In Galatians 4:19 Paul said, "My children, with whom I travail again in birth until Christ is formed in you." When the Galatian believers were regenerated through Paul's preaching of the gospel to them the first time, Christ was born into them but not formed in them. The apostle then travailed again that Christ might be formed in them. To have Christ formed in us is to have Christ fully grown in us. First, Christ was born into us at the time we repented and believed in Him, then He lives in us in our Christian life, and, finally, He will be formed in us at our maturity. Christ's being formed in us is needed that we may be sons of full age and heirs to inherit God's promised blessing, and that we may mature in the divine sonship.
That Christ is being formed in us implies that we are being constituted of Christ. This is a living, organic matter. Christ is now living in us to constitute our entire being with Himself that every part of our soul—mind, emotion, and will—may be like Him. This is what 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, that we "are being transformed into the same image." The indwelling Christ is being formed in us; He is becoming our inner constituent. If we receive Christ as our person in our thinking, preference, and will, His element will gradually become our inner constituent. Eventually, our entire being will be constituted of the element of Christ. This is not merely a concept, theory, or theology. This is a divine fact that we can experience in full. As the living One, Christ with His element is becoming our constituent organically, being constituted into our entire being, so that we may have His form and express His image.
The Christ who lives in us and who is being formed in us is also making His home in us. In Ephesians 3:17 Paul said, "That Christ may make His home in your hearts." Our heart is composed of all the parts of our soul—mind, emotion, and will—plus our conscience, the main part of our spirit. These parts 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 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 and occupies our entire inward being and supplies, strengthens, and saturates every inward part with Himself.
The Greek word for make home is composed of the word for down and the word for dwell. This indicates that Christ wants to make His home deep down in our being. 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 our inner man, the door is opened for Christ to spread in us, to spread from our spirit to our mind, emotion, will, and conscience. The more Christ spreads within us, the more He settles down in our hearts and makes His home in our hearts. As a result, we are filled with Christ unto all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19), which is the church, as the corporate expression of God for the fulfillment of His intention.
Christ is also the One magnified in us. In Philippians 1:20 Paul said, "According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I will be put to shame, but with all boldness, as always, even now Christ will be magnified in my body, whether through life or through death." This shows us that in the apostle's bodily sufferings, Christ was magnified, that is, shown or declared great (without limitation), exalted, and extolled. Paul's sufferings afforded him opportunity to express Christ in His unlimited greatness. No matter what the circumstances were, Paul would always magnify Christ.
The word magnify means to make something large to our sight. According to Ephesians 3, the dimensions of Christ—the breadth, length, height, and depth—are the dimensions of the universe. They are immeasurable. Since Christ is already universally great, why does He still need to be magnified? Although Christ is vast, extensive, and immeasurable, in the eyes of the praetorium, the imperial guard of Caesar, Christ was virtually non-existent. In their eyes there was not such a person as Jesus Christ. However, Paul, who was held captive in a Roman prison, magnified Christ among them. He made Christ great in their eyes, and he displayed especially to the jailers who guarded him the unlimited greatness of Christ. He became a living witness of Christ, testifying of Christ's love, wisdom, power, patience, etc., all of which are immeasurable. Through Paul's magnification of Christ, even some in Caesar's household turned to Christ and were saved (Phil. 4:22).
No matter what came upon him, Paul earnestly expected and hoped to magnify Christ in him. In his living, Paul lived Christ. This is to magnify Christ through life. As he was expecting to be martyred, he also lived Christ. This is to magnify Christ through death. Thus, whether through life or through death, Christ was magnified in Paul's body. Paul was not at all exhausted by his imprisonment; rather, he was full of joy and rejoicing in the Lord. No doubt he was shining forth Christ and expressing Him. Such an expression was a declaration of the unlimited greatness of Christ.
Now, as believers in Christ, we also should magnify Christ. As Christ lives in us, is being formed in us, and makes His home in us, spontaneously we will live Him. Then He will be magnified in us. In our daily life we must let others see Christ in the way of enlargement, in the way of magnification, that they may realize His unlimitedness.