today in Christ's resurrection, in Christ Himself, by living in the mingled spirit.

5. In resurrection as the Spirit, Christ longs to spread from our spirit to make home in our heart. Our heart is composed of all the parts of our soul – mind, emotion, and will – plus our conscience (the main part of our spirit). These parts are the inward parts of our being. After receiving Christ, we should allow Him to spread into every part of our heart. Since our heart is the totality of all our inward parts and the center of our inward being, when Christ makes His home in our heart, He controls our entire inward being and supplies and strengthens every inward part with Himself.

6. The very Christ who lived on the earth and died on the cross is now the Spirit in resurrection. As such He is available to live in us, to be our life, and to make home in our heart