Let’s just start off by saying that I can’t explain so many things … the Trinity, for one. How do you explain God, Jesus, Holy Spirit as being three and yet being one?

Another thing I can’t explain: the secret. But I know there is one, and I know it’s powerful.

And what I am going to write might sound contradictory in places, unless you believe that Three are One. But how? I don’t know. I only know that the Word says this is so.

And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.
(Colossians 1:27b)

This is one of those phrases that many Christians have known since childhood. We sang songs inviting Jesus into our hearts. It rolls easily off our tongues, but I suspect we have no idea of the power of this fact: Christ lives in you.

Listen to one of the last things Jesus said to His disciples, just hours before he died:

Since I live, you also will live. When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you…All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them.

 We have a life that is given only to those who believe. We have a life given by the Spirit, a life that was resurrected from deadness. That’s not just a future resurrection after physical death—this is a life that we have now, a part of us that once was dead but now lives because the Spirit of God has come and made His home within us.

Jesus talks about this relationship we have with Him in the same way He describes His relationship with the Father. I am in my Father and you are in me, and I am in you. I cannot explain it. What does it mean that Jesus says He and the Father will make their home with us? I don’t think we can even begin to see the magnitude of what Jesus was saying.

But as the Spirit shows us more and more of this secret, it will change the way we view our relationship to Christ. Christ was God in the flesh. Now Christ’s Spirit lives within you, and you are a part of how He works here on earth today.

You are not a small, sinful human trying to approach and appease a fearsome god — you are part of Christ Himself, a chosen child of God. The Spirit of God lives within you. Jesus said, I am in you.

You, child of God, can say with Paul,

My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

This is a huge claim. And yet, what a promise to grab — that Christ lives in you, that the life you’re living is Christ’s life. The part of you that was completely dead is now resurrected, reclaimed, alive, brought to life and sustained by the Spirit of the Almighty God.

Wow. God adopted us, brought us into his family, made us his children. Resurrected us, gave us life.

The Lord we follow says, Since I live, you will also live.

The Apostle Paul says, “I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead.”

Me too! Me too!

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Scripture: John 14:19-20,23, Galatians 2:20a, Philippians 3:10 (all NLT)