The Sanctuary Lamp

I remember once being stopped by a man acting very nervous and actually shaking. He proceeded to hand me a gospel tract and told me how he was backslidden and had begun to work his way back to the Lord. I was one of his first hits. The idea this man had, of returning to the Lord, was to show forth good works and thereby become acceptable to God. I think he believed that when he went back to the church building on Sunday and prayed, he would have enough good works behind him that the Lord would see he was sincere and thereby accept him back. He was working his way back to an EXTERNAL Christ.

To work our way back to an external Christ is a scenario that is carried out over and over again among born-again believers. The reason for this behavior is that very few ministries teach where Jesus is located. They don’t teach where Christ is because they honestly don’t understand. For the most part, Christians have Jesus sitting at the right hand of God and in their minds they must somehow get Him down from heaven to earth and into their church building or somehow next to them for help in their daily lives. Christians have Jesus everywhere except where He is - in you!

THERE IS A CRITICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN EXTERNAL AND AN INTERNAL JESUS CHRIST.

Satan, the Accuser of the brethren, does not want you to know that Jesus is in you. He wants you to feel the pressure that you can lose Christ and you may not get Him back. He would have us walking a tightrope and we keep falling off. The idea of anyone being able to have Christ internally rather than externally is not a knowledge he wants you to have.

Here is something all new converts should be told the moment they are born again:
You must understand that you have the person of Christ (God’s incorruptible Seed of the God nature) in you. Furthermore, He is not in you in bits, pieces, and parts but in whole. He is in you fully matured and all knowing. Wherever you go, He will go with you and you cannot go anywhere without Him. Further yet, He will never ever leave you or forsake you for the rest of eternity - even when you slip up and sin.

This information should go a long way in helping new converts to understand that it is not an external Jesus that needs to constantly be called down to help us grow, but rather it is the new converts that need to grow up in Him - to grow in their minds in awareness of His indwelling presence within their human spirits, and the internal power available by trusting in Him.

Whenever you are temporarily drawn away or enticed by your own way of attempted independence, Christ is still there. However, it is true that the grace of God in your life can be hindered (Galatians 5:4) but Christ doesn’t go away. Nowhere does Scripture for the born-again say He will leave us. He says He will never leave us alone, no matter what happens (Heb. 13:5). New converts need to know this at the beginning of their walk in Christ.

Before the completion of the Cross, mankind could not get rid of the Satan nature. Even if the people went to the temple or synagogues for worship and prayer or made hundreds of animal sacrifices, the sin nature of Satan was locked into the human family. All the sacrifices could do was cover the guilt of the sin but could not remove the punishment called for - death. There appeared to be no real deliverance from this sin infection that affected all of mankind.

However, when Jesus died on the Cross, He broke this curse and made it possible for us to be free from the Satan nature by simply believing and accepting the provision of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. By making Him Lord and being born again, Satan’s nature is put out and the Seed of God is put in the believer in the Person of Christ.

Peter calls this being born again not of corruptible seed but of the incorruptible Seed (1 Peter 1:23). This Seed is placed in the believer permanently and it cannot be aborted. But when I say that the Seed cannot be aborted, I must use caution because whatever you sow in this world is the crop you will reap. There are consequences when we willfully sin. The Father will correct you as a son because you are now in His Family, and He is quite literally your Father. The Seed, the indwelling Christ, placed in you at the instant of your new birth makes it so. The outer Christ is gone. Jesus of Nazareth went home. He no longer dwells in buildings or walks the shore of Galilee - He is in you!

I grew up during my early years in a church that made a big issue of Christ being located in the sanctuary of the church building. Whenever Christ in the form of the Holy Eucharist was present in the tabernacle box or exposed on the altar, a sanctuary lamp was lit to announce the fact. Anyone who came into the church building could see the red flicker of the sanctuary lamp and know that Christ was near.
If it were practical, the truth is that every born again Christian could go around with a little sanctuary lamp lit up and hanging over their heads showing the presence of Christ within the tabernacle of their bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Anyone who came around us could see the red flicker of the lamp and know that Christ is in us.

More importantly, maybe that little lamp hanging out over our noses would be a constant reminder to us also of the eternal present indwelling and union of Christ and would keep us in awareness of our need to trust constantly in Him for His WAY, His TRUTH, His LIFE.

The inner Christ is the one you receive when you are born again. The Peacegiver, the Healer, and, if necessary, the Miracle Worker is in you. YOU are the temple of God. He dwells in temples not made with hands (2 Corinth. 6:16). When was the last time you heard a sermon on that scripture? Does it not point to the inner Christ? Christ goes with you and in you wherever you go - isn’t that good to know? So many know nothing but an external Jesus who they must try to bring down near to them 1) to soften their guilt and 2) to accept their “good works”.

If a Christian doesn’t learn the difference between INSIDE and OUTSIDE, he will have an upside-down Christianity.

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