«　WEEK 5　DAY 1　»

　　Eph. 3:16-17 That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man, that Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love.

　　In order for Christ to make His home in our heart, we need to take Him not only as our life but also as our person. Because the church is not only the Body with Christ as life but also the new man with Christ as the person, Paul in Ephesians 3:17 emphasizes the importance of Christ's making His home in our heart. Paul prayed that the believers would take Christ as their person by allowing Him to make His home in their heart. When Christ is in our spirit, He is our life, but when Christ spreads into our heart, He becomes our person. We need to take Christ not only as life in our spirit but also as the person in our heart. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, p. 3390)

　　The genuine church life is the issue of Christ personally making His home in our heart to occupy every corner of our inner being. The content of the church is the Christ whom we take as our person, the Christ who is wrought into our being. In order for Christ's word in Matthew 16:18 concerning the building up of the church to be fulfilled, the church must enter into a state where many saints allow Christ to make His home in their heart, possessing, occupying, and saturating their entire inner being. The more Christ occupies our inner being, the more we will be able to be built up with others in the Body (Eph. 2:21-22; 4:16). The reality of the Body life is such an inner experience of the indwelling Christ. The Body of Christ is the consummation of our enjoyment of the unsearchable riches of Christ and the consummation of the experience of the unlimited Christ making His home in our entire inward being. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate issue of Christ making His home in our heart. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, p. 3391)

　　David wanted to build God a house of cedar, but God wanted to build Himself in Christ into David. What God would build into David would be both God's house and David's house. This mutual abode is also unveiled in John 14:23: "If anyone loves Me, ...My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him." This abode will be not only for the Triune God but also for us. What God builds up in us is both God's habitation and our habitation.

　　We need to realize that God will have a habitation not by our doing or working but by His building. Christ builds the church (Matt. 16:18) by coming into our spirit and spreading Himself from our spirit into our mind, emotion, and will to occupy our entire soul. This church will become His habitation and our habitation. This is what we need, and our burden is to emphasize this one thing. (Life-study of 1 & 2 Samuel, p. 169)

　　The key factor of how the church will be built up is the inner experience of the indwelling Christ. The gifted persons do not minister gifts to the saints; they only minister the unsearchable riches of Christ, which they have experienced, that the saints might be perfected in Christ and grow up into Him. If we read Ephesians 3 and 4 carefully and pray-read them before the Lord, I believe He will give us the vision to see that this is the only way for the church to be built up.

　　I must repeat again that the church is not built up by knowledge and gifts. The more knowledge we have, the more divisions we will have; and the more gifts we have, the more trouble we will have. It is only by the inner experience of Christ as life that we can have the reality of the church life. The inner man must be strengthened so that Christ will make His home in our hearts and we will grow up into Him in all things. Then we will be filled unto all the fullness of God, by whom we will be built together into a dwelling place of God in spirit. (The Way to Build Up the Church, p. 20)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1983, vol. 1, "The Subjective Experience of the Indwelling Christ," ch. 4; The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 338