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Christ should have the preeminence in our tripartite being—Col. 1:27; 3:4, 10-11, 15-16:
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We worship the enthroned Christ in the heavens, but we experience, enjoy, and partake of the indwelling Christ in our spirit; we are one with Him in a very subjective way—v. 1; 1 Cor. 6:17; Eph. 3:17:
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The Christ who indwells us is not a small, limited Christ but the all-inclusive, extensive, preeminent Christ—Col. 1:15-16, 18-19.
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We need to be infused, saturated, and permeated with the all-inclusive, extensive, preeminent Christ until in our experience He is everything to us—2:16-17; 3:4, 10-11.
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Because Christ is our life, all He has and all He has attained and obtained become subjective to us; universally, Christ is extensive, but in our experience, He is our life, our being—v. 4; Rom. 8:34, 10.
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The content and constituent should only be the all-inclusive, extensive Christ—Col. 3:10-11.
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We should allow Christ to fill our entire being and replace every aspect of our natural life with Himself—Eph. 3:17; Col. 3:10-11.
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Christ should have the preeminence in our spiritual experiences—1:18, 27; 2:9-13, 20; 3:1-4:
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The history of Christ is the experience of the Christian, and the experience of Christ is the history of the Christian—1 Cor. 1:30; Rom. 6:3-5; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 2:5-6:
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The history of Christ becomes our experience and our spiritual history—John 14:19b; Gal. 2:20.
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In the organic union with Christ, whatever Christ passed through has become our history—John 15:1, 4-5.
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In Colossians a number of phrases point to our experience of Christ; these expressions give us a complete picture of the proper experience of Christ—1:27-28; 2:6, 8, 13, 19-20.
Morning Nourishment
Col. 1:27 To whom God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.3:4 When Christ our life is manifested, then you also will be manifested with Him in glory.
Christ must become everything to us in our daily living. The Christ who is the expression of God and the mystery of God’s economy now lives in us. The Christ who indwells us is not a small, limited Christ. He is the One who is the image of the invisible God, the embodiment of the fullness of God, and the focal point of God’s economy. Such a Christ now dwells in us and is waiting for the opportunity to spread Himself throughout our being. We need to live by Him moment by moment.... All the room within us should be given over to the all-inclusive Christ who dwells in us to be our hope of glory. If we see such a vision of the indwelling, all-inclusive Christ, we shall spontaneously drop our culture....Once we see this vision, the culture within us will be replaced by Christ. (Life-study of Colossians, p. 309)
Today’s Reading
The extensive, all-inclusive Christ revealed in Colossians is subjective to us, for He dwells in us as our hope of glory (Col. 1:27), and He is our life (3:4). Nothing can be more subjective to us than our own life. In fact, our life is us. To say that Christ is our life means that Christ becomes us. How could Christ be our life without actually becoming us?Some Christian teachers oppose the revelation we have seen concerning the subjective experience of Christ. According to them, we deify ourselves, we make ourselves God. They claim that we teach that the self becomes the same as God and that this is self-deification. Although we definitely do not teach that we become God Himself or that we shall ever be worshipped as deity, it is nonetheless true that Christ dwells in us and that He is our life. He becomes us in our experience. As Paul says, “To me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21)....Life is our very being. Hence, for Christ to be our life means that He becomes our being. For Christ to become our being is for Christ to become us.
To us, Christ is both objective and subjective. We know Christ both according to doctrine and according to experience. On the one hand, our Christ is on the throne in the heavens. On the other hand, He is in our spirit. We worship the enthroned Christ in the heavens, but we experience, enjoy, and partake of the indwelling Christ in our spirit. We are one with Him in a very subjective way. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:17, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Christ is subjective to us to such a degree that He and we, we and He, have become one spirit. To be one spirit with the Lord is greater than to have gifts and miracles. Now that we have become one spirit with the Lord, in our daily life we need to experience being one spirit with Him.
Some years ago I stayed with some saints who talked a lot about Colossians 1:27. Although they could speak of the indwelling Christ as the hope of glory, they had very little experience of Christ. To them, the indwelling Christ was merely a doctrine, not a reality. In their practical daily living, they were ethical and religious, but they did not live Christ. Even their love was a natural, ethical love, not the expression of Christ lived out from within them. In these believers you could see religion and ethics, but you could not see much of Christ.... Many Christians today... know Christ in doctrine, but they have very little genuine experience of Him. However, when Paul wrote the book of Colossians, he wrote both according to doctrine and according to experience. (Life-study of Colossians, pp. 443-444)
Further Reading: Life-study of Colossians, msgs. 36, 51; CWWL, 1973-1974, vol. 1, “The Indwelling Christ in the Canon of the New Testament,” ch. 16