Christ revealed in us is the center of God’s plan. God’s plan is neither to have a religion nor to have many religious works accomplished. God’s plan is to reveal Christ into us, to make Christ our life and everything, and to regenerate and transform us to be members of Christ.
When God the Father reveals His Son in us, He sows Christ into us as the seed of life. For God to reveal Christ, His Son, in us is for God to dispense Christ into us. When the Son of God is revealed in us, something divine is added to us. Selection and calling do not cause anything to be added into us, but the revelation of the Son of God in us causes divinity to be added to our humanity. God Himself is added into our being to become our life. He who has the Son has life (1 John 5:12). Hence, to have the Son of God revealed in us means to have God added to us to become our life.
God made the apostle Paul a minister of Christ by setting him apart, calling him (Gal. 1:15), and revealing His Son in him (v. 16). At the time of Paul’s conversion, God was pleased to reveal Christ in him. Paul then realized that what matters to God is not for him to keep the law, to worship Him, or to do good works but to have Christ, the Son of God, as a living person revealed in him. The central point of the gospel is that the Son of God would come into us as our person to become our life and life supply, to be formed in us, to make Himself one with us, and even to become us.
The New Testament tells us that Paul was a pattern to all the believers (1 Tim. 1:15-16). Therefore, just as God revealed Christ into Paul, God must reveal Christ into each of the believers. We, the believers who have been genuinely regenerated and saved, can testify that since the time we heard the gospel, there has been an unveiling of Christ within us. We could not have been saved unless we had had such an unveiling of Christ within us. From the time we heard the gospel, the scenery of a person, the Son of God, began to shine within us, and day by day He is unveiled to us more and more. Today Christ is still shining in us, and we are continually seeing more of Him. This unveiling of Christ is God’s doing. Every aspect of the Christian life comes out of this unveiling. We live the Christian life according to the Christ whom we have seen. Our Christian life comes out of the Christ whom we see day by day. Christ must be continually revealed in us. Since the day we believed in the Lord Jesus, God’s unveiling of Christ should continue in us; this unveiling should never cease.
The more revelation we receive of the Son of God, the more He will live in us. The more He lives in us, the more He will become to us the unique and central blessing of the gospel which God promised to Abraham. This means that He will be to us the all-inclusive land realized as the all-inclusive, processed, life-giving Spirit. If we drop our concepts, turn our heart to the Lord, pay attention to the spirit, and spend time in the Word, Christ will be revealed in us, live in us, and be formed in us. Day by day He will become more of an enjoyment to us. As a result, this living person will make us a new creation in a practical way. The book of Galatians eventually brings us to the new creation by way of the inward revelation of the living person of the Son of God. Paul’s burden in writing the book of Galatians, and our need today, is that we 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, being formed in us, and being enjoyed by us continually as the all-inclusive Spirit.
Christ was revealed in Paul so that he might announce Him as the gospel among the Gentiles (Gal. 1:16). From the time he first met the Lord on his way to Damascus, God’s revelation of Christ began to shine within Paul. He received not only a revelation of Christ but also a burden to preach, to minister, and to present this One to others. The apostle Paul did not preach the law but announced Christ, the Son of God, as the gospel; he announced not merely the doctrine concerning Him but the living person Himself.
The proper preaching of the gospel is not the preaching of a doctrine; it is the preaching of the person of the Son of God. The Son of God is the embodiment of the Father and is realized as the Spirit. To preach the gospel is to preach this person. Whenever we preach the gospel, we must impress those who hear us with the living person of the Son of God. No matter what the subject of our gospel message may be, the focal point of our preaching must be this living person.
According to Acts 26:16 the Lord’s appearing made Saul of Tarsus a witness both of the things in which he had seen Him and of the things in which He would appear to him. The Lord said to Saul that He would reveal other things to him, not in the way of mere teaching but by means of His appearing. We must see the things concerning Christ by having Christ appear to us. All that the apostle Paul ministered to others were the things in which the Lord appeared to him. Being a witness of Christ is not a matter of teaching and knowledge; it is a matter of appearing and vision. The things in which the Lord appears to us are the things which we must minister to others. We need to pray, “Lord, appear to me that in Your appearing I may see something and then tell people of what I have seen.” When we pray in this way, the Lord Jesus will appear to us, and His appearing will give us a vision. His appearing will make us witnesses; we will tell others of what we have seen in the presence of the living Lord. It pleased God to reveal His Son in us that we might announce Him as the gospel. Our preaching must be the issue of what we have seen. We do not preach doctrine; instead, we minister and witness what we have seen in Christ’s appearing. After we have seen the vision, we need to contact others, telling them that Christ has appeared to us and that we have seen Him.