Message Six

Christ Making His Home in Our Hearts

Scripture Reading: Eph. 3:14-21

1. God’s eternal purpose is to work Himself into us as our life and our everything so that we may take Him as our person, live Him, and express Him; this is the desire of God’s heart and the focal point of the Bible—Eph. 1:9; 3:11; Phil. 1:20-21a:
   1. God’s economy according to His heart’s desire is to build Himself into man and to build man into Himself—2 Sam. 7:12-14a; Eph. 3:17a.
   2. God’s unique work, His central work, is to work Himself in Christ into His chosen people, making Himself one with them—Gal. 4:19.
   3. We need God to build Himself in Christ into our humanity, working Himself into us as our life, our nature, and our person—Eph. 3:17a.
   4. God’s intention is to work Christ into us as the Spirit, that Christ may be expressed through His Body and head up the whole universe under His headship— vv. 16-19; 1:22-23, 10.
2. In 1:15-23 Paul’s prayer is for the saints to receive revelation concerning the church; in 3:14-21 his prayer is for the saints to experience Christ for the church:
   1. The spirit in 1:17 is for revelation, whereas the inner man in 3:16 is for experience.
   2. In 3:16 our spirit is a person, the inner man, for us to experience Christ for the church; by this person we can experience Christ that the church may be built up.
   3. As a person, our spirit is for us to live by and experience what we have seen.
3. In order to experience Christ in a subjective way, we need to be strengthened with power into the inner man—v. 16:
   1. The inner man is our regenerated spirit with God’s life as its life.
   2. We need to be strengthened into the inner man with the power that raised Christ from the dead, that seated Him in the heavenlies, that subjected all things under His feet, and that gave Him to be Head over all things to the church—1:19-22.
   3. The more we are strengthened into the inner man, the more the parts of our inner being are brought back into our inner man.
4. Paul prayed that we would be strengthened into the inner man with the result that Christ could make His home in our hearts and thereby occupy, possess, permeate, and saturate our whole inner being with Himself—3:17a:
   1. Since our heart is the totality of our inward parts, the center of our inward being, and our representative with regard to our inclination, affection, delight, and desire, when Christ makes His home in our hearts, He controls our entire inward being and supplies and strengthens every inward part with Himself.
   2. The more Christ spreads within us, the more He settles down in us and makes His home in us, occupying every part of our inner being, possessing all these parts, and saturating them with Himself.
   3. In order for the revelation in Ephesians 2 concerning the new man to be practical in our daily life, we need to let Christ make His home in our hearts.
   4. For Christ to make His home in our hearts means that He is transmitted into us in a full way—1:22.
5. When Christ spreads into our hearts, He becomes our person—3:17a:
   1. We need to take Christ not only as life in our spirit but also as the person in our hearts.
   2. The only way for Christ to be our person is for Him to make His home in our hearts.
   3. If we take Christ as our person, allowing Him to spread into our hearts, the person living in our hearts will not be the self but Christ—Gal. 2:20.
6. The Christ who is making His home in our hearts is an unlimited, immeasurable Christ—Eph. 3:18:
   1. As Christ makes His home in our hearts, we apprehend with all the saints the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth; these are the dimensions of the universe, the dimensions of the immeasurable Christ.
   2. Although Christ is immeasurable, He is nevertheless making His home in our hearts.
   3. Christ is the universal cube, and our experience of Him in the Body must be “cubical,” three-dimensional.
7. When Christ makes His home in our hearts, we will be filled unto all the fullness of God—v. 19:
   1. The fullness of God is the Body of Christ as the expression of the Triune God to the uttermost, the ultimate consummation of the corporate expression of the Triune God.
   2. The Body of Christ is the unlimited expression of the unlimited Christ.
   3. If we let Christ make His home in our hearts, we will be filled with the Triune God to such an extent that we will become His full expression.
8. The genuine church life is the issue of the unlimited and immeasurable Christ personally making His home in our hearts—v. 17a; 4:16:
   1. The content of the church is the Christ whom we take as our person, the Christ who is wrought into our being.
   2. If we would have the reality of the Body of Christ, we must allow Christ to make His home in our hearts.
   3. 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 hearts, possessing, occupying, and saturating their entire inner being.
   4. 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.