Take Christ as our Person for the New Man by Letting Him make His Home in our Heart

We need to take Christ as our person for the new man by letting Him make His home in our heart through faith. The apostle Paul was a pattern of taking Christ as his person for the one new man, for he allowed Christ to make His home in his heart and Christ was formed in him for the new man.

We praise the Lord for creating the one new man on the cross in Himself, after terminating all the negative things and the ordinances in His flesh.

There’s such an entity in this universe called, the one new man, who was created by Christ in Himself; in this new man there’s nothing and no one else but Christ, and all the believers in Christ are the constituents of the one new man.

What does it mean to have a living that is for the one new man? What does it mean in our practical experience for us to put off the old man and put on the new man for the one new man to come into existence practically?

There are many ways for us to have a living for the one new man, and since eighty to ninety percent of our daily life is making decisions, we need to take Christ as our person in our making decisions.

This doesn’t just mean that before we make a decision we need to consult with the Lord and ask Him if this is right or wrong; rather, it means that we need to take Him as our person in making decisions, and in this way He in us makes the decision.

The Lord Jesus was a pattern in this respect, for He never did His own thing, He never carried out His work, and He didn’t seek His own glory. It seemed that He was well able and even entitled to speak from Himself, do things from Himself, and seek a little glory for Himself, for He was God incarnated to be a man.

But He denied Himself, He took the Father as His life to live because of the Father, and He also took the Father as His person, doing only what the Father did, speaking only what the Father spoke, and going where the Father wanted Him to go.

As believers in Christ we have this One as the new man in our spirit; right now all genuine children of God are organically joined to the Lord in spirit, and He wants to live this kind of life in us today.

Our only decision today should be to remain in contact with the Lord, to be intimately involved with Him, to abide in Him, and to live day by day and even moment by moment in the organic union with Him.

It is in this organic union that we take Him as our person for the one new man, and He as our person can live the life of the new man in our living. This, however, is the highest requirement, for we have to deny our person and take Him as our person.

Taking Christ as our Person for the New Man by Letting Him make His Home in our Heart

It is so encouraging to read Ephesians 2:15 and realise that, praise the Lord, on the cross all the negative things and all the ordinances have been terminated, and the one new man was brought into existence!

But how can we apply this to our experience? How can we experience the matter of the one new man?

In Eph. 3:16-17 we have a very practical way to have the living of the new man: it is by letting Christ make His home in our heart. For the new man to be practical in our daily experience, we must allow Christ to make His home in our hearts through faith.

We may think we’re done with the negative things and have no ordinances, but unless we allow Christ to make His home in our heart, there’s no way to see how many ordinances we stil have.

Are we allowing the Lord to make His home in our heart? If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we do enjoy the Lord and we love to read His word, but we still do not allow Him to make His home in our heart too much.

We do not give Him much opportunity in us, and we don’t give Him ground in our being. This is mainly because we care firstly for ourselves and then for Christ, we firstly care for our own way and then the Lord’s way.

An example of this is in Acts 10 where Peter, as he was praying on the housetop, had a trance in which the Lord told him to rise, slay, and eat from these four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth and birds of heaven on the sheet let down from heaven.

In this case, Peter didn’t take Christ as his person, so he told Him, By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common and unclean (v. 14).

We shouldn’t think that we’re more spiritual than Peter, for many times we ourselves fail to take Christ as our person, and when the Lord speaks to us we often respond by saying, Not so, Lord! I don’t believe you would ask me to do such a thing!

We are like Peter in this, and many times we argue with the Lord and even reject His inner leading.

But when we refuse to go along with the Lord, we sense that we lose His presence and His anointing. If we, however, agree with the Lord, we enjoy His presence and experience the inner anointing in a fresh way; this leads us to be full of joy in the Lord, and Christ is our person living in us.

In the married life, for instance, the sisters may not like to read or consider Eph. 5, especially the part about telling the wives to be submissive to their own husbands.

They may blame their husband for being this way or that way, they may say it’s the environment, or they may even say that if the Lord would give her another particular husband, then she would submit.

Similarly the husbands, they may think it is impossible to love their wives, and they may ask the Lord to change their wife’s behavior and disposition, even to help her submit to God and to her husband…and then he would love her. Oh Lord Jesus!

The Lord does NOT want us to try to submit to our husband or to love our wife – He wants us to take Christ as our person and let Him make His home in our heart, and spontaneously and automatically He will love the wife or submit to the husband.

If we take Christ as our person and allow Him to make His home in our heart, we will surely submit to our husband or love our wife. So we should just forget about anything religious and simply take Christ as our person, and spontaneously He will live the life of the new man in us.

The church life is not a matter of obeying the Lord’s teaching in the Word but a matter of Christ living in us and making His home in our hearts, so that in all things we may grow up into Him as the Head.

Lord Jesus, we take You as our person for the church life today. We open to You, dear Lord, and we allow You to make Your home in our heart. Save us from trying and striving; save us from doing our best to work for You or do things according to Your Word. May we simply turn to You and take You as our person, allowing You to make Your home in our heart a little more today. We take You as our person, dear Lord, and we put aside all our differences, so that You in us may live the church life, a life for the one new man!

Paul is a Pattern in Taking Christ as our Person for the one New Man

The apostle Paul took Christ as his person progressively, and as he did this, he was one who was burdened for and could speak about and even bring others into the one new man.

Paul is a pattern of taking Christ as our person for the one new man. He is our pattern because he, most of all, was involved with the ordinances and the old man, but the Lord met him, and he began a trajectory in taking Christ as his person unto the one new man (1 Tim. 1:16).

It please God to reveal His Son in him (Gal. 1:15-16). At his regeneration, Paul saw Christ and took Him as his person.

In Acts 9:4 we see that the great corporate “Me” whom Paul saw was not just Christ but the one new man, Christ the Head together with the constituents of the one new man, and this one new man was transmitted into Paul when he said, Lord! and was saved.

Praise the Lord, it pleased the Father to reveal Christ in him, and Paul took this Christ as his person. Nothing is more pleasing to God than the unveiling of the living person of the Son of God in us; we need to be brought into a state where we are full of the revelation of the Son of God and thereby become a new creation with Christ living in us. Amen!

In Gal. 2:20 Paul testified that he is crucified with Christ, and it was no longer he who lived but Christ who lived in him. Paul didn’t say that the life of Christ lived in him; rather, he said that Christ the person lived in him.

This is God’s economy: the “I” would be crucified in Christ’s death and Christ lives in us in His resurrection! Having received something of Christ and having seen something of Him, we need to continue to be drawn by Him, be involved with Him, and realise that He gave Himself up for us.

This will bring us into a personal contact with the Lord, and this life we live is by faith, that is, in the organic union with the Lord. In our organic union with the Lord, in our contact with Him, we no longer live but Christ as the person lives in us.

In Gal. 4:19, through the process of Christ living in Paul, Christ was formed in him, and he held to Christ in his organic union with Him. In this way Christ was able to make His home in his heart and gain more ground in him, and Christ was formed in him.

As Christ was formed in Paul, eventually He was able to bring him to the stature of the fulness of Christ together with all the saints (Eph. 4:13). This allowed Paul to arrive at the experience of the one new man.

And this was through Christ making His home in his heart; in this organic union with Christ, Paul lived in Christ and in His inward parts, and he had the same tender feelings and sentiments as Christ.

He longed for the saints and after the saints in the inward parts of Christ, and he desired that Christ would be formed in them and they would take Christ as their person.

Amen, may we have Christ formed in us until He is fully grown in us, until we all arrive at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ!

Father God, may it please You to reveal Your Beloved Son in us so that we may be full of the revelation of the Son of God and become a new creation with Christ living in us! Amen, Lord, we take You as our person and we allow You to make Your home in our heart through faith. May You as the person live in us as we remain in the organic union with You in spirit. Amen, Lord, may the Christ who is born in us and who lives in us be also formed in us until He is fully grown in us! Lord, we take You as our person today!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Rick Scatterday for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Ephesians, msgs. 32, 78 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The One New Man Fulfilling God’s Purpose in Creating Man (2019 fall ITERO), week 4, Taking Christ as Our Person for the One New Man.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Person, Person, Jesus is our Person, / Living now in us. / He’s our tastes, our attitudes and actions; / Oh, how glorious! / Our Person, Lord, Thou art / Make home in all our heart. / As life in every way / Be our Person, Lord, each day. (Hymns #1240)
  – Oh, Lord, grant us revelation, / Grant us light and sight to see / That as life, within our spirit, / Thou art our reality; / And that from within our spirit, / Now You must possess each part / Spreading out to all our being, / Making home in all our heart. (Hymns #1136)
  – It is God’s intent and pleasure / That His Christ be formed in me; / Not the outward forms to follow, / But Christ growing inwardly. / It is God’s intent and pleasure / That His Christ make home in me; / Not just outwardly to serve Him, / But Christ dwelling inwardly. (Hymns #538)