Building up the Church through the Inner Experience of the Indwelling Christ

How can we build up the church? As believers in Christ and members of the Body of Christ, it is our deepest yearning to contribute to building up the church as the Body of Christ so that our Lord Jesus would return soon for His Bride. But how do we build up the church?

The book of Ephesians as the heart of the Bible gives us a clear vision of the church and how to build up the church; according to Ephesians, the building up of the church as the Body of Christ is through the inner experience of the indwelling Christ.

Ephesians, a book on the church, does not say a word about how to set up elders, do practical arrangements in the church life, set up deacons and serving ones, organize the services efficiently, carry out the meetings, what kind of meetings the church should have, the gifts, the collection of the money and tithing, etc.

Rather, what we see in Ephesians is the unsearchable riches of Christ and how this Christ as the Spirit is making His home in our heart through faith (see Eph. 1:22-23; 3:8, 16-17). The way Christ builds up the church is by building Himself into us, His believers; He first enters our spirit through regeneration and then spreads Himself from our spirit into our mind, emotion, and will to occupy our entire inner being.

The way we cooperate with Christ for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ is through experiencing the indwelling Christ making His home in our heart.

Paul’s prayer in Eph. 3:16-21 could be considered the heart of Ephesians since it reveals the believers’ inner experience of the indwelling Christ for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.

We need to take these verses and pray them to the Lord every day so that we would be strengthened with power by the Father through His Spirit into the inner man for Christ to make His home in our heart through faith, so that we may apprehend with all the saints what the universally vast dimensions of Christ are, and we may be filled unto all the fullness of God to become the Body of Christ.

Building up the Church through the Inner Experience of the Indwelling Christ

It is very interesting to see that in Ephesians, a book on the church as the Body of Christ, Paul doesn’t focus on any of the outward practical matters we all think of when we consider the church. Rather, in Ephesians we see that Paul preached the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel, and he prayed that the saints would have Christ as the Spirit make His home in their heart through faith.

When speaking of the church Paul doesn’t give us tips on how to increase our congregation; he doesn’t speak of prosperity, success, holiness, healing, miraculous gifts, spirituality, etc. but he speaks of the universally vast riches of Christ. The building up of the church demands that the riches of Christ would be enjoyed, absorbed, and constituted into the Body of Christ.

The key to the building up of the church is our inner experience of Christ as life (see Eph. 3:17; Col. 3:4; 1 John 5:11-12). Without the inner experience of Christ we can never have the reality of the church and we cannot build up the Body of Christ.

Christ today builds up the church by building Himself into us; He first enters into our spirit to regenerate us, and then He spreads from our spirit into our mind, emotion, and will so that He may saturate, permeate, and occupy our entire inner being with Himself (see 2 Tim. 4:22; 1 Cor. 6:17; Eph. 3:17).

The best way to have Christ make His home in our heart in a solid way is by our partaking of, eating, and enjoying the riches of Christ. Eating Jesus every day is the way to grow in life and build up the church as the Body of Christ.

The physical food we partake of daily is being “built” and constituted into us, becoming the “building element” of our physical being. Spiritually, Christ with His unsearchable riches needs to be received, enjoyed, digested, and assimilated into our being to become the building element of the Body of Christ.

The result and the purpose of Christ making His home in our heart through our enjoyment and experience of Christ is that the church is being built up. The more we enjoy Christ with His unsearchable riches and the more we experience Him as our life, the more we build up the church as God’s habitation with the Christ who has been wrought into us.

Our building up the church is not mainly through outward activities or practical coordination but through our inner experience of the indwelling Christ to have Christ built into our being for the Body of Christ.

Lord Jesus, we want to experience You as the indwelling Christ for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ. Grant us a clear view of the key to the building up of the church. May all saints in the church life focus more on the inner experience of Christ as our life than on anything outward. Lord, build Yourself into us by spreading from our spirit into all the inward parts of our being to occupy and saturate our entire being with Yourself for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ!

Be Strengthened with Power Through His Spirit into the Inner Man (Eph. 3:16)

It is worthwhile taking a closer look at Paul’s prayer in Eph. 3:16-21 since here we have a clear view of the believers’ inner experience of the indwelling Christ for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.

Paul bowed his knees before the Father that He would grant us, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man so that Christ would make His home in our heart and thereby possess, occupy, permeate, and saturate our whole inner being with Himself (Eph. 3:16-17).

When Christ regenerated our spirit by imparting His divine life in us when we were born again, our spirit became our inner man indwelt by Christ. Christ as a living Person lives in our spirit, and within us we have an inner man with Christ as the person. Formerly the soul was our person, but now Christ lives in our spirit and our inner man is our real person.

However, even though Christ is in our spirit, our inner man is not the strongest part of our being. Rather, we are distracted many times to live in our mind, according to our feelings, or how we want. The first thing we need for the building up of the church is to be strengthened by God the Father through His Spirit into our inner man.

How much our inner man is strengthened by the Father can be seen in how much we pray and how often we pray; if we take every opportunity to pray, our inner man is strong. But many times we would rather talk about church affairs or the situation of the saints than pray for the church and the saints.

We need to be strengthened into our inner man by the Father: the Father does the strengthening, and we need to cooperate by being willing to be strengthened (it is active-passive).

We are being strengthened not merely to uplift our spiritual condition or to bear the situation we’re in but according to the riches of God’s glory. Glory is God expressed; the riches of God’s glory are the riches in the Godhead, all that God is.

We need to be strengthened into our inner man according to the riches of His glory so that we may become an expression of the Triune God with all His unsearchable riches. The more we are strengthened inwardly, the more God is expressed.

The Father strengthens us through His Spirit – not through our will power or determination, but through His Spirit in our spirit. He strengthens us with power – the same power that raised Christ from among the dead, seated Him at the right hand of God in power, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church. This power can strengthen us to be rescued from any distraction and preoccupation, from death, suppression, and depression.

We need to make these verse our prayer and ask the Father to strengthen us according to the riches of His glory with power through His Spirit into our inner man!

Father, grant us to be strengthened with power through Your Spirit into our inner man so that Christ may make His home in our heart through faith! Father, according to the riches of Your glory and through Your Spirit, strengthen all Your believers into their inner man so that they may experience the inward saturation and permeation with Christ for the building up of the church. Make our inner man strong to be our real person and cooperate with You by experiencing You for the building up of the Body of Christ!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. James Lee’s sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of 1 & 2 Samuel, msgs. 28-29, as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Vision, Practice, and Building up of the Church as the Body of Christ, week 8 / msg 8, The Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ (2) – Through the Inner Experience of the Indwelling Christ.
• Further reading: recommending Eph. 3:16-17 with the footnotes in the Holy Bible Recovery Version.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Oh, strengthen my spirit, Lord Jesus, / Oh, strengthen my spirit, I pray; / Oh, strengthen my spirit with power / And spread to my heart today. / Into my heart, into my heart, / Spread into my heart, Lord Jesus; / Make home today and have Your way / In all of my heart, Lord Jesus. (Hymns #1134)
  # For experience we must pray to be strengthened always, / That from soul into spirit we would turn and remain, / Only when we’re in spirit can Christ have a way, / From our spirit to make His home in our hearts through faith. (Song on Eph. 3:16)
  # Father God, forgive me if I groan; / For so long I’ve been on a plateau. / Now with tears, I bow my knees and pray / By Your Spirit make my spirit strong today. / As I came this morning to Your word / With no strength to even read a verse; / Yet my plea, is “Lord, I do need You!” / How You strengthen me, Your power within to prove. (Song on Experiencing Christ)