The indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God in the very life and body of the believer is one of the most comforting and assuring truths of all Scripture and of the life experience of the Christian. This indwelling means precisely what it seems. It is the very act of the Holy Spirit of God taking up residency in the spirit of the individual Christian from the moment he becomes a new creation in Christ Jesus until the time of his physical death, when the believer becomes absent from his body and present with the Lord in heaven. Granted, it is a stretch to say that God Himself dwells within our being. Are we claiming too much? Many would say so. I would be the first to admit it sounds preposterous. Then, upon what possible basis can a rational person make such a claim? God says so! And God cannot lie. The determining factor about any of the claims made by Christians is always the same: Never is it due to our worthiness. We are not worthy. Never is it due to our feelings. Our feelings are fickle and unreliable. Never is it due to our church or religious dogma. They all differ considerably. It is and must always be “thus saith the Lord.”
So, where does the Lord say individual believers? All individual believers are actually indwelt by the Spirit of God. The most compelling verse that comes to mind is found in 1st Corinthians 6. Here, the inspired Apostle Paul is rebuking the Corinthian assembly for their cavalier attitude toward serious spiritual matters. He chides them in saying, “What! Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? For you are bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” Their being indwelt by the Spirit of God had nothing to do with their being worthy of such a favor. They clearly were not worthy, nor are we. The Spirit of God’s indwelling of each believer is due solely to the gracious operation of God Himself, despite our unworthiness. Couple this passage with Romans 8, “But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” The believer is in the Spirit, and the Spirit is in the believer, inseparably so. It is part of what being a Christian means.
Christ alluded to the indwelling nature of the Holy Spirit in the very life and body of the believer shortly before His death, in John 14, when He told His apostles in the Upper Room the night of His betrayal, “And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it sees Him not, neither knows Him. But you know Him, for He dwells with you and shall be in you.” Following the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, the Holy Spirit became available to believers in a way different from His previously being with them. Then, He would be in them, as He now indwells all who have faith in Christ.
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