“[God] who … called me by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me.” Galatians 1:15,16

All our study and worship of Christ are focused on five points: Christ incarnate, the crucified Christ, the enthroned Christ, the indwelling Christ, and Christ coming in glory.

If the first is the seed, the second is the seed cast into the ground, with the third the seed growing up to heaven. The fourth is the fruit through the Holy Spirit, and the fifth is the gathering of the fruit when Christ appears.

Paul tells us that it pleased God to reveal His Son in him. The result of that revelation is that Christ lives in him. And the distinguishing mark of this new life is that he is crucified with Christ. It is this that enables Paul to say that he no longer lives. In Christ, he has found the death of self. Just as the cross is the chief characteristic of Christ Himself, so the life of Christ in Paul made him inseparably one with his crucified Lord.

If Christ so actually lived in Paul that Paul no longer lived, what became of his responsibility? Paul’s answer is ready and clear: “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

This was the sum and substance of all Paul’s preaching. He asks for intercession that he might speak the mystery of Christ (see Colossians 1:26-29). The indwelling Christ was the secret of his life of faith, the one power, the one aim of all his life and work, the hope of glory.

Let us believe in the abiding presence of Christ as the sure gift to each one who trusts Him fully.

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from Daily In His Presence (Multnomah), 2004.