God with us

Jesus is Immanuel, God come to dwell in us, they also underline that He is Christ come to dwell in us. 

The wonder of the Christmas message here celebrated is that through faith, Jesus Christ comes to indwell His people. His presence is not merely an event in history but the present experience of every Christian believer. Our understanding of the Christmas message and its life-changing implications will be incomplete unless the wonder of this dawns upon us.

While there are perhaps only a dozen passages in the New Testament that emphasize Christ’s indwelling, their teaching raises two questions: (1) In what way does Christ indwell us? (2) What difference does it make to our lives?

How does Christ indwell us?

The Son of God came to dwell in human flesh for us in order that He might come to dwell in us by His Spirit. This is the meaning of Jesus’ teaching prior to His death: “Remain in Me and I will remain in you.” This is the way to bear much fruit (John 15:4–5).

Later in prayer, Jesus spoke again of this union in these terms: “I in them and You in me.… I have made You known to them … in order that … I myself may be in them” (John 17:23, 26). Just as the Father “dwells” in the Son (and vice versa), so the Son dwells in believers (and vice versa). The indwelling of Christ in His people is so significant that its best analogy is the mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son.

But how does this indwelling take place? Jesus had already indicated to the disciples that it would be through the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He would come as “another Counselor” (John 14:16). The nuance of John’s language here is that the Spirit is “another just like Jesus,” for the promise of the coming of the Spirit to indwell the disciples is parallel to Jesus’ other promise: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18). Jesus adds that when this takes place (on the Day of Pentecost), “you will realize that … you are in Me, and I am in you” (John 14:20).

Paul expresses the same perspective when he speaks about the indwelling of Christ in Romans 8:9–11. Several statements are parallel to and mutually explain one another: “The Spirit of God lives in you” (v. 9); “Christ is in you” (v. 10); “the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead [i.e., the Father] is living in you”; “His Spirit, who lives in you” (v. 11).

For Paul, to have Christ is to have the Spirit, because the way Christ indwells us is through the Spirit.

Does the indwelling of the Spirit seem a poor substitute for Jesus Himself? Not when we remember the identity of this Spirit. He is the One who was present at the conception of Jesus (Luke 1:35) and who enabled Him to grow in wisdom and grace (Luke 2:40, 52; cf. the Messianic promise in Isaiah 11:1–3). He is the Spirit who came upon Him at His baptism and served as the strategist of His campaign against the powers of darkness (Luke 3:22; 4:1); through Him Christ offered Himself on the cross (Hebrews 9:14), and by His power Jesus was raised from the dead (Romans 1:4). To be indwelt by the Spirit is to be indwelt by Christ, incarnate, obedient, crucified, resurrected, and glorified. “This is how we know that He lives in us: We know it by the Spirit He gave us” (1 John 3:24). No wonder one hymn writer bids us: “Think what Spirit dwells within thee.”

What difference does it make that Christ indwells us?

(1) The fact that Christ has come to indwell us changes the fundamental direction of our lives, according to the New Testament. “I no longer live,” says Paul, “but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). The old life, dominated by sin, Satan, and self has gone. Christ has come to take possession of my whole being and to provide all the resources I need to live for Him. Life is no longer a matter of frustrated striving to keep an external code, but it is living in the power of the indwelling Christ. His yoke fits well; the burden of His royal law is light because He has come to shoulder it from within, in the power of the Spirit.

(2) Yet immediately when Christ indwells an individual, his or her life becomes a spiritual battle-field. Think of two statements Paul makes, employing similar language: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20); “it is no longer I myself who do it but it is sin living in me” (Romans 7:17).

Here is a mysterious paradox. Christ dwells in Paul, yet sin also continues to dwell in him. Conflict is unavoidable; opposition to Christ’s influence is inevitable—as inevitable as the hostility of King Herod to the Christ child when he feared that the newborn babe was a threat to his throne (Matthew 2:16; cf. Revelation 12:1–6). The conflict is certainly between opposite foes, but they are not equal. The One who is in us is greater than all opposition (cf. 1 John 4:4). If Christ indwells us, we need no longer be defeated by sin.

(3) A further implication affects our life in fellowship with one another. It is a simple, logical deduction from the fact that Christ has come to indwell me—but its potential repercussions are staggering. My attitude and response to every fellow Christian must be consciously dominated by the thought that he or she is indwelt by the same Christ who indwells me. They are temples of Christ by the Spirit; they are saints, holy ones set apart for the Lord. Consequently, no natural distinction between myself and a fellow Christian (race, color, education, employment, wealth) can be allowed to become a barrier between us, for “Christ is all, and is in all” (Colossians 3:11). How different our relationships, our thoughts, our speech, and our actions would be among the saints if we were more conscious of that.

(4) There is one final implication to which Paul draws our attention. If Christ indwells you by His Spirit so that you are united to Him, married to Him as it were, then your very body is His (1 Corinthians 6:12–17)—your eyes and what you see, your lips and what you say, your hands and what you touch, your feet and where you go. Do you live in the conscious awareness of that, yielding your body to Him because He has redeemed it and now wants to sanctify it?

The message of the incarnate Christ is glorious indeed, but it must never be severed from the message of the indwelling Christ. He who came for us as a baby now dwells as Lord of glory in us through His Spirit. That is His gift to us this and every Christmas.

The indwelling Christ seeks one gift from you in return: you.


Ferguson, S. (1992). Immanuel: The Indwelling Christ. (R. F. Ingram, Ed.)Tabletalk Magazine, December 1992: Immanuel: God with Us, 16–18.