The Indwelling Spirit
W. Carl Ketcherside
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"But ye 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" (Romans 8:9).
Once more we must remind you that to be "in the flesh" has no direct reference to being in the physical body. It is contrasted with being "in the Spirit." One of these is antithetical to the other. But the Spirit dwells in or abides in the body as in a living organism. "Do you not know that your body is the sanctuary of the indwelling Spirit, and the Spirit is God's gift to you?" (1 Cor. 6:19). We must abide in the body to provide a temple for the Holy Spirit, but we dare not be "in the flesh," that is, on the lower level of the human nature. That is the plane in which sin rules as a tyrant and moral anarchy is the order of life.
This passage is important because it uses the terms Spirit, Spirit of God, and Spirit of Christ in one verse. All apply to the same personality. Peter declares that the prophets were motivated and instructed by the Spirit of Christ, even before Jesus came (1 Peter 1:11). He informs us that this was the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven to prompt the apostles. The term Spirit refers to the nature, Spirit of God to identification with Deity, and Spirit of Christ to his affinity to the Word who became the Messiah. The Anglo-Saxons employed the word "ghost" for the inner man, while the Latins used spiritus. Thus, the Authorized Version uses these interchangeably. But because of the way the word "ghost" is used in our generation it should no longer be applied to the Holy Spirit, although it was legitimately so used by King James, who commissioned the translation which often bears his name. The Spirit is a holy guest, but not a holy ghost.
Thus, the Spirit is said to dwell or abide in us. This is not a brief stay by a passing friend, but tenantry for life, or so long as we permit. The proof that we are living on the higher plane of spiritual existence is the indwelling Spirit. God moves into a meaningful personal relationship with us on the upper level and rules over our life. The dominance of sin is broken. It has no more claim upon our members. We are set free by the grace of God.
Regardless of what claim may be made or what acts are performed, one simply does not belong to Christ if he does not have the Spirit of Christ. Man is an earthen vessel, a pot of clay, and the indwelling Spirit gives him value. Without the Spirit man is an empty jar occupying space on life's shelf, but providing no real contribution to the world. The value of a jar is determined by its content.
We have been tricked into thinking that if we go through certain motions on particular days of the week, reciting rit-
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A lot of awe-struck tourists think this is wonderful. But I've been accustomed for years to seeing men and women arising mechanically on Sunday when the clock struck a certain hour and moving to a meetinghouse where they woodenly recite "The Lord's Prayer." Then they retreat to their original position as if it were all over until the clock strikes again a week later. They are no more real than Disney's Lincoln. The spirit is absent from the latter and the Spirit is absent from the former. Regardless of what else one may have, if he does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. Every person who is Christ's has the Spirit of Christ, every person who has the Spirit of Christ is Christ's. It is just that simple.
"And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." (Romans 8:10).
Christ dwells in us in and through the Spirit. This union is spoken of from two aspects. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. This means that the attributes which belong to the divine nature are ours in which to share. They are available unto us. Paul wrote to Corinth, "All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours, and ye are Christ's: and Christ is God's" (1 Cor. 3:21-23).
It is difficult for most of us to accept this. We are so conditioned to thinking about what we "give up" to follow Jesus, that we never think of the gains which accrue. There is deposited for us in the bank of heaven tremendous resources upon which we can draw, but often we do not know the account has been opened, or we are reluctant to draw upon it. We want to keep it for "a rainy day." We forget that things to come are ours as well as things present. In Jesus there is no rainy day.
God has provided us a book of prayer checks. The supply is as inexhaustible as was the oil in the widow's cruse (2 Kings 4:1-5). There is sufficient to meet every need. Unfortunately, we think of Christ as a mere historical figure in the past, or as a far-off ruler who is coming again. Both of these describe him, but they ignore the "things present" facet. Christ is in us. He is the same Christ he always was. His power has not eroded away or become depleted.
He is "made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30). Whatever is implied in these glorious terms we have in Christ. He is our peace (Eph. 2:14). Our peace is not based upon a creed, concordat or conciliar agreement. It is not a pact, proposal or prepared document. If Christ dwells in me I am at peace with God. And I am at peace with every other person in this universe in whom Jesus dwells. That is why it is a universe and not a multi-verse. Versus means to turn, and universe means to "to turn or bring together in one." The Spirit of God which originally brought order out of chaos in creation, brings the new creation together in one body. This is the action of the Spirit and not the result of human arrangement.
That is why the only unity of which God speaks is "the unity of the Spirit." It is a gift. It can neither be achieved nor attained. It must be accepted. Our responsibility then is to guard and keep it with the bond of peace. It is silly for men to hold conferences and arrange conventions to promote unity. Unity does not need to be promoted. It has already graduated. Our task is not to promote it but to appropriate it. If Christ is in you, peace is in you, because He is our peace.
This does not mean that you will not die a physical death. It is appointed unto
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Jesus did not remove physical death. He simply conquered the one who wielded the power over it, and delivered those who were all of their lifetime subject to bondage through fear of death. Death is not a monster any more than sleep is a monster. It is not a tragedy but a transfer. "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord." To die in the Lord means that the Lord lives in you!
If Christ be in you, the Spirit is life. It is eternal life. "He that hath the Son hath life" (1 John 5:12). "And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." If the Spirit dwells in you, eternal life is yours now. You do not have to die to collect it. The life of God is the gift of God to His children. It is our present possession.
The Spirit is life because of righteousness, just as the body is dead because of sin. My body is not dead because of my sin, but because of sin, the sin of one man. So the Spirit is life, not because of my righteousness but because of the righteousness of another which is imputed unto me. "As by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life." It is not my righteousness which makes life, but his righteousness. I could never be righteous enough to merit eternal life, but thank God, it is not on the natural plane that I receive it. This is the promise of God. I do not stagger at this promise through unbelief. I accept it, thrill to it, and rejoice in it, as one who is strong in faith, giving glory to God. The Spirit is life! Praise God for that!
"But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Romans 8:11).
The most momentous fact of history was the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. On this fact all else in our relationship to God depends. If Christ was not raised the Christian message is empty and there is no content to faith (1 Cor. 15:14). If Christ was not raised the apostles are liars (15:15). If Christ was not raised those who died in him are gone. They have perished (15:18). If Christ was not raised all hope is limited to this life and we are miserable above all men (15:19).
Jesus did not prove he was the Son of God by dying on the cross. That proved he was the Son of man. He proved divine Sonship by his resurrection (Romans 1:4). It is true that Jesus said no man could take his life from him. He had power to lay it down and he had power to take it again. But he also said that he had received this commandment from the Father (John 10:18). God raised him from the dead as the first fruits of the great harvest of those who are asleep.
The same power that was exercised in raising Jesus from the dead dwells in us through the Holy Spirit. "How vast the resources of his power open to us who trust in him. They are measured by his strength and the might which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead, when he enthroned him at his right hand in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 1:19,20).
God will quicken our mortal bodies by the Spirit. To quicken means to make alive, to empower with life. The word "mortal" means subject to death. Its root form occurs in such words as mortician, mortuary and post-mortem, all of which relate to death. Of course God will raise us from the dead, but he will give us life and power now. The "resources of power" which were employed to raise
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It is a great source of comfort and reassurance to realize that whatever God demands of us he furnishes the power to accomplish. We need not be hesitant about moving into any situation to which God calls us. He is able to bring us safely through. We need not fear what men shall do unto us. The shield of faith is capable of deflecting all of the fiery arrows of the evil one. Most of us are defeated by our own doubts.
A great watchword of the faith is found in these words, "The Lord is near; have no anxiety, but in everything make your requests known to God in prayer and petition with thanksgiving. Then the peace of God, which is beyond our utmost understanding, will keep guard over your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 4:6, 7). The encouragement to allow God to deal directly with every problem of life by making our requests known to him in everything is a powerful incentive. All that we need he will supply, richly and fully. Life itself is the gift of his Spirit.
"Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh" (Romans 8:12).
The lower nature, the old life of sin, has no further claim upon us. We have been ransomed from its grasp. We have been redeemed from the slavery and bondage in which it held us. I owe nothing to my unregenerate nature. I have been born again. Old things have passed away. All things have become new. My previous concerns "I count so much garbage for the sake of gaining Christ and finding myself incorporate in him" (Phil. 3:9). "Circumcision is nothing; uncircumcision is nothing; the only thing that counts is a new creation! Whoever they are who take this principle for their guide, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the whole Israel of God." If the only thing that counts is new creation it is obvious that what belongs to the old life is no longer to be valued at all.
Paul said he wrote off all supposed assets of his past because of Christ. He did not merely discount them. He counted them sheer loss. He took out bankruptcy on his past and placed all of his hopes in Christ Jesus. There was nothing left but Jesus. This is not just a good way to live, it is the only way to live!
Fully understood this means, for instance, that the former alcoholic needs alcohol no longer as an inward booster. Alcoholism results from fear of inability to cope with problems. The alcoholic feels a sense of rejection and compensates for it by leaning upon liquor as an escape. This settles nothing because he must return to reality or drink himself into oblivion. Good resolutions will not solve the problem. When the going gets rough there is an overpowering temptation to take a drink to fill up the emptiness. Preaching and counseling will not overcome it. There must be a real vital sense of relationship to God including a recognition of an indwelling Helper who is the power source for conquest of self.
Paul knew the reason for alcoholism, so he wrote, "Do not make yourselves drunk with wine; that leads to loose, wild living; but be filled with the Spirit" (Eph. 5:18, 19). One who is not filled with the Spirit is empty and vacuous. But filling with the Spirit is the alternative to drinking for the man who is insecure. I do not share the view of those who talk about "intoxication of the Spirit," for the very word means to poison. There is no toxicity of the Spirit. One cannot drink
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Indeed, I am quite thoroughly convinced that an acceptance of the Spirit as a result of genuine faith in Jesus Christ can recover one from the clutches of drug addiction. There is a physical aspect to the problem which means that Satan must be conquered and thrown out of his stronghold. This means that the frightful symptoms of withdrawal must be undergone and the living hell involved must be faced. One can be helped through the awful ordeal by those who once had the clawing monkey on their backs but who won through to victory. (Here I must mention that at least two college people who were addicts and who came to know Jesus testified that they escaped the withdrawal symptoms through prayer. I am sure that it will not always be this way).
The devil does not turn any of us loose easily. He fights for his territory where he staked his claim. But "the Son of God appeared for the very purpose of undoing the devil's work" (1 John 3:8). It is affirmed that Jesus has overcome the world. This includes the power structures of the world. The fact is that we need no longer be under the dominance of any sin. Even drugs, which distort brain images and disorient life can be thrown out by the Holy Spirit. Best of all, the indwelling Spirit can give meaning to life so that the factors which led to drug addiction can be alleviated and corrected.
Many of our social problems are related to the sense of loneliness which accompanies our computerized culture. It is true that man is in a crowded world, pushed and shoved about by the teeming mass. But it is also true that there is a lonely crowd. It is evident in the gigantic mass of tranquilizers and soothing drugs, plus pain relievers, consumed every year. Our society is dependent upon foreign substances introduced into the body to enable men to eat, to refrain from eating, to sleep and to stay awake.
A realization of the closeness of God, a sense of the power provided from on high, a positive acceptance of the Spirit to dwell within, can change all of this. The Holy Spirit is not provided as an esoteric or mystic influence, but as a positive helper, enabling us to love ourselves and to love others, including our enemies. Thus we can share in the creative force of the universe which can re-create our personalities. Much of what we call recreation only fatigues us more and wears us out. It saps our strength and vibrancy.
It is not enough "to feel like a new man." We must become new men. And that is exactly the function of the Spirit of God. It is unfortunate that a lot of pseudo-sophisticates in our day dismiss what we have been saying as a species of wishful or fanciful thinking. They are content to believe that they are big enough to bear all of the problems of life without help from God. They think that "all of this talk about the Spirit" has been concocted and dreamed up by mental weaklings.
But life has a way of catching up with us. When we played marbles as boys we spoke about "taking roundings," which meant that we moved around the ring and got into a position from which we could shoot a rival out of the ring. And life does not remain static. It "takes roundings" on us. The cumulative tensions stretch us taut on the inside and break us. The rug is jerked out from under us when we think we are standing firm. We are kicked out of the plane without the parachute of faith. We wanted to be free and now we take a free fall!
The wisecracks about religion fail us when we crack up ourselves. In his book Modern Man in Search of A Soul, Dr. Carl Jung writes, "I should like to call attention to the following facts. During the past thirty years, people from all civilized countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients...Among all my patients in the second half of life--that is to say, over thirty-five--there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on
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As I write I cannot forget a girl in a midwestern college. When I first met her on a speaking trip she was a gay drop-out from Christianity. She came up to taunt me and tell me that she thought I was a quaint throwback to medieval times, and she didn't think there was anyone else like me on earth. She couldn't understand why I was so positive and unrelentingly certain about God and why I insisted upon an ethical soul slant and mental bent which was based upon an absolute.
She went the route and had her fling, laughing at old fuddy-duddies who still talked about such things as faith and hope, as if they were real. Drinking, gambling, toying with sex and using her body like a passport to the dream world of popularity, she came to the end of life's alley. And it was bricked up and she was walled in. Jilted by the man who had impregnated her, disillusioned, bitter, helpless and hopeless, sick and vomiting, she decided to end it all.
But she decided while her eyes were red with weeping and the sobs were catching in her throat, that she would call and confess she had been wrong and now it was too late. She then expected to gulp down a handful of "goodnight" capsules and go the way of all flesh. But I convinced her that man's extremity was God's opportunity, and prayed for her over the telephone, talking to God for her while she listened. She is now back in the fold. She came in out of the cold. Here's a brief quote from one of her letters:
"I'm home again, home with God and the angels, with the Spirit in my soul and heaven in my heart. I'm home with my parents, with Dad and Mother, and it is wonderful to have peace and a clear conscience from God's forgiveness." She is right, so right, and I am glad that she found the way home through the Spirit! Home is where the heart is!