Living with Christ is not I living alone but with Christ living in me (Gal. 2:20). If you live every day and every moment by yourself, you are defeated. You must realize that you are no longer living alone, but Christ is living with you and in you. When you have this sensation, it will revolutionize your entire life.
To live with Christ, we still live, yet not by ourselves alone but by Christ living with us as Immanuel. The name Immanuel is first mentioned in Isaiah (7:14; 8:8). Many Christians address the Lord as Jesus and Christ, but few address the Lord as Immanuel. We must learn to call our Lord "Immanuel."
Immanuel is our life and person, and we are His organ. As His organ, we live together with Him as one person. The Triune God lives together with the tripartite man. Our victory depends upon Immanuel, the presence of Jesus. If we lose His presence, we are defeated, but if we have His presence, we have the victory.
In the past we did not see the distinction between living with Christ and walking by Christ. The Christ with whom we are living is Immanuel. Immanuel means God with us, God with man. This is revealed in Matthew, the first book of the New Testament (1:23; 18:20; 28:20). Chapter one introduces the matter of Christ's presence with us as Immanuel (v. 23); chapter eighteen further indicates that we should be gathered into His presence (v. 20); and chapter twenty-eight stresses that Christ's presence will be with us unto the consummation of the age (v. 20).
Christ was constituted to be Immanuel by first being incarnated to be a man. Matthew 1:23, a quotation from Isaiah 7:14, says, "Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel." The Son born to the virgin was God with her. He was a child born with the human nature, and a son given with the divine nature (Isa. 9:6). His incarnation was the initial step for God to be with us. Then He lived on the earth and came out to minister at the age of thirty. After three and a half years of ministry, He passed through death and entered into resurrection. In resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). His becoming the life-giving Spirit was the second step for God to be with us as Immanuel.