If we realise that Christ is our person in our inner man, we will be those taking Christ as our person to live in our spirit in and for the church life today.
When we believed into the Lord Jesus and received Him as our Lord and Savior, He came into us not only as our life but also as our person. If we have the Son of God, we have the life, for life is in the Son, and the Son is life (1 John 5:12).
All genuine believers in Christ have Christ in them as their life and person in their inner man. We need to realise that Christ came into us as the Spirit, mingled Himself with our spirit, and now in our inner being there’s another person, the inner man, which has Christ as its person.
Our entire Christian life now is a continual turning to the inner man, setting our mind on the spirit, and living according to the spirit, so that we may take Christ not only as our life but also as our person.
We need to take Christ as our person in and for the church life as the living out of the new man. Christ already is our person in our inner man, but this inner man needs to be strengthened with power through the Spirit so that Christ may make His home on our heart through faith (Eph. 3:16-17).
Christ doesn’t want to merely remain in our spirit, which is the organ for us to contain and contact God, but He wants to spread into every part of our inner being and make His home in our heart, taking possession of every part and saturating us with Himself.
He wants to spread into our mind, emotion, and will, and He does this by our setting our mind on our spirit so that the mingled spirit would spread into all our inward parts.
God’s intention in His economy is to work Himself into His chosen people to be their life and person for the living of the new man. He came into us, in our spirit, to regenerate us and be our life and person in our inner man.
Now our inner man is our regenerated spirit with Christ as its life end person, and this inner man is growing and spreading to take over our inner being, so that God’s element would saturate us and permeate us.
If are taking Christ as our person we need to realise that our regenerated spirit is not only an organ to contact God, but it is our real person. Therefore, we need to deny the self and take Christ as our person. We need to deny the living of the soul, the soul life with its person, and take Christ as our life and person.
The truth is that long before we were born, our old man has already been crucified with Christ, and now we simply need to deny the self to cooperate with the Lord for Him to make His home in all our heart.
We need to realise that we have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer us who lives but Christ who lives in us, and the life we now live in the flesh we live in faith, the faith of the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself up for us (Gal. 2:20).
We need to Live in our Spirit as the Inner Man by Taking Christ as our Person
The matter of living Christ and having Christ living in us is not a doctrine or a terminology but it should be our experience. For Christ to live in us and for us to live Christ we need to live in our spirit as the inner man by taking Christ as our person.
Christ actually has to make His home in our heart and live there, and we need to live Him by walking according to the spirit. This is taking Christ as our person every day and living Christ in the church by walking according to the spirit.
The Lord knows to what extent this is happening, and He wants to perfect us, train us, and gain us that day by day Christ would make His home a little more in our heart, and we would have more walking according to the Spirit then before. We all are learning this.
Our human spirit is not just an organ to know God and contact God but it is our inner man, with the indwelling Christ as its person. We need to live in our spirit as the inner man by taking Christ as our person in and for the church life.
As regenerated believers, we have both the “I” (the self), our former person, and Christ, our new person (see Gal. 2:20). The “I” is in our soul, but Christ is in our spirit (Rom. 8:10; 2 Tim. 4:22). The “I” is the person of the outer man, the old man, and Christ is the person of the inner man, the new man (2 Cor. 4:16).
However, we need to realise that the “I,” the former person, has been crucified, and Christ, the new person, should be the One living in us (Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20). Christ is in us as our life and our person, and we need to live in our spirit as the inner man by taking Christ as our person.
We need to know that our old man has been crucified with Christ – this is a fact, and this is something we should subjectively know (Rom. 6:6).
If we see that our old man was crucified when Christ was crucified, and that the effectiveness of this fact is being applied by the eternal Spirit through which Christ offered Himself, then we will practice to apply the effectiveness of the death of Christ to our self and to our soul life.
No one else can do this for us, and we cannot do this for others. We need to personally live Christ by applying His death to our self and soul life, and by living according to the Spirit as we are taking Christ as our life and person.
To take Christ as our person requires that we deny the self, our fallen person (Matt. 15:24-25; Col. 1:27). We need to deny our soul life and live by our new person, the indwelling Christ.
As we allow the Lord to make His home in our heart, He will expose the self and the living of our soul; we then need to cooperate with Him by denying the self.
If we don’t know the self or deny the self, our growth in life stops, and Christ cannot advance in us. Christ cannot coexist with our self in our heart; rather, as He increases, we must decrease.
This is the basic principle of the growth in the divine life; the growth in life is positively the increase of the life of God, the increase of the measure of the stature of Christ, and the increase of the ground given to the Holy Spirit in our being.
On the negative side, growth in the divine life is the decrease of the human element, the self being dealt with, and having all our inner parts subdue by the Spirit.
Lord Jesus, we choose to live in our spirit as the inner man by taking Christ as our person in and for the church life! Strengthen us with power through Your Spirit into the inner man so that Christ may make His home deep down in our heart. Thank You Lord, our old man has been crucified with You, and now we can apply the effectiveness of the death of Christ to our self and our soul life. Lord, we want to live one spirit with You today. We take You as our person for the church life, and we want to live Christ!
To Take Christ as our Person we need to Deny Ourselves and Live by Christ as our Person
What does it mean practically to take Christ as our person? Many Christians know that Christ is our life and power, but few realize that He is also our person.
Christ is not only the reality of all that God is and has, but He’s also the person of our inner man, for we as regenerated believers already have Christ within us as our person. However, we need to turn to our spirit and take Christ as our person every day for the church life.
For example, we may go shopping for something, and as we are shopping (either online or in the shopping center), we shouldn’t just ask, “Lord, should I buy this?” but check with Him, “Lord, You are my person; would You buy this?”
We need to take Christ as our person in the practical matter of doing our shopping, in the way we dress, and in all the little details of our daily life, so that we may say one with Paul, For me to shop is Christ; for me to dress is Christ…for me to live is Christ!
In order for us to take Christ as our person, we need to deny our purpose, our aim, and our preference, and we need to take His purpose, His aim, and His preference (see 2 Cor. 5:14-15). We need to live not just for the Lord but to the Lord, to the One that died and resurrected for us.
We may have our own purpose, aim, and preference, but as we turn to the Lord and take Him as our person, checking with Him about His purpose, aim, and preference, He will point out the natural things in us, and we will deny the self and take Him as our life and person.
When we are taking Christ as our person and live not by ourselves but by Christ as our person, we become one with Him, and we no longer do anything according to our preference and taste, but we do everything according to His preference and taste.
Even in our reading the Bible and the ministry, we need to take Christ as our person; we need to know the person of Christ living in us, and He will teach us inwardly.
We need to learn Christ as the reality is in Jesus, even as we have been taught in Him.
The Lord wants us to know Him, to know His tastes and preference, and to see what He loves and what He hates; He hates hierarchy – the clergy-laity system, but He loves the ordinary members of the Body who use their little power to enjoy Christ and share something of what they experience of Him.
We need to allow Christ to live in us and make His home in our heart so that we may be filled unto all the fullness of God in order to be the practical manifestation of the church as the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:22-23; 3:19).
We need to live in our inner man by taking Christ as our person so that we may have a proper, living, and rich church life.
Then, when we come to the meetings, we will not only bring our portion of Christ for all the saints to enjoy, but we will come together as the corporate Christ (1 Cor. 12:12), rendering real worship to the Father – worshipping Him in spirit and with Christ as the divine reality (John 4:24).
Lord Jesus, we take You as our person to live no longer by ourselves but by Christ as the person, so that we may be one with You and do everything in oneness with You. Teach us inwardly how to deny our purpose, aim, and preference, and how to take Your purpose, aim, and preference for the church life. May we no longer do anything according to our preference and taste but do everything according to Your preference and taste. Amen, Lord Jesus, we want to live in our spirit as the inner man by taking Christ as our person in and for the church life!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message given by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1970, vol. 2, pp. 501-516, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Taking Christ as our Person and Living Him in and for the Church Life (2018 spring ITERO), week 1, Experiencing the Central Work of God and taking Christ as our Person in and for the Church Life.
- Hymns on this topic:
# There’s nothing that we are / Or have or do well-pleasing; / We need Thee, glorious Christ, / Inwrought into our being. / O Lord, our heart’s still vacant now! / Come in and settle down. / Come saturate and permeate / And fill us with Yourself. (Song on, Recall how David swore)
# Only Christ, our Person, must remain; / From our aims, our goals we must refrain, / Till the church be only Christ Himself / Built up as the one new man, / Thus fulfilling God’s great plan of— / Mingling fully with the human race / To obtain a proper dwelling place, / ’Stablishing His kingdom’s rule and grace; / Over all the earth. (Hymns #1180)
# But it’s Christ, a living Person, / Mingled thus with us within, / Spreading into all our being, / So that we might live by Him. / Oh, Lord, let our every action, / Everything we do and say, / Come from Thee alone, experienced / In a real and inner way. (Hymns #1136)
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