An Ever-Expanding Awareness of Christ In You

[ My class at Grace Church on October 12, 2011]

OK. First, let’s get the title of this class straight. It is not an expanded awareness of Christ in you as the bulletin read. It is an EVER EXPANDING awareness. It is an expanding awareness that goes on forever – in this life and for eternity. It is an ongoing process for eternity.

Before we get into the ramifications of knowing Christ in you, let’s talk about NOT knowing Christ is in you as a Christian.

Let me give you my testimony and you will see why I have a “Christ in you” ministry. I was born into a Catholic family and, as well as I can tell, I made my own personal decision to follow Christ at about 12 years old. I was what is termed “a devout Catholic”. I tried to follow all of the instructions on how to be good. For about the first half of my life I believed that Catholicism was the only true way to God.

I went to confession on Saturday night and Mass and communion on Sunday. I became an altar-boy and assisted at Mass during my last years of grade school. I went to CBC Catholic high school and received my doctorate in dentistry at St. Louis University – the first Catholic university west of the Mississippi.

In my adult years, I attended Mass and received Communion practically every morning. Up until about age 35, I believed that being saved and getting to heaven depended on my behavior. When I sinned, I lost God’s grace and was going to hell – UNLESS I confessed my sin to a priest and received forgiveness. Then I was back in God’s grace and was going to heaven. Until I sinned again. My spiritual life was up and down like a roller-coaster. I always feared dying between my sin and my confession.

I never really read the Bible but rather used the Catholic Missal which was a compilation of verses taken out of the Bible for epistle readings and gospel readings and for prayer at Mass.

My Christian faith was supposed to give me mental peace and security but, as time went on, I found less and less of peace and security. I never knew where I really stood with God. I’m telling you, those were frustrating and insecure years for me. I began to think that this could not be the way God wanted His children to live.

I began a headlong search into the New Testament to get its perspective. I began to find that many doctrines and rules of Catholicism were not in the Bible and, in fact, were the opposite of what the Bible stated. I could find only 2 sacraments mentioned: baptism and communion (or the Lord’s Supper). Even marriage was not discussed as a church function but rather a civil one. It then became obvious to me that the other 5 Catholic sacraments were established to perpetuate the power and function of the hierarchy. A member of the clergy was necessary to dispense these sacraments.

When I began reading the Bible for myself to see what it really said about salvation, I found a completely different perspective.

I began discovering the fact that salvation was ALL by faith and not by behavior. I left the Catholic faith at age 35 and began an in depth study of the Bible – especially of the way to salvation.

In all those early years of Catholicism, I saw Jesus as being an external helper to be called upon when I really needed Him. But my in depth studies showed Him to be much more than that. I found scriptures like Colossians 1:27 “Christ in you, the hope of glory” and Galatians 2:20 “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me..”

I began to see salvation as being born again once and forever and having Jesus come to live in me – forever. I was saved – with Jesus living in me in a living union – His Spirit with my human spirit.

I no longer had the fear of dying between sin and forgiveness. The difference between punishment and correction became clear to me. As a born-again Christian, I would never receive punishment for my sin – Jesus had taken all that punishment on the Cross for me. My sin would have physical effects and bring on correction from God to get me back on the right path. But I was still saved!

Punishment is a penalty imposed on an offender for a crime or wrongdoing. It has retribution in view (paying someone back for what he deserves). Punishment is looking back to the offense, is impersonal and automatic, and its goal is the administration of justice.

Correction or discipline, on the other hand, is totally different. Correction is training that develops self-control, character and ability. It is looking forward to a beneficial result, is very personal, and individually applied. Its goal is the administration of mercy.

Punishment and correction sometime “feel” the same to the one on the receiving end! But the sharp difference can be seen in both the attitude and the goal of the one applying it.

Under the New Covenant, God never deals with His children on the basis of punishment. All of the punishment of God for our sins was fully received by our Savior, Jesus Christ, on the cross. Now that we are children in the family of God, He deals with us only on the basis of correction.

Getting back to the Colossian letter, you will notice in the context that the first chapter carries us right back into the mind and heart of God before the world was, and we are shown what was going on in the plan of the Father concerning His Son. It is called the “mystery”, that is, the divine secret. Out of the secret of His heart concerning His Son, every activity of God proceeded, and down through the ages He was occupied in many activities, in many forms and ways, working with His secret, enshrining His secret in His self-expression, never giving out what the secret was, never proclaiming what was in His heart in so many words, but hiding it, hiding it within symbols and types and many things.

   Then at length, in the fullness of the times, at the end of these times, He sent forth His Son. Then by revelation of the Holy Spirit He was pleased to make known the mystery, pleased to disclose the secret, and the first chapter of Colossians is the matchless, incomparable unveiling of the secret of God’s heart – “Christ IN you!”

   That which was in the mind of God from before the foundation of the world has its commencement in the receiving of Christ into the human spirit by faith on the part of the believer, the individual believer. That is not the end, that is the beginning. What will follow will be the Church which is His Body. That has been foreseen and is complete in the eternal thought, but it will follow the individual believer’s reception of Christ.

   God now begins on the inside. Paul has a good deal to say about this eternal thought as to Christ and His centrality to the believer, and he speaks concerning this matter very largely from his own life and his own spiritual ambition, and as far as I can see, he gathers it all up into five main aspects. There is the revelation of Christ within; there is the Life of Christ within; there is the forming of Christ within; there is the home-making of Christ within, and there is the consummation of Christ within.

1. The Revelation of Christ Within

The first stage which every believer must arrive at is the John 3:16 experience. “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” This, of course, has to do with the new birth. It is impossible to achieve God‘s plan for you if there is no born-again experience. The new birth in John 3:5 is plainly stated as being the necessary experience if one is to know God and to enter into the things of God. We might very well declare the new birth to be the “HOW to become a child of God” experience. This is fundamental. This is basic to Christianity.

Now proceeding from this, every group of believers who form some part of Christianity has a key to God of their own. For some it is water baptism. For others it is church membership, catechism and rituals. For others it is tongues and the gifts. Others concentrate on miracles and faith. God may use any of these stages at any time in a Christian’s Life. But I believe that everything is ultimately directed to an understanding of the Galatians 2:20 experience - that everything depends on Christ living in me. This final key might be called the “WAY to be a child of God”. Jesus said that He was “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6) . The eternal Life of a child of God is in the Son (see I John 5:11-12 ) , and the giver of that Life is the Father who births His children by placing His Seed, Christ, in them. Only by coming to the awesome understanding of the Galatians 2:20 experience will the believer ever fulfill God’s basic purpose for his earthly life and only then will the believer come to really know who he is by the new birth. There are multitudes of bona fide, saved, born-again Christians in the world today who do not know who they are by their new birth, and as a result never come to the fullness of the Life of a child of God and recognize the full implications of the Christian Life, both on this earth and later in heaven.

   Galatians 1:12-16 tells about Paul’s personal revelation of the secret – not from man, but received and revealed from God. Now, for ourselves, that principle holds true as it did for Paul, that everything hangs upon an inward revelation of Jesus Christ. Our lives as children of God are constituted by that, and all that we are and all that we do in relation to Him rests upon that inward revelation which has resulted in His supremacy so far as our lives are concerned. It is so even for religious people, for Saul was an exceedingly religious man. I say that because so often there is a kind of a mental kickback when we speak of Paul’s conversion and the radical nature of it, and the attitude is mentally taken – “Yes, well, but I have never had such an experience; God has never done to me what He did to Saul of Tarsus. Therefore the same cannot be expected of me, and cannot be basic to my life.” Now in spite of such a mental reaction, the truth is that you and I will never be Christians, or servants of the Lord, in real spiritual life and effectiveness beyond the measure of our inward apprehension of the indwelling Jesus Christ. That is basic to everything. Many have not had a thorough-going revelation of knowledge of Christ within because they themselves are not thorough-going with God. Saul of Tarsus was “busy” about God and the Lord met him on his own basis, on his own ground, and because he was so thorough-going, the Lord was thorough-going with him. If you and I are more or less careless about spiritual things, the Lord will meet us on that ground, and we will never get anywhere. But when we get to the point of being determined in the interests of the Lord, even though we may be mistaken about many things, God will meet us on that ground.

   Is it not true with so many that they had to be brought to the place where it was a matter of desperation, life or death hanging upon a new knowledge of Christ? He has not been able to give them that inward unveiling until there could be for them no more life unless there was a new knowledge of the Lord.

   These two truths apply: one, because of the revelation of Jesus Christ in our spirits we have a passion for Him; on the other hand, because of the absence of a sufficient revelation of Christ in our souls we are out for other things which we would say were in His interest, and for Him, but which can never, never satisfy God’s desire for us.

   Therefore it is not converting people to Christianity, or getting them to be followers of a movement; it is receiving Christ, the revelation of Christ in you. The initial knowledge a new convert receives is Christ FOR you, a Savior from your sins. This is overwhelming enough and is about all that you can handle. Christ does come to live in you at conversion and new birth, but it takes a while to see Him as anything more than a “help” to fight sin. But our determination and zeal, however misplaced and misunderstood, brings the revelation of Christ within to a new level. God meets our zeal with His zeal for revelation.

2. Christ the LIFE Within

   We now go on the second of the aspects of “Christ in you” and come to the second part of my favorite verse of the Bible, Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ – nevertheless I live – yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the LIFE that I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” The first is the revelation, however misunderstood, of Christ in you working FOR you; the second is the LIFE of Christ within.  He IS my new Life forever (With a capital L to distinguish it from the old death-life of humanity). It is important for us to recognize that this is not just the fact that Christ lives within, not merely that Christ is within us, working for us, but this carries with it something more than that – that Christ is the believer’s LIFE! And He IS - that LIFE just in the measure in which He is central and supreme, no more, no less.

So many believers who now have eternal Life dwelling in them never seem to come to such an understanding of it so that it makes a big difference in their daily living. Eternal Life concepts always make a difference when one thinks of dying. Even though it seems at many times to make little difference in daily activity, yet every birthed believer has eternal Life here and now. When this concept becomes a normal perception of life, what a remarkable change is seen. Though the idea of eternal Life is anticipated in the Old Testament, the concept of eternal Life is largely a New Testament revelation because the issue of eternal Life follows the new birth. You must be born-again, and in the new birth you have a whole new and different Life. While we are physically alive by the death-life which is in this body, we are not body-persons any longer. We are spirit-persons by Christ indwelling us. It is important to distinguish between “life” and “Life”!

   But we want to understand in what way Christ within is the LIFE of the believer, and this whole letter to the Galatians helps us to that understanding. We often speak about Christ being our life, we often say things to that effect, that He is our very life. We use another fragment of Scripture which is not in the same realm as this passage exactly, although linked with it: “When Christ, Who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall you also with Him be manifested in glory” (Col. 3:4). It is not just that Christ is to us that vital energy and power which we call life. Of course He is that. But if you look at the immediately surrounding words you will see that this statement of the apostle represents a change. This letter, as you probably know, is dealing with the legalism into which the Galatian believers had fallen, by which they had been overcome and ensnared. You notice how chapter 3 begins: “O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you…?” They had come under a spell of a false legalism. Now what Paul is saying here in verse 2:20 represents a change. Paul had lived in the old days by holding on to the law. His position as a Jew was that under the law man must live by the law. The law was: “Thou shalt,” and “Thou shalt not.” When the “shalts” were complied with, and the “shalt nots” were observed and avoided, then a man’s life was preserved by God. And we know, even from one like Saul of Tarsus who rigidly kept the law, that it was a tremendously burdensome thing, and it represented always condemnation and death. It was like the sword of Damocles always hanging over the head. Deviate one hair’s breadth and you die, you come under condemnation, judgment and death. Everything for a Jew was purely outward, and there was always the inward sense of something wanting, something lacking. But Saul had lived by holding on to the law with all its burdensomeness, all it wearisomeness, all its threat, judgment, condemnation, and its shadow of death which it always kept in view. That was his past life.

   Now no man had ever been found, as Paul makes perfectly clear in the first chapters of his Roman letter, who by his own ability could perfectly satisfy God on every point and requirement of His Divine law. All had broken down, all had failed, and in no man was the root of righteousness found. But Christ, the only one who could do so, had fulfilled the law up to the hilt by virtue of inherent righteousness of the Father within – Christ had the LIFE of the Father.

   Jesus had introduced a new dispensation, not of law but of grace. He had brought a new regime where the government is not the government of “thou shalt not” and “thou shalt”, not a government of systematized legalism, but of grace through faith in Christ – faith in Christ who has satisfied every demand that God ever made of man; faith that in Him all who believe are gathered up and represented, and God is satisfied.

   That Christ with whom the Father is completely satisfied on the matter of all righteousness is within the believer; so that the believer in Christ has all righteousness in Him. The believer is not anymore righteous in his soul than he ever was, but the Righteous One is within his spirit. God does not look upon our changing soul mind as us; He looks upon His Son in us. Paul says in effect in v. 2:20: “Now I live, not by holding on the law but by holding on to Christ, and the thing with which I hold on to Christ is faith – and that LIFE which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, that faith which is in the Son of God.” How? By saying, when the Accuser comes to lay a charge at my door, to bring me under condemnation, “Christ is my righteousness.” When the Accuser attacks with a fiery dart and says, “You are no good and can never be any good to the Father”, I say, “Christ, who satisfies the Father for me, is in me – His LIFE is what the Father sees.” “I have been crucified with Christ – you can’t nail me again!”

   In as much as I constantly keep the link of faith strong in what He is to the Father for me, I live – I live the LIFE force of God. Christ becomes my LIFE in that sense. You see it is something more than our regarding Christ as the backup vital energy and power within us which keeps us going. It is no use our trying to meet the enemy in our own “human life” strength. We must meet him with Christ, knowing our union with the indwelling Christ – answer him with the LIFE of Christ, every time!

3. Christ Formed Within

   Galatians 4:19 – “My little children, of whom I an again in travail until Christ BE FORMED IN YOU.” First we have: Christ in revelation within; second, Christ in LIFE within; thirdly, Christ in formation within.

   Take again the whole letter to the Galatians. The motive for writing is the correction of an error. Due to spiritual immaturity, these believers had not gone on as they should have gone on in the Lord. Paul puts his finger right upon the root of the matter when he says in effect, “All this is because of the indefiniteness of Christ in you.” The word “formed” in v. 19 is a very strong word. What he is saying is: “Yes, Christ is in you since you are believers and children of God, but it is an ill-defined Christ, an unformed Christ, a Christ without features developed. And because of this, there is all this weakness and this aptness to be misled.”

   There was confusion, indefiniteness, because they had not seen clearly that Christ is the end of the law to them that believe; that Christ really represented a clean cut between the old dispensation and the new, the old order and the new. Because they had not grasped the clear definition of union with the indwelling Christ, they were a prey to anything that came along. Now today, there are a lot of Christians like that. They are a prey to all sorts of things because they have not recognized the clear implications of Christ within.

   Why are so many of the Lord’s people just beaten and harassed and tormented by the Accuser causing them always to have their eyes turned to soul self-analysis, self-conscious guilt, so tied up with themselves that they are useless to Christ and to other people? They have not had deliverance from self into Christ – Christ is not formed in their minds. But still they are in an ill-defined way trying to provide God with satisfaction, and it is an awful struggle. They have not seen the clear features of Christ within.

When we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), “old things are passed away” (2 Cor. 5:17). There is an essential transformation of the spirit at the new birth rather than just a moral decision. The moral transformation comes after the new birth as we partake of the divine nature.

It is here that we must see there is no human nature. There is a human mind, which many in religion have long attributed to being a human nature. The mind is where decisions are made, a God-created place of the soul, but the mind is not a nature. The nature is in the spirit of man, not in the soul of man. The nature of the earthly birth of human beings is basically the characteristics of Satan being manifested. With the new birth, the next basic result is that he now has the nature of God in his human spirit. This gives him the ABILITY to do those things which are pleasing to God and which are akin to the Family of God. With the sin-nature out and the God-nature in, this newborn person CAN cease from sinning and CAN become conformed to the laws of God by love. It will take time. It will take chastening (Hebrews 12:7-11). It will take submission and trust. But God promises us that this spiritual inoculation WILL “TAKE”! Christ will never leave us or forsake us (Heb. 13:5).
Prior to this new birth, there was no possibility of a sinner producing the will of God, for the sinner was actually dead to God and needed to be rebirthed.
Since there has never been a human nature, though the world and many in religion loudly proclaim it, it becomes necessary for the Christian to have a change in the mind. Paul said that the mind must be renewed (Rom. 12:2) . The believer does this by his daily walk of faith and trust. He is born of God and now he must be “raised” as a child of God. It means that all God intends by His righteousness will be effected in the Christian by the inward pulls of the new God-nature. We hold this God-nature in us as a treasure in earthly vessels, waiting for the total spiritual fulfillment.
Paul says, “I am really anguished and disappointed over you my brethren, that you must finally come to a place where Christ is defined in your souls; where He takes form, and is not a formless Christ.” That is the meaning of Galatians 4:19.

4. Christ Making a Home Within

   And then the next thing, the fourth thing. Ephesians 3:17: “That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…being rooted and grounded in love…” Now you have here an advance upon what has gone before. You may not recognize it, but it is an advance. This is not saying that Christ may take up residence in your heart. This is not saying that Christ may come into your heart. This is saying that Christ may “dwell” in your heart and the Greek word there is, “make His home” or “settle down” in your heart. That is something more than a lodging, that is something more than just coming in and being there. Every house is not a home.

The human life of Jesus demonstrates. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has no place to lay his head.” That was His place in the world. But Bethany felt like home. He came to Bethany, and He came again, and He came again – and in the face of greatest stress, when things were pressing more and more heavily upon Him towards the end, His constant retreat was to Bethany. The only home He seemed to have had on this earth was Bethany. It was because He found soul satisfaction in Bethany. There was one there who “kept on listening.” In the story of the sisters, Martha and Mary, the literal translation of Mary’s listening is: “she kept on listening to His word.” He wanted someone, He wanted some heart into which to pour that which was in Himself and find appreciation and response, and He found it at Bethany – the better part. He was made to feel that it was the greatest of all privileges to have Him there. We are so often like Martha – we are doing a multitude of things for the Lord when the Lord is just craving an opportunity to be listened to.
Christ says to us, “Yes, I know you mean to be very busy for Me, I know you mean it all for Me, I know your motive is right. I fully appreciate all that, but oh, that you could give Me a chance to say a few things to you; oh, that you would give Me an opportunity just to speak into your soul, to show you things which you do not know, which could make such a lot of difference.” He would draw us from the feverish activities of the “many dishes” to a place where He is listened to. We have got to run the risk of being misunderstood for seemingly doing nothing; as Mary was misunderstood. Sometimes we are afraid that people will think that we are slacking because we get away with the Lord a little more. That’s okay. Christ knows – He knows He needs a home. And He will come and make His home where He finds an open ear to family values.
Busy Christians must remember that all your work, in the Lord’s mind, can never take the place of an opportunity which He craves of being able to speak fuller things into your heart. Your activities will be without vitality unless you are giving Him time to speak and He is having response to new understanding. Christ is on a mission to make your “house” a real family HOME.

5. Christ Glorified in the Believer

   Now finally, in 2 Thessalonians 1:10. “When He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe.” It is the consummation of Christ within. Yes, we expect to see Him coming in glory, we expect to see the glorified Christ, but He is working something in the meantime which means that when He appears His glory will also be in the saints! It is not only the objective Christ in glory coming, it is the subjective Christ manifested in glory IN US. “If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.” (Rom. 8:17). “God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: Whereunto He called you by our gospel, TO THE OBTAINING OF THE GLORY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.” (2 Thes. 2:13-14). Christ is going to be glorified IN the saints and marveled at IN them that believe.

 It was, from the world’s point of view, an ordinary Palestinian peasant who one day went up the slope of a mountain. There may have been things striking about Him, impressive, but for the most part He was like other men. He reached the summit of that mountain and suddenly that One became ablaze and aflame with heavenly glory. His clothing changed, white and glistening; glorified, changed suddenly from an ordinary man - as the world would say – to the glory of God. It so bewildered those who were there so that they began to talk and did not know what they said. Utterly taken off their feet, they were.
Fellow Christian, fellow believer, fellow child in the home of Christ, fellow saint – that Christ is in us! We are very ordinary folks among men, there is nothing very striking, outstanding, distinguishing about us, but there is a moment coming when that which happened on the mount of transfiguration is going to happen to us. Christ in us is going to blaze out in glory through us, and as those on that mountain marveled at Him, so He is going to be marveled at in all them that believe.
Now we may have a problem. I was once challenged by the following situation. I had said to a person seeking the truth that the Christian life really means that Jesus Christ lives in me.
The person quickly shot back at me, “That sounds to me like you claim that you ARE Jesus! I can‘t and I won‘t accept that! Many of the trouble-makers in religion have claimed to be Christ!”
When I say that Christ lives in me, does this say that I AM Christ? No! Does this say that I am Christ/Lou? Yes, I believe that it does.
Galatians 2:20 does NOT teach that Paul became Christ. What is overlooked here is that there are two basic concepts being discussed in the verse. First, there is IDENTITY. Paul exists, as Paul. “I am crucified with Christ.” Paul who still exists has undergone a crucifixion wherein his old man was crucified. This crucifixion did not put Paul out of existence. He was still around to tell about it. Moreover, he underwent a resurrection and he, Paul, was still around to tell of that as well.
But what of Christ‘s part in the process? This does not involve identity or existence, but rather the second concept of ACTION. Christ is not the only one who is alive in Paul after Paul‘s crucifixion, but Christ it is Who lives (or is doing the living) in Paul. Christ produces the life in the still existent Paul. Paul still exists as Paul but Christ produces the spiritual life within him. What appears to be confusing here is the matter of existence versus producing life. I exist but I do not produce spiritual life, Christ does. Now this constitutes a living union between me and Christ and makes me one spirit with Him, but it does not make me Him.
I still exist as me, having a body and a soul along with this spirit union. My nature comes from my spirit, but I have a soul, and I live in a body. The fusion of my spirit with His has produced a radical change at the very core of my being, but it is not completely realized yet in experience. So there is still an “I” that exists which is being profoundly affected by this fusion of spirits.
We have a body that is uniquely us apart from Christ, we also have a personality within our soul that is uniquely us. That personality can be profoundly altered if we allow Christ’s nature to be released in us. In fact, all of the sinful influences affecting our personality can be overcome by Christ‘s life within. There are, however, neutral aspects that remain. These personality quirks are what make us uniquely us. They are not sinful or carnal, they are merely human. They are us, the human. By no spiritual semantics can we erase these things or say they cease to exist.
We must understand that we are dealing here with much more than just man OR God – am I Lou OR Christ. Man and God, though always distinct in identity, are nonetheless joined, as stated, in a spirit union. The humanity of man and the deity of God have been united. The question all of us must come to grips with is: HOW IS MAN MEANT TO FUNCTION IN A ONE-SPIRIT UNION WITH GOD WHILE MAINTAINING HIS INDIVIDUAL HUMANITY?
What I have been trying to say to you is this: Christ can and does live through man without violating man‘s humanity or having man become God.  
Here’s how it works. Before conversion, you did not have to WORK at trying to know God or to get Him to convert you. You were converted by grace - the unmerited favor of God. When you called out for a Savior, God heard and answered by placing Christ into union with your human spirit. You could not earn it. The only function of your human soul was to RECEIVE IT.
Well, now that Christ lives in you, it is still all by grace. The only true function of your human soul NOW is to receive and accept the understanding of Jesus Christ living in you and, IF I MAY BE SO BOLD, CHRIST LIVING AS YOU – YES CHRIST LIVING AS YOU -  TO YOUR WORLD.
We ought to go back over the whole five stages, from the revelation to the consummation, and see what each one of them represents as a demand. You will see that Christ as revealed in the believer means a captured vessel. You and I have been captured. Christ living within as our LIFE means, not a changed life so much as an EXCHANGED life, a crucified and resurrected vessel. Christ formed within means a vessel that is going on with the Lord, not standing where the Galatians were, but being defined in Christ. Christ making His home in the heart is connected with being “rooted and grounded in love” and then there follows the phrase “with all the saints”. This fellowship in the Body of Christ, and the mutual love one for the other is a “Bethany” principle, leading to Christ’s settling down. And so each one represents its own peculiar responsibility and demand until you come to the consummation. Here the consummation of glory is related to faithfulness and trust in living out to others through Christ, when it feels good and when it hurts. You see there is a demand for each aspect of Christ in you – the key to LIFE – the HOPE of glory!