The result of being strengthened is that Christ makes His home in us. The Greek word in 3:17a is the verbal form of the noun home. The inner man is our human spirit with Christ in it, while the heart includes the mind, emotion, will, and conscience. When our spirit, our inner center, is strengthened, Christ can spread out and take over our mind, emotion, will, and conscience. In this way Christ makes His home in our heart. We may illustrate this with a glove. I may put my hand into a glove, but it is not settled in the glove at first. There is still the need for the hand to “make home” in the glove. Gradually the thumb gets into the glove’s thumb, and then the second and third fingers settle into place, and after some time the entire hand settles into the glove.
Yes, Christ is in us, but He may be in us in an unsettled way. This requires further consecration and more yielding to Him. Our spirit, our inner man, must be strengthened. When we are strong in our spirit, the indwelling Christ has the ground, the opportunity, to spread Himself into and take over our mind, emotion, and will to occupy every part of our soul, that is, to occupy our heart. Then Christ will settle in all our inward parts. He will have not only regenerated our spirit, but He will have indwelt, made home, in our heart. This is an inward matter, not an outward one. Our soul must be taken over; our mind, emotion, and will must be saturated with Christ.
At the beginning of our experience of Christ, we were regenerated. Now we have a regenerated spirit, an inner man, but it is young, weak, and small. Christ is in our spirit, but He is not dwelling there; rather, He is imprisoned there. Our spirit becomes a prison to Christ rather than a home. Once Christ comes in, He may have no freedom to move around. Now we must be strengthened into the inner man. This means that our soulish life must be lowered down, our soul must be weakened, but our spirit must be uplifted. Our spirit, not our soul, must be first. With too many of us, however, the soul is first; it is too strong. It needs to be cast down. When we are strengthened into the inner man and give Christ more ground, then He can saturate our hearts and make His home there.
Ephesians 4:23 says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” The spirit of your mind is another particular term. It indicates that the spirit is in our mind. Again it is hard to tell whether this is the human spirit or the Holy Spirit. There is the article the, but spirit is rendered in lower case. I believe that this is the mingled spirit. To be renewed in the spirit of our mind means that our mind is taken over by the spirit. It is not that our mind controls our spirit but that our spirit controls our mind. With too many of us, the mind is over the spirit, but if we surrender, yield, and consecrate ourselves, the mingled spirit will control our mind, so it becomes the spirit of our mind. It is by such a spirit that our mind is renewed.
We have too much oldness in our mind, in our thinking. Our mind is too old. We need to be renewed in our mind. This is a great matter. The reason we do not grow is that we are simply too old. The husbandman of an orchard can tell us that the way to help trees grow is by cutting off the old branches to make the tree new. If the oldness is cut off, something new will come out. We have been using our mind for our whole life. It is too old, and it needs to be renewed, not by human hand or thought but by the renewing spirit.
After we are renewed, we will grow with Christ and into Christ. Doctrinally speaking, we are in Christ, but experientially speaking, in so many things we are still not in Christ. Therefore, we need to grow up into Christ in those things. Verse 15 of chapter four says, “We may grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head, Christ.” We need to grow into Christ not only in one thing but in all things.
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