Confident Living

If I asked you right now, "Do you feel Christ inside you?" What would your answer be? If we are honest, many would say "Not really. I feel my breath, I feel my heart, but not Jesus himself."

But Jesus does live within His children. Proliferating throughout Scriptures is a preposition that leaves no doubt about this - the preposition in. Jesus lives in His children.

At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. John 14:20

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love Eph 3:17

Christ in you, the hope of glory... Col 1:27

And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us. I John 3:24

So, if Christ actually lives in His children but we can’t feel His presence all the time, does this mean that we are not saved? Absolutely not. But, it does may mean that we are not enjoying the full benefits of our eternal salvation. That’s where discipleship comes into the picture!

Christ can live so dynamically within His children they can enjoy an experiential realization of His presence. They can know and they can feel that He is actually at work in them. This is more, of course, than knowing that we are saved, although our assurance of eternal life is fundamental to all vital Christian experience. What we are talking about is the result of fellowship with Christ, and it is nothing less than the manifestation in our lives of His indwelling presence and power.

It is thrilling, of course, to have a Lord to call on who is "Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come" (Eph 1:21). But it is also thrilling to have this same Lord manifesting Himself in our lives on a daily basis -- and to be able to recognize that fact. This was the confident persuasion of the apostle Paul as he served the risen Christ. And this confidence comes through powerfully as he closes his second letter to the Corinthian church. In the final chapter of that epistle, he writes this:

Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you-ward is not weak, but is mighty in you. For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward you. (2 Cor 13:3-4).

What boldness there is in these words! Yet, at the same time, what humility and dependence. Yet Paul is not so arrogant as to suppose that such spiritual confidence was his alone. The Corinthians themselves could likewise enjoy a confidence like this:

Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? (2 Cor. 13:5).

Paul differentiated between two groups - the children of God and the reprobate a/k/a the unsaved. To the children of God, Paul says "examine yourselves to see that you are operating in the faith." He says this because there are children of God who, at times, operate outside the faith - who live, talk and walk like the unsaved. By operating outside the faith, they have not lost their salvation, rather the have lost the experiential reality of that salvation.

Regrettably, however, these forceful words have been sadly misconstrued. They have been read by some interpreters as though they were a challenge to the Corinthians to find out whether they were really saved or not!

This is unthinkable. After twelve chapters in which Paul takes their Christianity for granted, can he only now be asking them to make sure they are born again? The question answers itself.

Examine 2 Corinthians and see clearly how often the apostle affirms in one way or another his conviction that his readers are genuinely saved. Think, for example, of these words:

Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: (2Co 3:3; italics added).

No indeed! Paul is not saying, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are saved." He is saying, however, "Take stock and see if you are in the faith." But that's a different matter.

Surprisingly, the closest analogy to these words of the apostle is to be found in a statement toward the end of his first letter to this same church. There Paul writes like this: "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong." (1Co 16:13; italics added).

Elsewhere Paul speaks of those who are "weak in the faith" (Ro 14:1) and of others who need to be "sound in the faith" (Tit 1:13). Even Peter's words suggest a parallel:

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the faith, .... (1 Pe 5:8-9; italics added).

To be "in the faith," therefore, is to be operating and acting within the parameters of our Christian convictions and beliefs, precisely as Paul claims to be doing in the immediately preceding verses. It meant living in a dynamic, faith-oriented connection with Jesus Christ, who Himself was living by the power of God (v. 4).

Paul had confidence that he could demonstrate to the Corinthians that he did live like that--that Christ was indeed speaking in him. But he also thinks they can demonstrate the same thing about their own experience of Christ.

"Take a look at yourselves," he challenges them, "test yourselves. Can you not recognize yourselves as people in whom Jesus Christ is very much alive? You most certainly can--unless, you are not part of the family of God.

This was a passion for the Apostle Paul. He wrote:

But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. (1Co 9:27; italics added).

So long as the Corinthians were not living "outside the boundaries of their faith," like reprobates, so long as they were living up to their high calling, they could know in their own experience--as Paul did in his--the reality of the indwelling Christ.

So can you!