There was much to appreciate about this year’s Autumn University Conference: meeting old friends, making new ones, campfires and hymns to the Lord, an informative Q&R session, and a lesson in humility in chess.
However, my foremost enjoyment from the conference is our relationship with Christ, and more particularly Christ within us. God does not just want people to serve Him and be devoted to Him. He wants a relationship with man where He lives in and through man. This is the difference between Christ and “religion”. “Religion” is a devotion to God devoid of the indwelling Christ.
We are weak and unable to please God on our own because of the flesh and the self, so even our “religious” service is vain in God’s eyes. Even Paul recognised that his life in the flesh before his conversion was like dung compared to winning Christ, even when it was a life in the flesh that was blameless regarding righteousness based on the law (Philippians 3:4-9).
We thus first need Christ dwelling in us. Christ knew no sin and lived perfectly righteously on Earth, completely devoted to God, unlike us. When Christ indwells us and we cooperate with Him, seek Him, and hear Him, He changes us inwardly to follow God and mind God’s things. Our God-pleasing virtues and character are not just what we cultivate (or else they would be works), they are the product of our relationship with God (hence they are fruits).
Jesus in John 15 taught that He is a true vine, to whom the disciples are attached as branches, who themselves bear fruit as long as they abide or remain in the vine as Jesus abides in the disciples. This means the fruit-bearing of the believers hinges not just on us abiding in Christ but Christ abiding in us.
Galatians 5:22-23 teaches that fruits of the Spirit are born in us if we walk by Him, as opposed to works of the flesh if we indulge that. It follows that the fruits of the Spirit are what we bear if we abide in Christ, as Christ grows them out of us as He indwells us.
Paul in Galatians 2:20 said that he no longer lived, but Christ lived in him so that he lived in the flesh but now in the faith of Christ who loved him and died for him. He thus understood that his new living was Christ’s work in him, not his own.
In Romans 8:9-11, the Spirit of God and Christ dwell in the believers and it is that indwelling that means we are in the Spirit and led by the Spirit to be sons of God.
Romans 11 gives the best analogy to understand how Christ indwelling us is necessary for our change and our relationship with God. Just as Jesus described Himself as a vine to whom branches are connected to bear fruit, Paul compared the believers to branches grafted to an olive tree and partaking of the richness of that tree.
Grafting is where a branch is attached to a tree. The tree feeds the grafted branch, and the branch grows and bears the fruit of the tree. In the same way, we are grafted to Christ. Christ dwells in us and, as long as we remain in Him by faith, His life permeates us and we bear His fruit. Christ dwells in us and as we remain in Him in faith, our appetites and inclinations and thinking are transformed.
Sharing by Matt I. (Newcastle, UK) from his top enjoyment in the 2023 Autumn University Conference. If you were there and wish to share what touched you during this time, send us an email to [email protected].
