HAVING CHRIST MAKE HIS HOME IN OUR HEARTS
Ephesians 3:16-17a speaks of Christ making His home in our hearts through faith by the Father strengthening us into our inner man through His Spirit with power according to the riches of His glory. Since we love Christ, we need to allow Him to make His home in our hearts through faith. The very presence of Christ within us is substantiated by our faith. In order for Christ to make His home in our hearts, the Father has to strengthen us into our inner man. To understand what it means to be strengthened into our inner man, we need to consider our experience. The more we are not in our spirit, the weaker we are. When we are weak, we are surely absent from our spirit. When God the Father comes to strengthen us, that strengthening will bring us back to our spirit, which is our very inner man. When we are weak, we are remaining in our outer man, in our flesh, in our self, in our natural man, and in our soul. But when we are strong in the Lord, we are remaining in our spirit, in our inner man.
Because we are not in our inner man much of the time, there was the need of some apostle to pray for us. Paul prayed to the Father, asking the Father to strengthen all the saints, who are weak in their outer man, into their inner man. The Father does not do this strengthening directly. He strengthens the weaker saints through the Spirit with power, and He does this strengthening according to the riches of His glory. This prepares the way, opens the way, paves the way, so that the Son can have a highway to make His home in our entire heart. In our heart there are four rooms—the room of the mind, the room of the will, the room of the emotion, and the room of the conscience. Christ wants to make His home in all these different rooms.
Christ making His home in our hearts results in our having been rooted and grounded in love. To be rooted is for growth, and to be grounded is for building. This rooting and grounding is in love. Christ makes His home in our hearts through faith, and we are rooted and grounded in love. "Through faith" refers to our substantiating; "in love" refers to embracing with a loving heart. To realize that Christ is making His home in our heart, we need faith to substantiate it. To have ourselves rooted for growth and grounded for building, there is the need of love. We need to love the Lord and also love the rooting and the grounding. We need to be those who love the Lord, who love His rooting, and who love His grounding that we may grow and be built up.
When we have been rooted and grounded in our love toward the Lord, we will be strong. We will have the strength, the power, the capability, to apprehend with all the saints the breadth, length, height, and depth of Christ and to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ. The breadth and length are horizontal, whereas the height and depth are vertical. These are the dimensions of Christ which we have to experience. These dimensions make a cube, which is solid, strong, stable, unbreakable, and immovable. We need to apprehend with all the saints the dimensions of this great, universal cube—Christ. We also are made strong to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ. This love surpasses knowledge, yet we can know it.
Eventually, this results in our being filled unto all the fulness of God (vv. 17b-19). "Unto" means resulting in or issuing in. Such an experience of Christ making His home in our hearts eventually results in our being filled to such an extent that we become the fullness of the Godhead. This fullness is the very expression of all the riches of the Triune Godhead. The living church, the actual church, the active church, the real church, is the expression of the Triune God.
Today can we see such a church in the universe? We must admit that there is not such a church today. The Triune God will not tolerate this situation. He is doing something to change this situation. This is why we need to pray for one another that we would be strengthened into our inner man with power through the Father’s Spirit according to the riches of His glory that the Lord Jesus may have a way to make His home in our hearts. Then we will love the rooting and the grounding, and we will have the strength to apprehend the universal dimensions of Christ with all the saints. We cannot apprehend by ourselves in an individualistic way. We need all the saints to apprehend the dimensions of the Lord Jesus—the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth. We need to experience Christ as an unbreakable, stable cube. Eventually, we will know the knowledge- surpassing love of Christ, and we all will be filled unto the very fullness of the Triune God as the church according to His heart’s desire. We need to pray this prayer recorded in Ephesians 3.
HAVING CHRIST FORMED IN US
To live with the Divine Trinity is to have Christ formed in us (Gal. 4:19). After Christ makes His home in our heart, He will be formed in us. He will spread Himself from our spirit into every room of our entire inner being. Galatians speaks of God revealing His Son in us (1:15-16a). This is the first step. Then we have been baptized into Christ and have put on Christ (3:27). We have been put into Christ, taking Christ as our clothing, and now Christ takes us as His dwelling by living in us (2:20). Then Christ matures in us. For Christ to mature in us is for Him to be formed in us. He matures in us for us to be heirs (3:29) for the full enjoyment of the Triune God as our inheritance (Eph. 1:14; 1 Pet. 1:4). The Holy Spirit is the pledge of this inheritance (Eph. 1:13b-14a). Thus, the entire Divine Trinity is involved in Christ’s being formed in us.
(Living In and With the Divine Trinity, Chapter 11, by Witness Lee)
