In my last post, the question of who is this Christ in us was asked. It is extremely critical that we come to know the Christ that is in us. This is an important journey for each one of us, to know Him, to know who Christ really is that is living not with us , but IN us. Paul after many years of being used as an apostle and knowing who he was and the purpose of his life, still had this burning desire to know the Christ that was in him. He said “that I might know Him”. I hope that is a burning desire of yours.
At our church family we have been considering the fact that the mystery of God is Christ in us the hope of glory for the last few years. This has been and still is an awesome fact that we are not able to get our minds around without the help of the Spirit of God. Now that we have at least received and delighted greatly in knowing this revealed mystery, we now are moving on to desire to know the Christ within.
Knowing the Christ within is absolutely needed in order to know ourselves. Since we are made one with Him, we must know Him. Since we are as He is, we need to know Him in order to be who He is in this present world. This is at the center of alot of confusion in my opinion. If we do not know Him, we do not know who we are in this present world. This ignorance makes us easy prey to misrepresentations of Christ, ourselves and the church, the Body of Christ in so many, many ways. We can get caught up in the externals, the little things that do not matter, rather than His life within us.
With this blog called “Christ In You Roundtable”, I hope that you and others will add to our understanding of knowing the Christ within by adding your comments at the end of this post.. I would like to really encouraged our older, mature brothers and sisters in Christ who can help those who are younger in understanding who our older brother Jesus Christ is as our indwelling Lord and life. Please feel free to share some of your journey that has open to you a further knowledge of the Christ within us.
I have been considering our Lord’s childhood in that the written accounts leaves us with ideas that He was like any other child, teen, young adult. He fit in with everyone around Him. He did not look any differently; He did not dress any differently than His peers. The thing that made Him different was His ongoing growing relationship with God His Father. He knew God. No one else knew God. Because He knew God as His Father, He knew who He was, and lived with this understanding that grew as He grew.
He saw the workings of God His Father. He could look at the birds and know that His Father fed them. He heard His Father speak to Him. He shared a life with His Father that no one else knew about and therefore could not share in. His knowledge and shared life with His Father had profound impact on His total life. It affected what He did , how He did what He did, when He did what He did. He grew to delight in His Father. His meat, what sustained Him was to do the will of His Father. He had no other goal or desire in life outside of His Father. He loved His Father to the point that He was willing with joy to suffer death on the cross so that the Father’s will and desire to take away our sins and the sins of the world would be accomplished. This was the height of His love for His Father. He had come to deeply enjoy the presence of His Father, and just the thought of Him being separated from His Father as He became sin for us meant agony for Him. Yet his relationship of love with His Father, made Him say not my will but your will be done.
This is who is in us!! Yet this is only a small part of who the Christ is who is in us. Again it will take your input and my input along with all of what we read in the scriptures and still others until the end of time to fully describe the One who is within. For we are told that the world could not contain the number of books that would be needed if all of what Christ did was written.
Yet we are encouraged to grow in grace AND the knowledge of Christ. So our journey as the Body of Christ must continue as we together come to know the Christ within. What has been written is to be experienced by us as the Word again becomes flesh and lives within us. I expect that since all of scripture really centers on Him, we will be continuing to grow in our knowing of Him.
I am looking forward to other saints, other sons of God, other believers to share what they have been taught and what they are learning about the Christ within. I say this not looking for book facts and head knowledge, but rather heart and spirit connections with the Christ within, and the tutoring that only the Holy Spirit of God can reveal. After all it is His glorious work to take the things of Christ and show them to us; to open our eyes that we might see what already is and has been true about the Christ within, and most importantly to enable us to walk and live in His life, to come to the place of knowing that for us to live is Christ!
Please share with us. This is Body work that only the Body can do, as each joint supplies nourishment which it has received from the Head, Christ who is within. We would love to hear from you and invite you to pass this on and encourage others to read and share.
Christ In You Roundtable 