Christ in You

To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. COLOSSIANS 1:27

Meyer opens the third address in The Secret of Guidance by remarking how fitting it is that the largest church in London should be dedicated to the apostle Paul. Gentiles owe Paul a great debt, for it was to him that God unveiled two mysteries that touch us especially. The first was that Gentiles need not become Jews in order to become Christians. The second, which Meyer thought the Church had hardly begun to grasp, was that the Lord Jesus is willing to dwell within a Gentile heart. That He should live in a child of Abraham was wonder enough. That He should make His home in us was, to the first believers, almost incredible.

Meyer called this the secret of Christ’s indwelling, and he thought it was the hinge of the Christian life.

The mystery

His statement of it is bare: “Christ is in the believer.” Not because we are good, he says, or because we are trying hard to be wholehearted, or because we keep Him there by the strength of our love, but because we believe, and in believing have thrown open the doors and windows of our nature. And He has come in.

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height. EPHESIANS 3:17–18

He adds a word for those who cannot remember when it happened. Christ comes quietly, Meyer says, without a footfall in the passage, His step so light that it does not break a bruised reed. “Do not be surprised, therefore, if you cannot tell the day or the hour when the Son of Man came to dwell within you. Only know that He has come.” It is a kind word for Christians who have never had a dramatic experience and have been made to feel second-rate for it.

Why we do not notice Him

If Christ is really within, why are so many believers unaware of Him? Meyer’s answer is that He dwells deep. Below the life of the body, below the busy life of thought and feeling and imagination, in the deepest place of the spirit, Christ lives by His Spirit as the glory once dwelt behind the veil in the most holy place, hidden from view. And most of us seldom go down so far. We eat and drink and work and read, make short trips into questions of right and wrong, and live almost entirely on the surface.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 1 CORINTHIANS 3:16

The remedy is not to try to feel Him. Here Meyer applies his rule of fact, faith and feeling. He confesses frankly that he does not always feel Christ there; amid temptation or storm he often cannot see His form or hear His voice. But he dares to believe He is there, not as a guest for a night but as a permanent resident, unchanged by our changes. And he tells Christ so, again and again: Thou art here; assert Thyself; come out of Thy secret chamber and possess all that is within me.

Meyer told a story from the life of Catherine of Siena to make the point. After days of dreadful temptation she asked the Lord where He had been while her heart was so tormented, and received the answer that He had been in her heart all along, and that it was His presence that made the evil thoughts unbearable to her. It is a medieval tale and should be taken as an illustration, not a revelation. But the point is sound and pastoral: the very pain we feel at our temptations may be a sign that Christ is within, not that He has gone.

The riches of the glory

Paul speaks not only of the mystery but of the riches of its glory, and Meyer delights in the phrase. If all the treasures of wisdom and grace are in Christ, and Christ is in us, then we are rich. “It is like a poor man having a millionaire friend come to live with him.”

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. GALATIANS 2:20

He names two of these riches. The first is patience. Life, he says, is not easy for anyone; no branch escapes the knife, no jewel the wheel. People vex us beyond bearing, and the pace of modern life frays our nerves. And he lists what patience would really mean — never to relax the watch on ourselves, never to speak the hasty word, to be more thoughtful of others than of ourselves, to drink the bitter cup without complaining — and admits that no mere stoicism could give it. But the patience of the Lamb who was dumb before His shearers is ours, because He is in us.

The second is grace for every demand. Here Meyer gives a piece of advice that is worth more than many books. When a trial or a task comes, do not say, as we so often do, that we shall never get through it. Say instead, “I cannot; but Christ is in me, and He can.” Every trial then becomes a way of drawing out the wealth that is hidden within.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:7

Making room

Meyer ends with three pieces of counsel, and they are more demanding than the rest of the address. First, be still each day for a little while before God, and ask the Spirit to show you the truth of Christ’s indwelling. Second, reverence your body and soul as His temple, and let Him drive out what does not belong there, as He once cleared the temple courts. Third, hate your own life — by which Meyer means the self-life, with its restless striving after independence and its own way. Learn to say no, he says, not only to your bad self but to your good self, and you will become more and more aware of a richer life than your own.

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. LUKE 14:26

The last counsel needs care, as all talk of self-denial does. Meyer does not mean that the personality God made is to be despised, or that the believer should become a colourless nobody. He means that the self must come off the throne so that Christ can sit there. What Christ builds in the room that is left is not less of us, but more.

Reading him with care

Two cautions are worth adding. Meyer’s picture of body, soul and spirit as three layers, with Christ in the deepest, is a helpful image but not a precise doctrine, and it should not be pressed into a map of the inner life. And his confidence that the believer can come to a steady consciousness of Christ within was, like much Keswick teaching, sometimes stated more sweepingly than experience bears out. The fact of Christ’s indwelling does not depend on our awareness of it. That, happily, was Meyer’s own chief point.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Take five quiet minutes each day this week to sit before God and ask Him to make the fact of Christ’s indwelling real to you.

2. When a hard task or trial comes, practise Meyer’s sentence: I cannot; but Christ is in me, and He can.

3. Consider your body and your habits as His temple. Is there anything that needs to be driven out of the courts?

4. Where do you most need patience? Ask Christ to let His patience rise in you there.

5. Name one way in which your good self — your reputation, your ambitions, even your religious zeal — is still on the throne.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You have come to live in me, and I have hardly noticed You.

I do not always feel You, but I believe You are here. Assert Yourself. Possess all that is within me.

Where I say, I cannot, teach me to say, but You can.

Take the throne of my heart, and make me, in all my ordinary days, a temple fit for You. Amen.