This Christ who is both God and man has become not only our Redeemer but also our Savior. He has become the life-giving Spirit to come into us as the indwelling Christ. This indwelling Christ is our life and our resurrection.
Many Christians do not understand what life is, nor do they know what resurrection is, nor can they tell the difference between life and resurrection. The Bible tells us that life is God Himself. God is life. The Lord Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and may have it abundantly” (John 10:10). For people to have life is for them to have God. John 1:1 through 4 says, “In the beginning was the Word...the Word was God....All things came into being through Him....In Him was life.” Therefore, life is God Himself living in His believers.
John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that every one who believes into Him would not perish, but would have eternal life.” Many Christians often talk about having “everlasting life.” This term is very misleading. According to their understanding, to have everlasting life is to never die but to enjoy blessings forever. There is a great discrepancy between this understanding and the meaning of this term in its original language. In reality, eternal life is God Himself. That God causes every one who believes into Him to have eternal life means that God enters into His believers to be their life.
Before a person believes in the Lord, he does not have God in him as life. However, after he believes in the Lord, even without hearing any message concerning God living in him or having anyone tell him about this, he realizes from his experience that at the time he confessed, repented, called upon the Lord Jesus, and received Him with his heart as his Savior, the Lord Jesus came into him and is living in him. Each one of us who is regenerated has such an experience. To be sure, when we repented, confessed, believed in the Lord Jesus, and called upon His name, we received the life-giving Spirit, who is God Himself living in us.
Christ is this life-giving Spirit. He has entered into us to be our life. He is the Word who was in the beginning, the God who became man, and the last Adam. He passed through death and resurrection and has become the life-giving Spirit as the consummation of this process. Hence, in this life-giving Spirit there are the Word, God, man, death, and resurrection. This is truly rich and wonderful. This is the Christ who is our life and the God whom we worship.
This Christ who is life passed through death and overcame it to be manifested as resurrection. Today the life within us is Christ as the life-giving Spirit. Christ walked into the tomb, went into Hades, passed through death, overcame death, and came out of death triumphantly. Hence, He is resurrection. Christ is in us not only to be our life but also to lead us that we may pass through death, overcome death, and boast against death. What is death? What is resurrection? Let me use our experiences to explain this. In the daily family life sometimes the wife gives the husband a long face. That long face is a valley of death. Sometimes the husband throws a pair of chopsticks at the wife. That throwing of chopsticks is a wider valley of death. All these are deaths. However, the life within us, which is Christ as the Spirit, can bring us out of these deaths by our calling on the name of the Lord. Then, like Paul, we can say that although we suffer affliction and are excessively burdened, beyond our power, so that we despair even of living, the God who raises the dead is able to deliver us out of so great a death (2 Cor. 1:8-10). This is to experience Christ as resurrection.
Resurrection means that no event or circumstance can cause us, who have the life of Christ, to be pressed down. On the contrary, any circumstance or event is a good opportunity for us to express Christ. This is Christ as our resurrection manifested in our daily life.
Paul said in Philippians 1:20, “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.” Paul knew Christ and experienced Him as resurrection; therefore, he had the assurance to say that all the woes or blessings, death or life, which befell him were simply for Christ to be magnified, as always, in his body. This was the testimony of resurrection. Paul treasured Christ’s resurrection power, so he said in 3:10, “To know Him and the power of His resurrection.” While we are living among people on earth, many problems, sufferings, persecutions, and slanders often befall us. However, we can transcend all these and not be bound, imprisoned, or pressed down by them. This is resurrection.
Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace!
The Christ who’s all within me lives.
With Him I have been crucified;
This glorious fact to me He gives.
Now it’s no longer I that live,
But Christ the Lord within me lives.
Oh, what a thought! Oh, what a boast!
Christ shall in me be magnified.
In nothing shall I be ashamed,
For He in all shall be applied.
In woe or blessing, death or life,
Through me shall Christ be testified.
(Hymns, #499)
This is a hymn that we sing from the depths of our being after we have experienced Christ as life and resurrection.