Ephesians 3:17 indicates that the result of the Father’s strengthening us into our inner man is that Christ makes His home in our hearts through faith. Our heart is composed of all the parts of our soul—the mind, the emotion, and the will—plus our conscience, the main part of our spirit (Heb. 4:12; Acts 11:23; John 16:6, 22; Heb. 10:22). These are the inward parts of our being. Through regeneration, Christ came into our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22). After this, we should allow Him to spread Himself into every part of our heart. Since our heart is the totality of all our inward parts and the center of our inward being, when Christ makes His home in our heart, He controls our entire inward being and supplies and strengthens every inward part with Himself.
The expression make His home is a translation of the Greek word katoikeo, which means to settle down in a dwelling, or to make a dwelling place. The prefix of this word, kata, means “down.” This indicates that Christ desires to make His home downward in our heart. Christ is not only in us (Col. 1:27); He is also making His home deep down in our heart.
In Ephesians 3:17 Paul says that it is through faith that Christ makes His home in our hearts. Faith is the substantiation of things not seen (Heb. 11:1). Christ’s indwelling is mysterious and abstract. We realize it not by our physical senses but by the sense of faith.
We need Christ to make His home in our hearts so that we may be wholly occupied and possessed by Him. When we were saved, Christ came into our spirit. Now we must give Him the opportunity to spread Himself throughout all the parts of our inner being. As we are strengthened into the inner man, the door is opened for Christ to spread in us, to spread from our spirit to every part of our mind, emotion, and will. The more Christ spreads within us, the more He settles down in us and makes His home in us. This means that He occupies every part of our inner being, possessing all these parts and saturating them with Himself. As a result, we are filled with Christ.
Christ desires to make His home in our heart, that is, to occupy every part of our heart, our inner being. Yet He is now imprisoned in our spirit because our mind is set on other things and our conscience is not exercised. Because Christ is imprisoned in our spirit, we need to repent by turning our mind from other things to Him. When we repent in this way, our conscience will be exercised to bear witness concerning where we are wrong and what we specifically need to confess. By repentance we turn our mind to the Lord, and by confession we exercise our conscience. It is by repentance and confession that the two main parts of our heart, our mind and our conscience, are opened for the Lord. When we repent and confess in this way, our emotion follows with love for the Lord, and our will also chooses to seek the Lord. Consequently, our entire heart, as the gateway to our spirit, is opened for Christ to fill and strengthen our spirit. When our spirit is strengthened, Christ will increasingly make His home in all the parts of our heart. As a result, He will spread Himself from our spirit into our heart to make His home in our heart so that our whole inner being will be His dwelling place and His home.
When we exercise our spirit so that our spirit is strengthened through the Spirit, we will automatically forget about our self, reject our self, and thereby put off the old man. Spontaneously, Christ will have the opportunity and the full ground to take possession of our entire inner being. When Christ makes His home in our heart in this way, He takes over our whole inner being. Christ then becomes the Host of our heart and not merely a Guest. We need to allow Christ to make His home within us so that our heart, our inner being, will be His residence.
Christ is not simply dwelling within us; He is seeking the opportunity to make His home in our heart. This is to mingle Himself with every part of our being. Christ, the Son of God and the embodiment of the Triune God, is the life-giving Spirit indwelling our spirit to spread into all of our inward parts. The result of this is not only holiness, spirituality, and victory but the marvelous mingling of divinity with humanity to produce the church.
In order for Christ to make His home in our heart, we need to take Him not only as our life but also as our person. Because the church is not only the Body with Christ as life but also the new man with Christ as the person, Paul in Ephesians 3:17 emphasizes the importance of Christ’s making His home in our heart. Paul prayed that the believers would take Christ as their person by allowing Him to make His home in their heart. When Christ is in our spirit, He is our life, but when Christ spreads into our heart, He becomes our person. We need to take Christ not only as life in our spirit but also as the person in our heart.
If we take Christ as our person, allowing Him to spread into our heart, the person living in our heart will not be the self but Christ (Gal. 2:20). In a practical way our heart needs to become Christ’s home. He must be able to live in us and to settle down in us. He, not the self, must be the One who occupies our heart. The crucial question is who is living in our heart and who is the person taking up residence in our heart. As long as we are still the person living in our heart, our heart is the home of the self, not the home of Christ. For this reason, we need to pray for ourselves and for others to have the reality of taking Christ as our person in our daily living. Everything we do should be done not by the self but by Christ. His tastes and preferences need to become ours. Then Christ will be not only our life but also our person. The Lord will thus expand in our heart, take possession of our heart, and make His home in our heart in a full way. Eventually, He will saturate our whole being with Himself, and we will live no longer by the self but by Christ.
The genuine church life is the issue of Christ personally making His home in our heart to occupy every corner of our inner being. The content of the church is the Christ whom we take as our person, the Christ who is wrought into our being. In order for Christ’s word in Matthew 16:18 concerning the building up of the church to be fulfilled, the church must enter into a state where many saints allow Christ to make His home in their heart, possessing, occupying, and saturating their entire inner being. The more Christ occupies our inner being, the more we will be able to be built up with others in the Body (Eph. 2:21-22; 4:16). The reality of the Body life is such an inner experience of the indwelling Christ. The Body of Christ is the consummation of our enjoyment of the unsearchable riches of Christ and the consummation of the experience of the unlimited Christ making His home in our entire inward being. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate issue of Christ making His home in our heart.