We have seen the centrality and universality of Christ—Christ as the central One and the universal One. Furthermore, we have seen that He is the all-inclusive and subjective Christ to us. On the one hand, we stress the all-inclusiveness of Christ—He is the center, the circumference, and everything. On the other hand, we want to see that this very central, universal, all-inclusive Christ is so subjective to us. If He is not subjective to us, He has nothing to do with us, and we cannot experience Him as life and everything to us.
We all may realize that with a subject as big as the centrality and universality of Christ, there are many things to see. However, we are not dealing with doctrinal matters here; we are dealing with the experiential matters. Therefore, we will just concentrate on the main point concerning Christ being subjective to us.
We pointed out before that the New Testament speaks a number of times about Christ's ascension, but it also says many, many times in various ways that Christ is in us, Christ is dwelling in us, and Christ is making His home in us. On the one hand, the Scripture reveals to us that Christ has ascended to the heavens and is now at the right hand of God (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:51; Acts 1:11; 7:55-56; Rom. 8:34; Eph. 1:20). But on the other hand, it tells us more clearly that this very ascended Christ is now in us (Rom. 8:10a; 2 Cor. 13:5b). "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27c). "It pleased God...to reveal His Son in me" (Gal. 1:15a, 16a). "It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (2:20a). "Christ is formed in you" (4:19b). There are phrases, clauses, sentences, verses, paragraphs, chapters, and books in the New Testament which speak about Christ in such a subjective way.
However, there is something more crucial than this. This crucial thing is that we have to know where Christ is today. We know He is in the heavens and also in us. But in which part of our being is He? In the preceding chapter, we showed clearly that this very Christ today is the Spirit. First Corinthians 15:45b tells us that Christ as the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. We have also seen that this wonderful life-giving Spirit, who is Christ Himself, is now in our spirit. This is the human spirit created by God purposely for us to contact Him, contain Him, and even digest Him and express Him. Christ today as the divine Spirit, the life-giving Spirit, is in our human spirit. This is why 1 Corinthians 6:17 says, "He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit."
Furthermore, Romans 8:16 says, "The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God." Two spirits witness together, so these two spirits are mingled together as one spirit. This is why in many passages in the New Testament it is difficult to discern whether the spirit refers to the Holy Spirit or to our human spirit. This is especially true in Romans 8. But we know that it is a mingling of two spirits. It is wonderful that these two spirits, the divine Spirit and the human spirit, can be joined and mingled as one (1 Cor. 6:17).