Christ is Formed in us so that we may be Sons of Full Age Inheriting the Blessing

To have Christ formed in us is to have all the three parts of our soul – mind, emotion, and will – renewed; Christ needs to be formed in us so that we may be sons of full age and heirs to inherit God’s promised blessing and so that we may mature in the divine sonship. Amen!

This week, we have been enjoying the matter of Christ being the One who is formed in us, the believers in Christ. This is seen in Galatians 4:19.

Before He can be formed in us, we need to have Christ revealed in us. In Gal. 1:15-16 we see that it pleases God the Father to reveal His Son in us. God reveals His Son Jesus Christ in our spirit at the time of our regeneration; when we see Christ, we are drawn to Him, we believe into Him, and we begin our Christian life.

Now that Christ is revealed in us, we need to daily remain in this fresh revelation of the Son of God; day by day, we need to come to the Lord and have Christ revealed in us. As He is revealed in us, He also lives in us (Gal. 2:20).

Wow, Christ is not only revealed in us or born in us – He also lives in us! Our old man has been crucified with Christ, and now we no longer live in and by the old man but in and by faith, the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself up for us.

Christ was crucified to redeem us out of the curse of the law and rescue us out of the evil religious course of the world, and He was resurrected from the dead so that He might live in us and be formed in us at our maturity. Hallelujah!

Christ lives in us and Christ is also being formed in us. He is our focus. Our Christian life is wrapped up with Christ, for we don’t focus on anything or anyone else but Christ in our daily living. To have Christ formed in us implies many things.

First, to have Christ formed in us is to have Christ permeate our whole being and saturate all our inward parts with Himself. For Christ to be formed in us, He needs to make His home in our hearts, that is, to settle down within us.

For Christ to be formed in us is for us to allow the all-inclusive Spirit to occupy every part of our inner being.

May we open to the Lord day by day, in all the daily situations and things, and just allow Him to make His home in our heart and saturate our inner parts with Himself.

He wants to renew our mind so that we may have the mind of Christ. He wants to subdue our will so that our will may be in harmony with His will.

And He wants to saturate and balance our emotions so that we love what He loves and hate what He hates. May we allow Him!

To have Christ Formed in us is to have Our Soul Renewed so that the Lord Replaces the Self and the World in our Soul with Himself

For us to have Christ formed in us, for us to be transformed into the image of Christ and express Him with His image, we need to have all the three parts of our soul – our mind, emotion, and will – renewed (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 4:23).

In order for our mind, emotion, and will to be renewed, Christ must saturate our mind, emotion, and will, and He must replace the self and the world in our soul with Himself. We are occupied in our soul with many things other than Christ. In particular, the self and the world occupy us.

There are so many things in the world that occupy our soul, for the many aspects of the world are so attractive and occupying.

Whether we realize it or not, we are usurped by the world not only in our flesh but even in our soul. Our mind, emotion, and will are occupied with many things in this world, and we are simply loaded and busy with the things of the world that the soul likes.

However, when we exercise our spirit to contact the Lord, He shines on us and exposes the many aspects of the world that occupy us.

May we allow the Lord to renew our mind so that our whole soul may be renewed. May we cooperate with the Lord so that He can saturate our mind, emotion, and will.

Even though our soul is so occupied with the world and with the self, we do not want to remain in this situation.

We want to cooperate with the Lord. We want Him to saturate us in our soul. We want to allow the Lord to invade our soul, expanding beyond our spirit into our mind, emotion, and will. This is the nature and the heart of the Christian life.

It is not a matter of outward activities but something organic, where we give the Lord the ground to occupy and saturate our thoughts, our feelings, and our decisions.

The only way we can be saved from the influence of the world and the self in our soul is by having our soul renewed so that the Lord replaces the world and the self in the soul with Himself.

The people in the world want to be successful and achieve many things, accumulate a lot of knowledge, dig deeper into many subjects, fight for social causes, demonstrate for the right thing, and accumulate riches and possessions.

However, we are not of this world. We simply let the world go by. We are not here to be successful in the world; we are here as believers in Christ to know the Lord, enjoy the Lord, and have Christ formed in us.

So we let the world go by, we open to the Lord, we love Him, and we allow Him to replace the self and the world in the soul with Himself. If we are renewed in this way, every part of our inner being will bear the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:29).

At the moment, we do not yet bear the image of Christ in many aspects of our life and in many parts of our soul. We may think noble thoughts at some time, but frequently during the day we realize that our thoughts are worldly, expressing the self and the world. Oh Lord Jesus!

We may love things, laugh about things, and weep by the self and just like the rest of the world, because Christ has not yet been formed in our emotion.

And regarding our choices, many times we choose things and make decisions just like the rest of the ones around us, not checking with the Lord. Even in our speaking, many times we express the self and the world, for we are so occupied with the self and the world in our soul.

May we come to the Lord again and again in His word so that He may sanctify us, saturate us, and replace the self and the world in our soul with Himself, thus renewing our soul.

What we are full of, that is what we express. If we are full of the self and the world, we will express the self and we will live out the world. But if we are filled with the Lord, if we enjoy the Lord and allow Him to occupy our inward being, we will express Christ.

As we allow the Lord to renew our mind, we will also be renewed in our emotion and will. He must occupy our thinking, our consideration, our love, our preferences, our hatred, our happiness, our sorrow, our decisions, and our intentions.

As we allow Him to saturate us, as we set our mind on the spirit (Rom. 8:6) and set our mind on the things which are above (Col. 3:1), Christ will increasingly saturate our soul, and eventually He will even invade our body, dispensing Himself into our entire being.

Lord Jesus, renew us in our soul so that we may be transformed into Your image and express You. We open to You. Oh Lord, You see how much our soul is occupied with the world and the self. You see the way we think, the way we feel, and the things we choose with our will. We open our inner being to You and we allow You to invade and occupy our mind, emotion, and will. Oh Lord, renew our mind today. We choose to set our mind on our spirit. We choose to set our mind on the things of God, on the things which are above, not on the things which are on the earth! Amen, Lord, be formed in us! We allow You to come into our soul to replace the self and the world in the soul with Yourself! Amen, Lord, occupy and saturate our thinking, consideration, love, hatred, happiness, sorrow, and intention. Come in, Lord! We fully open to You from within! Dispense Yourself into our entire being. Renew our soul so that Christ may be formed in us!

Christ needs to be Formed in us so that we may be Sons of Full Age and Heirs to Inherit God’s Promised Blessing

The consummation of the process of having Christ formed in us is that we are sons of full age and heirs to inherit God’s promised blessing so that we may mature in the divine sonship (Gal. 3:14, 26, 29; 4:5-6). Hallelujah!

For Christ to be formed in us is for Him to grow in us unto maturity until His image is formed in us and we express Him not only inwardly but even more, outwardly.

Gal. 3:26 says that we are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ. This expression, sons of God, refers to sons of full age. We need to grow in life unto maturity so that we may be sons of full age and heirs to inherit God’s promised blessing.

Christ was revealed in us and therefore we were born of God (Gal. 1:15-16; John 1:12-13), and now Christ lives in us (Gal. 2:20). He needs to be formed in us (Gal. 4:19) so that we may arrive unto maturity and express the Lord in full. This is what we see in the book of Galatians.

In Galatians, Paul shows us that God’s intention is for Christ to be wrought into us, God’s chosen people, so that we may become sons of God, even sons of full age to inherit the promised blessing.

For this, we need to be saturated and permeated with Christ. He must occupy and fill our inner being.

However, like the Galatian believers, we are also distracted by many things and even occupied with many things other than Christ. The Galatians were distracted by the Judaizers who came and preached the law, asking the Galatians to keep the ordinances of the law.

This occupied the Galatians, so Paul was labouring and travailing again in birth so that Christ may be formed in the believers.

Under the Old Testament, God’s chosen people were considered infants; now under the New Testament, they are considered sons of full age, who will inherit the promised blessing – the all-inclusive Spirit of Christ! Hallelujah!

For us to enter into this inheritance of the promised blessing, Christ must grow in us. He must mature in us.

Christ must mature in us in order for us to be heirs for the full enjoyment of the Triune God as our inheritance. The Holy Spirit is the pledge of our inheritance (Eph. 1:13-14; 1 Pet. 1:4).

May we come back to Christ to enjoy Him, eat Him, drink Him, and partake of Him so that we grow in life unto maturity and become sons of full age to inherit the promised blessing. May we pray that the Lord may grow in us and mature in us.

May we pray for one another that we may grow in life unto maturity so that we may be sons of full age, heirs to inherit the promised blessing. The blessing the Lord wants to bring us into is the full enjoyment of Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit, the reality of the good land.

For this to be our enjoyment, we need to be saturated, possessed, and fully taken over by the Spirit. Amen!

We need to pray that the Lord will bring us into the experience and enjoyment of Christ. He has been born in us, He is now living in us, and He will be formed in us at our maturity so that we may be sons of full age and heirs of God’s promised blessing (Gal. 3:29; 4:6, 19).

We need to pray that we may mature in the divine sonship. The more revelation we receive of the Son of God, the more He will live in us.

The more He lives in us, the more He will become to us the unique and central blessing of the gospel which God promised to Abraham.

This means that He will be to us the all-inclusive land realized as the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit!

This shouldn’t just be a concept to us; we need to drop our concepts, turn our heart to the Lord, and pay attention to our spirit as we spend time in the Lord’s word so that Christ may be revealed in us. Then, He will live in us and He will be formed in us.

Day by day, He will become more of an enjoyment to us, and as a result, this living Person will make us a new creation in a practical way. May we daily practice receiving revelation by dropping our concepts and turning our hearts to the Lord. May we tell the Lord,

Lord Jesus, we want to drop our concepts. We turn our heart to You. Grow in us today. Bring us on to maturity. Spread from our spirit into our mind, emotion, and will. May Christ be formed in us so that we may be sons of full age and heirs to inherit God’s promised blessing! Amen, Lord, may we grow in life and mature in the divine sonship! Praise the Lord, Christ has been born in us, for He was revealed in us. Amen, Lord, live in us today. Be formed in us a little more today! Bring us into the full enjoyment of the Triune God as our inheritance! Oh Lord Jesus, we turn our heart to You and we exercise our spirit as we come to Your word to receive a fresh revelation of the Son of God! Be revealed in us! Live in us! Be formed in us! Bring us on to maturity so that You may be formed in us and we may be sons of full age enjoying the promised blessing of God, the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit, in a full way!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ray Mulligan in the message for this week, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 330 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ (2) (2024 December Training), week 19 (msg. 7), The One Who Is Formed in the Believers.
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  – Christ to me is so subjective, / Life imparting all the way; / As the Spirit He revives me / And refreshes day by day. / Christ to me is so subjective, / All my being He transforms; / By the mind and will renewing / To His image He conforms. (Hymns #537 stanzas 2-3)