Romans 8 may be considered the focus of the entire Bible and even the center of the universe. To understand this fact, we must first consider what God’s purpose is. Zechariah 12:1 says, “Thus declares Jehovah, who stretches forth the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him.” In this verse we can see that God created three crucial things—the heavens, the earth, and our spirit. Most people would agree that the heavens and the earth are great. However, we may have never thought that in the Bible a part of our being is ranked with the heavens and the earth. In order to understand why the spirit of man is ranked with the heavens and the earth, we need to turn to the New Testament, which reveals that our spirit is the location where God desires to dwell (Eph. 2:22; cf. 2 Tim. 4:22). Most Christians have the concept that the heavens are God’s home and aspire to go to heaven to be with God. However, this is not according to God’s concept as revealed in the Bible. Isaiah 66:1 says, “Thus says Jehovah, / Heaven is My throne, / And the earth the footstool for My feet. / Where then is the house that you will build for Me, / And where is the place of My rest?” In this verse God is aspiring to obtain a proper home. His home is not the heavens or the earth but man.
Several verses in the New Testament reveal that God desires to dwell within man. John 14:23 says, “Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him.” The Son and the Father do not come to us merely for a short visit and then go away. If we are genuine lovers of Jesus, the Son and the Father will come to us to make a mutual abode with us. In other words, we become God’s home, and He becomes our home. In John 15:4 the Lord said, “Abide in Me and I in you.” Here the Lord was indicating that He is our home and that we are His home.
In Ephesians 3:14-17 Paul says, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father...that He would grant you...to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man, that Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith.” The inner man is our spirit. We can see the Triune God in these verses. The Father grants us to be strengthened in our spirit by the Spirit so that Christ the Son may make His home in our heart. To make home is to be settled. When we temporarily stay in someone else’s home, we do not make our home there. When we believed in the Lord, He came into us not for a brief visit but to stay forever. When we move into a house, we make home in it by filling every room and corner with our possessions. Our heart is a composition of our mind, emotion, will, and conscience. Therefore, Christ makes His home in our heart by occupying our mind, will, emotion, and conscience. Paul prayed that the Father would grant us to be strengthened into our inner man, our spirit, that Christ would have the opportunity to make His home in our heart. We need to be strong to agree and cooperate with the Lord’s settling Himself in our heart by filling every part of our inner being with Himself. The Lord comes into our spirit when we believe in Him, but we need to give Him the permission to spread into our will, our emotion, and especially our mind. We need to give Him the freedom to take over our mind, emotion, and will. Otherwise, He will be confined by us in our spirit and will be unable to settle in our entire inner being to make His home in our heart.
The above verses in John and Ephesians convey the New Testament revelation that the Triune God desires to dwell within us to make us His home. Although the Bible is composed of sixty-six books and over a thousand chapters, it has a central thought—Christ as the embodiment of God wants us to receive Him and give Him the permission to make His home in our hearts, to dwell in us permanently and eternally. The Triune God created the heavens and the earth, was incarnated, lived as a man on the earth for thirty-three and a half years, and died on the cross to accomplish redemption, take away our sins, and terminate our old man and the entire old creation. Then He entered into resurrection and ascension. The central focus in the universe is that this processed Triune God has come into us and now dwells in us. This is the greatest miracle. Nothing else in the universe could be more important than this.
We need to see that the indwelling of the processed Triune God is not a mere theory or doctrine but a real and present fact. Nothing should be more important to us. If we see that the Triune God lives in us, we will be ecstatic. If we were given a precious diamond, when others saw us, they would realize that we had received something extraordinary. We should all be full of joy since the Triune God is indwelling us and is one with us. He is our life and our person, and He is making us His home. It is crucial that we recognize this fact. We need to pray, “O Lord Jesus, show us this glorious fact.” We need His mercy to see a vision that the processed Triune God, who has accomplished everything and is now the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit, dwells in us. Even if we see only a little, it is better than nothing. Although we may not be ecstatic, as long as we are happy, it is good enough. A Christian must be a happy person. The Christian life is a happy life.