10 But for you who welcome Him,
in whom [Christ] dwells —
even though you still experience all the limitations of sin —
you yourself experience life on God’s terms.
11 It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God Who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, He’ll do the same thing in you that He did in Jesus, bringing you alive to Himself?
èWhen God lives and breathes in you (and He does, as surely as He did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life.
èWith his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s! Romans 8:10-11 (The Message.)
When I was four, my family lived on 22nd Street in Beaumont, TX. Our 1940s house held high ceilings. A tall, glassed in book case filled one wall of my brother’s and my room. I know it was tall, as my brother stuffed me high on a shelf for being four! Those high shelves were the next to the last place I dreaded! The last place I wanted to be “in” the house was the porch. It had two large white eyes in the dark cement. My older brother told me the two circles were angel eyes watching if I ever lied to him. I never told a lie on that porch. In fact, I avoided that porch. I loved the house, but avoided porch and our shelves because unseen things dwelt there, unbidden.
We hold two sorts of places in memory. Some we avoided, dreaded. The other places we loved. Maybe your loved place was Granny’s attic, or closet where you hid. Was it a fort you built in the living room or out in the bushes? Was it under your bed consuming forbidden foods? Remember those places to grasp two words: dwell and indwell in verse 11. Consider a favorite place where I dwell I love. I feel safe. I am comfortable there. Places I must indwell, must change before I can stay, or I must grow up to live there. The eyes must come out of that concrete before I sit there to enjoy a snack! Or, I can grow up, and be unafraid to sit on that porch at age 24. I drove by and saw the house was for sale. I stopped. I had to know if the eyes still were in the concrete. (They were.) I sat there to watch cars go by. Smiling.
The places I love and avoid can be close together. I avoided some places in my house on pain of death: like my brother’s desk, and older sister’s dresser. I never went in my parent’s bedroom if the door was closed — ever. I might die in the hallway, but that was preferable.
So I had places where I dwelt. I had life and flourished in them. I had places where I felt as a visitor or trespasser. Paul says that is how the Holy Spirit feels about parts of our lives.
Romans 8:10-11 “And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.
11But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
èHe who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life
to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.
Use some imagination now. Visit your imaginarium, or doff your imagining hat. Suppose you dwell in a lovely country with mountains, deserts, rain forests, volcanoes, and beautiful coasts. Let’s call your country Mexico. You dwell in Mexico. You love your village and extended family, but you your crops have failed for two years. There are no jobs. You dream of a place called America where families have as many jobs as they want. Their children, can you believe it? Drive cars! They spend more time worrying about taxes than worrying if there will be enough to eat this week! Some houses have three bedrooms, even the cars have bedrooms! You dream of indwelling America, to immigrate there. How hard will it be? How wonderful? Would Norte Americanos let us indwell among them?
Your dream of indwelling to America could consume you. Indwelling to America may be your favorite topic at church, at home, and at work, but the reality is you dwell in Mexico. You spend every sleeping hour in Mexico, no matter where your dreams take you. Though you aspire to Indwell America, you dwell in Mexico. This is how the Holy Spirit feels watching me sin! I get in trouble and pray, “Dear God, please come and clean up my mess!” He responds, “I can. Would you also like Me to indwell and clean and claim it?” I answer, “No, I just want you on stand by for clean-up, thanks!”
Say you live in Juarez, down from El Paso. You see the place of your dream, America, up on a hill. Maybe you clean houses in El Paso, in America. Maybe you shop in America, but dwell in Mexico. You have no rights and no power in America. That is how God’s Spirit feels in me many days.
God dwells in my soul. Why? Because if I asked Christ Jesus to save me, that part of God that is the Holy Spirit came in to fulfill the bargain. Now, in God’s Spirit (the verse says) God dwells in that part of me guaranteed to live forever — my soul. Part of me is packed for eternity. God dwells in there.
Read the verse again: if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you[1] (there are still places in me God wants to INdwell).
Look at the clue in the last phrase: He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.
The Greek word for dwell is the word for house. It’s your crib, tent, cave, palace, or shanty. In your dwelling you live, you relax, sleep, retreat in calamity, and love it if you have no other place you have to be. The place looks like you. If you are a gerbil, it looks like it.
The word, indwell in Greek uses that preposition — in.
We in habit a place.
What is interesting, is that the word indwell is ONLY used in a spiritual sense in Scripture.
“What has the temple of God to do with idols?
èFor we are the temple of the Living God; just as God said,
è‘I will indwell them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.’” [2]
DO you see all Paul says here? We must throw away “house idols” hanging around in us, since we are the temple of the Living God. And God walking among us might be uncomfortable!
“Let the word of Christ richly indwell you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God,” [3]
Obviously, God should indwell my worship. Maybe I should attempt more joyful noises, or maybe let Him indwell my face with a little joy?
God says that I listen to sermons, and sing spiritual songs, to focus on my places uninhabitable by God’s Spirit to date. I must let Him indwell those areas, so the Spirit can transform them.
“I am mindful of the sincere faith within you,
which first indwelt your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice,
and I am sure that it is in you as well,” 2 Timothy 1:5.
Timmy’s hometown of Lystra was a small, frontier garrison town: a cultural and religious crossroad. Lois taught her boy how to be different from everyone else! Do you hear a challenge? If I have Christ, then I, build differences in me. I show how God’s Spirit indwells new areas of my life for all to see.
Do my friends and coworkers think I am still growing? I must be learning. I must help others see Christ indwell me. Do people watch you give, witness, or serve?
Guard, through the Holy Spirit
Who indwells us,
the treasure
which has been entrusted to you. 2 Tim. 1:14
Hmm. God made a beach head in you when you professed Christ as Lord. He pitched a tent in your soul: prepaid for eternity in Heaven. Amen. How do you know? Look! He placed treasures in you!
How much of you do you want to go to heaven? Seriously. Where did you learn the most about going to heaven: from All Dogs Go to Heaven, or Warren Beatty (Heaven Can Wait), or Robin Williams?
That is the same question as “How much of my life, have I asked God to indwell?” Beyond a tiny, guaranteed soul-overnight-package, how much do I give Him on weekdays? Ten minutes in a morning? How much of your character, of your spirit and of your mind have you deeded to God?
See it another way. How many movies from this year are repacked for your eternal trip? How many conversations this week can you send ahead? Bear in mind, heaven is perfect. No guano allowed. Heaven is holy. No trash whether it’s in your hand or your mind — it’s inadmissible.
CS Lewis toyed with this in The Great Divorce. Every Tuesday, a bus left hell for heaven. If you wanted to you boarded the bus. You could stay, even. Lewis showed something that colors my thinking.
I may think what is headed to heaven is ethereal, insubstantial, ghostly, a shadow at best. Lewis thunders, “Just the opposite!”
Lewis (and Jesus) counter that (Heaven and earth will pass away
but what is eternal My Words
are MORE substantial will never pass away!)
than what we are.
He counters that what is eternal is MORE substantial than what you are.
Physics supports this. Take a BB and place it on the fifty yard line in a football field, that’s your proton. The electron is spinning around in the end zone. That is a HUGE invisibility in the atom!
That is right, the end zone holds your electrons for your tiny nucleus of one proton. That is the old Bohr model. The electron cloud theory says that there is a slight chance your electron from your proton is miles away for an instant. That is a lot of space in a molecule. We have mostly space in us! Scripture says we’re like a morning mist on a lake, gone by noon. We’re the ghosts! We’re the blow away souls! We’re insubstantial! This indwelling is how we become substantial.
What the Spirit invades and packages for eternity in you has more substance than the leftovers of you. Your leftovers blow away like ash in an incinerator. We’re fragile, insubstantial, and unkind to each other. We are ghostly, and cling to our insubstantial dark pleasures, proclaiming our freedom, rather than working at becoming substantial, eternal, lasting men and women.
When was the last time you denied yourself anything: a meal? When was the last time to discipline an hour rather than entertain yourself? When was the last time you served the Living God in some way commanded by scripture? What the last hour you packed for heaven that you did not spend in church?
The 25 cent word for this is “sanctification.” Sanctification is any hour, thought, or place in me that I asked God to indwell, and then acted on his changing me, empowering me to do something different?
Sanctified means I take a thought and ask God to indwell it. I take my humor or anger, and ask God to indwell it. I take my passion and ask God to indwell it. He changes lust and porn to loving people enough to give them Christ.
Sanctified means I use my entertainment to grow me in Christ, to build eternal “new” in me. Being sanctified, I invite God to indwell my business hours, so I grow in character, and others see Jesus where I work. Do you say, “God, thanks for saving my soul, but the rest of me is mine to waste!” Can you hear how silly that sounds on death’s other side? How much of you now lives eternally?
Some Christians say terrible things about each other. It starts like, “Well I love Tom, but….” Jesus isn’t fooled. Leave the “Well, I love whoever” part out, God is not fooled. If it stinks like gossip, grieves the Spirit like gossip, and makes the soul of hearer and listener ghostlike, it is gossip. Don’t like this part? Ask it another way. Do you wail about reasons the Lord can’t do anything around you, rather than live as though He indwells you to do all He promised?
Ask it another way. How much of what you do here is eternal? Do you “cover for God” that, “Many people make little invisible decisions.” Wouldn’t you rather see, “what the Holy Spirit did in him, her, and in me?” Eternal stuff is substantial. Visible to anyone looking!
God indwelt Mount Sinai, so you saw it for miles and people were drawn to it and had to be warned to be careful near it as they were drawn to it, but not clean to touch it.
God indwelt the temple and a cloud chased everyone out that first morning!
God indwelt Paul and his merry band, no matter how messed up a town they entered, people came to Christ. No matter how stupid Paul acted toward Jon Mark or Barnabas, God still changed lives, and in time changed Paul. If you say God indwells you, but you feel dead, guess what this scripture says?
And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit Who indwells you.
Parts of me are dead due to sin. See it? Where sin dwells things die. They pass away.
Parts of you live because of Christ’s Spirit in you. Where Christ lives, things live, already eternal.
The rest of you: emotions, past, life, choices — do you ask God who raised Christ from the dead to indwell your mortal, dying areas? Ask that He empower those if His Spirit now indwells those areas. My used-to-be dead parts, now in God’s power that raised Christ from the dead, now live in Him. That’s it. God indwells, enlivens, makes eternal. He raises what was dead to life, as with Jesus: the Prototype.
Will Saint Peter unwrap a bag of chips that was you and sad at the label’s warning: “Some settling of contents may have occurred in shipping.” Peter says, “Not much here, but the wrapper made it! Give him a room. He’s missing his entertainment, his laughter, and best friends. Sad!”
OR, will you be substantial? Will God’s indwelling be substantial? Will the movies, friendships — She brought 20 friends; conversations — see how our Lord entered his conversations! “She avoided conversational cesspools to love her friends!” Will the areas God indwelt you be empowered in the same way God raised Jesus from the dead? Will they be indwelt by the Spirit, and so be eternal, substantial?
Do you speak of Him, but have never asked Him to indwell you, taking up residence in your soul? You might say, “I go to America, so I am an American!” The reality is, no, you complete a citizenship process for it to be true in you. You may say, “I go to church, so I must be a Christian!” The reality is no, you must submit to His dwelling you first, and then ask Him to indwell new parts every day!
Won’t you?
[1] Romans 8:11
[2] 2 Corinthians 6:16.
[3] Col. 3:16.
Another Traveler 