Christ lives in the believers. Christ is not only our life; He as a person lives in us. Christ became the life-giving Spirit in order that He might live in us. Apart from becoming the life-giving Spirit, it would not be possible for Christ to live in us.
For Christ to live in us does not mean that He lives instead of us. In Galatians 2:20 Paul says, “Christ lives in me.” Christ lives in us by causing us to live with Him (John 14:19). This means that Christ does not live alone; He lives in us and with us. He lives in us by enabling us to live with Him.
Paul’s word about Christ living in us is definite and emphatic. Paul clearly says that Christ, as a person, lives in us. This Christ who lives in us is the pneumatic Christ, the Christ who is the Spirit. Now that He dwells in us as the Spirit, we need to learn to let Him live in us and to live together with Him.
Christ as our portion lives in us for us to walk in Him (Col. 2:6b). Our walking in Christ comes out of His living in us. Christ lives in us for the purpose that we may walk in Him.
Colossians 2:6 says, “As therefore you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in Him.” The word “walk” here means to live, to act, to behave, and to have our being. We should live, walk, and act in Christ so that we may enjoy His riches, just as the children of Israel lived in the good land and enjoyed all its rich produce. The children of Israel had the good land as their portion, and they lived, walked, in that land. In our experience today, Christ, our unique portion, should be the good land in which we live and walk.
As Paul was writing Colossians 2:6, he must have been considering the picture of the good land in the Old Testament as a type of the all-inclusive Christ. There is a suggestion of this in 1:12, where Paul says that Christ is the portion of the saints. Then in 2:6 Paul tells us to walk in Christ. This implies that Christ is the land, the territory, the realm, in which we may walk. Furthermore, Paul’s reference to being rooted in Christ in 2:7 may also indicate that he was thinking of the good land. In order for us to be rooted in Christ, He must be our land, our soil. All these are indications that Christ is the good land and that we need to walk and be rooted in Him.
In Colossians 2:6 Paul tells us to walk in Christ, but in Galatians 5:16 he charges us to walk by the Spirit. Furthermore, in Romans 8:4 he speaks of walking according to spirit. These verses indicate that the good land for us today is the all-inclusive Spirit who indwells our spirit. This all-inclusive Spirit is the all-inclusive Christ as the processed Triune God. After being processed, the Triune God is the all-inclusive Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit for us to experience and enjoy. Today this all-inclusive Spirit who is Christ Himself indwells our spirit to be our good land and lives in us that we may walk in Him as our all-inclusive land.
To walk in Christ is to enjoy His living in us, and His living in us is a matter of the divine dispensing. As Christ lives in us, He dispenses the riches of the processed Triune God into our being.
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