Not Only Are We in Christ: Christ is in US!

 Paul says it clearly:

“But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10).

“To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20a).

This raises the question of whether this mutual indwelling is only metaphorical or in some sense literal or spatial. It would appear that the sense in which we are “in” Christ is not the same as Christ being present “in” us. We are “in” Christ according to the will, purpose, and intent of the Father. He reckons or considers us as inseparable from his Son (we are identified with and incorporated in Christ). Our “union” or oneness with Christ, therefore, at least in terms of our experience, is not spatial. It is spiritual. By that I mean that, as far as the Father is concerned, whatever may be found in Christ or whatever he may have achieved for sinners like you and me, is ours.

But neither I nor any of you are spatially present “in” Jesus. Our union with him is an expression of the promise God has made to all who believe. We are all present on earth while he is present at the right hand of the Father. But he, on the other hand, is both spatially and spiritually “in” us. Wherever we go, whatever we do, we can know with certainty that the risen Christ abides within us. I do not mean that his resurrected and glorified body is “in” each of our bodies. But he is most assuredly spiritually present, much as he would be in the elements of the Eucharist (as the Reformed conceive it, as over against both the Zwinglian or symbolic understanding of the Eucharist and the Roman Catholic view).

Consider Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21. He asks that we would be strengthened with power through the Holy Spirit “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (v. 17). His “dwelling” in us is quite real, perhaps even tangible. That is, there is every reason to believe that we have the capacity, through the Spirit, to “feel” and “sense” the indwelling Christ in our hearts. Even if we don’t, we may rest assured that the spiritually omnipresent Son of God abides within us. It is more than simply that truths about Christ live within us, or that he exerts a powerful influence within and through us. He himself lives within us! While his glorified body is in heaven, and will remain there until he returns at the end of the age, his “being” as God cannot be restricted or confined within that body.

This is similar to what came to be known as the Extra Calvinisticum. During the time of the Protestant Reformation the Lutherans had contended that the whole Logos was present in Jesus, thus demanding the communication of the divine attribute of omnipresence to the humanity (and hence the latter’s ubiquity). They needed to affirm this to justify their belief that the physical body of the risen Christ was present in/around/under/with the elements of the Eucharist.

Calvin and the reformed tradition held to a much stronger distinction between the infinite and finite (finitum non est capax infiniti) and thus concluded that the Logos, truly present in Jesus’ manhood, is nonetheless existent outside it (totus extra carnem as well as totus in carne), governing the world simultaneously from a different center of life and consciousness, so to speak, from that at which he dwelt incarnate in Jesus. Said Calvin: “Although the boundless essence of the Word was united with human nature into one person, we have no idea of any enclosing. The Son of God descended miraculously from heaven, yet without abandoning heaven; was pleased to be conceived miraculously in the Virgin’s womb, to live on the earth, and hang upon the cross, and yet always filled the world as from the beginning” (Institutes, II, 13ff.).

Does this union mean that I am everywhere Christ is? Yes, but only spiritually, in accord with the mind and will of God. On the other hand, it is true that Christ is everywhere I am. That is to say, Christ Jesus is truly in us both spiritually and spatially wherever we may be and whatever we may be doing.

To be continued . . .