The New Testament reveals that Christ is deeply related to our inner being and desires to have a subjective relationship with us; in Gal. 1:15-16 in particular, we see that it pleased God to reveal His Son in Paul and also in us – it pleases God to reveal His Son in us! Amen!
This week we come to the book of Galatians to see the main aspects of Christ for us to enjoy, experience, and express in this book, and the title is, The One who is Formed in the Believers.
In the Old Testament, God was outside His seekers, His people, and He could not get into them; He could only move them to do things for Him or speak things for Him.
However, in the New Testament, God is not merely objective, outside of us, but He is subjective, within us, being experienced by us. Amen!
We want to see the pathway of the Christian life and walk that we are on, as seen in the New Testament, so that we may enjoy, experience, and express Christ.
In the book of Galatians, Paul has a particular burden and makes certain emphasis, but the main thing is the same: he wants to present the Christ who is revealed in us, living in us, and being formed in us.
God in Christ in the New Testament is subjective to us; He doesn’t just want us to worship Him and obey Him but even more, to know Him subjectively and be filled with Him.
We need to realize our need in relation to our experience of Christ; He needs to grow in us and our experience of Christ needs to be uplifted so that we may have a real enjoyment of Christ.
And all this is for us to express Christ. We don’t just enjoy and experience Christ for us to go on with the Lord and live a proper Christian life; our enjoyment and experience of Christ is for us to express Christ.
Why do we need to experience and express Christ? It is so that we may express Christ. Christ wants to express Himself through us.
First, He is revealed in us, then He lives in us and makes His home in our hearts, and finally, He is formed in us, so that we express Christ. We believers in Christ need to express the Christ we enjoy and experience.
There’s a great need today on earth for the expression of Christ. Many Christians simply express themselves, and then they mention God’s name so that we know they are Christians; this is not the expression of Christ.
God created man in His image and according to His likeness so that man would experience God, enjoy God, and express God by partaking of what God is to be constituted with God and live out God. It is God’s purpose for us to express Christ, and we can express Him only by first experiencing and enjoying Him.
Christ is Deeply Related to our Being and Desires to have a Subjective Relationship with Us
The entire New Testament shows us that Christ is deeply related to our inner being, for He desires to have a subjective relationship with us. In particular, as we come to the book of Galatians, in Gal. 1:15-16 we see that it pleases God to reveal His Son in us.
Then in 2:20 we are told that Christ lives in us, and in 4:19 we see that Christ is formed in us. Paul doesn’t tell us to read the Bible and obey God’s word, and then God will bless us; rather, he says that it pleases God to reveal His Son in us.
Paul tells us that we were crucified with Christ and it is now no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us.
Furthermore, the Christ who lives in us is also being formed in us so that we may be conformed to the image of Christ. May we come to the Lord in His word day by day with this in view, realizing that Christ is deeply related to our being and desires to have a subjective relationship with us.
It is God’s intent and pleasure for His Son to be revealed in us. It is God’s intent and pleasure for His Christ to live in us and to be formed in us.
We are all in this process in which we don’t follow some outward forms but we have Christ revealed in us, Christ growing in us, Christ living in us, and Christ being formed in us.
God’s heart’s desire in His salvation is that we would cooperate with Him to such an extent that He can be formed in us and expressed through us.
What a wonderful and glorious thing this is! If we see this, if we see that Christ wants to be deeply related to our inner being and desires to have a subjective relationship with us, we will be revolutionised in our Christian life.
Knowing this and seeing this changes the nature of our understanding of the Christian life. Living a Christian life is not a matter of behavior.
It is not a matter of ethics or morality, nor is it a matter of trying to improve ourselves so that we may please God.
The Christian life is a living that expresses God. For this, God wants to have a subjective relationship with us; He wants us not merely to know about Him or to have a lot of sound doctrines and keep the ordinances, but He wants to be revealed in us, grow in us, live in us, and be formed in us.
If we read all the sixty-six books of the Bible we see that the central point in the divine thought in the holy word is the wonderful divine Spirit coming into the human spirit to mingle Himself as one spirit with us.
This is the key to God’s economy, this is the key to our Christian life, and this is the secret of the universe. Wow!
The center of the sixty-six books of the Bible is that God as the Spirit, joins Himself and mingles Himself with our human spirit to be one mingled spirit so that we would be one with God and God would be one with us.
The Bible speaks of many things, but the main point is that God in Christ went through a process to become a life-giving Spirit to come into our spirit and mingle Himself with our spirit as one spirit. It is easy, however, to just have an objective knowledge of God, knowing a lot of things about God and His word.
However, God wants to not just objectively know Him but even more, have the subjective enjoyment and experience of God so that we may express God.
We need to experience Christ, enjoy Christ, and express Christ; this is very subjective.
May we open to the Lord and ask Him to deliver us from merely knowing about Him or knowing Him in an objective way. May we learn to know God in a subjective way in our daily Christian life.
Lord, enlighten us to see that Christ is deeply related to our inner being! May we realize that Christ desires to have a subjective relationship with us. Amen, Lord, we open to You today. Turn us from mere objective knowledge of God to subjective enjoyment of Christ. Save us from merely knowing about God and His word and bring us into a deeper, more subjective experience and enjoyment of Christ. Oh, it pleases God to reveal His Son in us! Amen, Lord Jesus, be revealed in us today! We want to know You subjectively and intimately. Praise the Lord, Christ grows in us, Christ lives in us, and Christ is being formed in us! Amen, Lord, keep us in the subjective knowledge and experience of Christ so that we may have Christ revealed in us, growing in us, living in us, and being formed in us! May we go on with the Lord in our walk with Him by having a personal relationship with Him. May we develop and deepen our subjective relationship with the Lord day by day!
It Pleases God to Reveal His Son in us – Christ is Revealed in us for us to Know Him, Receive Him as our Life, and Become Sons of God
Gal. 1:15-16 says, But when it pleased God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me. God revealed His Son to Paul and to us. He reveals His Son in us.
It pleases God to reveal His Son in us. Not just to us but in us. This is a subjective and inward matter.
If we consider our experience, we realize that each one of us had at least one time in which God revealed Christ in us. If we can’t point to the reality of this experience, then we need to deal with the Lord.
We need to ask Him to reveal Christ in us. Saul of Tarsus used to persecute those who called on the name of the Lord, and he was on the way to Damascus to bind them and put them in prison.
At that time, on the road to Damascus, Christ appeared to him. He didn’t just see Christ with his physical eyes; the Father was pleased to reveal His Son in him.
When Saul saw Christ, he was captured by His appearing, and he became Paul the apostle. Many years after his conversion, Paul declared that it pleased God to reveal His Son in him.
This revelation was not merely something outward, an outward vision that was bright to the extent that it blinded him, but something inward, an inward seeing of Christ.
Such a seeing qualified Paul and made him an apostle so that he might present the very Christ who had been revealed in him. When Christ is revealed in us, the course of our life is changed.
When God reveals His Son in us, we will announce Him to others as the gospel, for it pleased God to reveal His Son in us.
The word “reveal” is crucial and of utmost importance. In the book of Galatians, we see Paul dealing with the Judaic religion and its influence on the saints; he was battling religion because the religious thought and mentality had overtaken the Galatian believers.
Even though they had received the gospel from Paul, yet some Judaizers had come in and influenced them to come back to the law and circumcision.
In Paul’s estimation, he spoke of religion as the present evil age, which was there overtaking genuine believers so they would lose sight of the gospel. Oh Lord Jesus!
We fight the same battle today, for if Christ is not revealed in us in a fresh way, we will be under the influence of religion.
During a period of fifteen hundred years, from the time of Moses to the coming of John the Baptist, Judaism was fully established as a religion.
Today, Christianity as a religion is even older than Judaism was at the time of the Lord Jesus. The Lord has tolerated this religious situation for a long time, but He will not tolerate it for much longer.
We need to see that, unless we have the fresh and present revelation of Christ in us, unless we live Christ and Christ is formed in us, we live in a religion and are religious people.
Just as it was impossible for Paul to be released from the religion of Judaism without God’s revelation, it is also impossible for us to be kept away from today’s religion, Christianity, without God’s revelation! Wow!
We need to have Christ revealed in us. This should be not just something that happens once at the time of our regeneration; day by day we need to have a fresh revelation of Christ in us.
As we live our Christian life, serve the Lord, and meet in the church life, we need to have a revelation of Christ day by day, even moment by moment, otherwise we live in religion.
To reveal is to make something known, to divulge, or to show plainly and display something that has been kept secret.
In the New Testament, the word “revealed” is used in a profound manner, and this revelation is related to our spirit (Rom. 1:17; 8:18; 1 Cor. 2:10; 1 Pet. 1:5; 5:1).
God reveals Christ to us in our Spirit through the Spirit. In the Old Testament, Job said, I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye has seen You (John 42:5).
Unless God reveals His Son in us, we merely live in a religion, doing our best to do th egood and reject the evil so that we may please God, yet without Christ. Oh Lord Jesus!
God’s revealing His Son to us is IN US; it is not outward but inward, not by an outward vision but an inward seeing.
When we see Christ, we are captured by Him, and we will no longer live in a religious way but rather, we will have a personal, subjective, inward relationship with Him, allowing Him to grow in us, live in us, and be formed in us.
In Paul’s case, the gospel he received through the revelation of Christ is the center of God’s revelation in the New Testament (Rom. 1:1, 9).
This gospel is a revelation of the Triune God processed to become the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17; Gal. 3:2, 5, 14).
The gospel is centered on the Triune God being our life so that we may be one with God organically to be the Body of Christ expressing Him corporately (Rom. 8:11; 12:4-5; Eph. 1:22-23).
Hallelujah for this wonderful gospel which is revealed to us in spirit!
The focal point of the gospel revealed to Paul is God Himself in His Trinity becoming the processed, all-inclusive Spirit to be life and everything to us for our enjoyment so that he and we may be one to express Him for eternity (Gal. 4:4, 6; 3:13-14, 26-28; 6:15).
When Christ is revealed in us, when we see the Son of God as the embodiment and expression of the Father being subejctively revealed to us (John 1:18; 14:9-11; Heb. 1:3), we will take Him and receive Him as our life (John 10:10; 1 John 5:13; Col. 3:4) and we become children of God.
This is what God desires: that Christ is revealed in us for us to know Him, receive Him as our life (John 17:3; 3:16), and become the sons of God (1:12; Gal. 4:5-6).
May we open to the Lord again and again so that we may have a fresh revelation of Christ as the Son of God in us.
Thank You, Father, for revealing Your Son in us! Hallelujah, God is pleased to reveal His Son in us. We open to You, Lord. We don’t want to merely live our Christian life according to what we know about God from the Bible; we want to live one spirit with You today! Oh, may we have a fresh revelation of Christ as the Son of God in us! Amen, Lord, remove any veils from our eyes so that we may see You face to face! May Christ as the Son of God be revealed in us. May we be delivered from merely having an objective knowledge of Christ to having an inward seeing of the wonderful person of Jesus Christ! We turn our heart to You today. We exercise our spirit to contact You. We want to no longer live in a religious way, being influenced by the religious Christianity today to do good, obey the word of God, and have a code of ethics and morality. May we have a fresh revelation of Christ as the Son of God in us! Amen, Lord Jesus, be revealed in us today!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ray Mulligan in the message for this week, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 324 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ (2) (2024 December Training), week 19 (msg. 7), The One Who Is Formed in the Believers.
- Similar articles on this topic:
– Christ living in us and we being in Him, a portion from, The Experience of Christ in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee.
– How You Can Have the Excellency of the Knowledge of Christ, via, Holding to Truth.
– Galatians (Program #4) – The Revelation of God’s Son in Us, via, Bible study radio.
– Christ being formed in us, a portion from, The Crucified Christ, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee.
– Magnifying Christ in the Midst of Turmoil, via, Shepherding Words.
– Christ in Us, Our Hope of Glory, via, New Jerusalem blog.
– The indwelling, pneumatic Christ as revealed in the Epistles of Paul, article by Ed Marks in, Affirmation and Critique.
– The True Nature of Our Relationship with the Lord Jesus, via, Bibles for America blog.
– What is the All-inclusive Christ? More via, The Hearing of Faith.
– Exercising Our Spirit to Contact the Reality of the Bible and to Know Christ Practically, via, Living to Him. - Hymns on this topic:
– It is God’s intent and pleasure / To have Christ revealed in me, / Nothing outward as religion, / But His Christ within to be. / It is God’s intent and pleasure / That His Christ be wrought in me; / Nothing outwardly performing, / But His Christ my all to be. (Hymns #538 stanza 1 and chorus)
– Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace! / The Christ who’s all within me lives. / With Him I have been crucified; / This glorious fact to me He gives. / Now it’s no longer I that live, / But Christ the Lord within me lives. (Hymns #499 stanza 1)
– Oh, Lord, grant us revelation, / Grant us light and sight to see / That as life, within our spirit, / Thou art our reality; / And that from within our spirit, / Now You must possess each part / Spreading out to all our being, / Making home in all our heart. (Hymns #1136 stanza 1)
About aGodMan
The Conclusion of the New Testament, p. 3257, by Witness Lee
The New Testament reveals that Christ is deeply related to our inner being and desires to have a subjective relationship with us.
First, it pleases God to reveal His Son in us. Not just to us but in us. God reveals His Son in us so that we know Him subjectively, receive Him as our life, and become sons of God.
Amen Lord! Thank You Father God to reveal His in to us to be sons of God to know God. Keep us open vessels to receive and enjoy Christ for Your expression!
Amen! It pleases God to reveal His Son subjectively in us, not just outwardly to us. May we remain open to receiving inward seeing of Jesus so that He and we may be one to express Him for eternity.
Amen, Lord, May Christ be revealed in us.
Not outward but inward, Christ is revealed to us in a personal way to open the veil to show what is hidden from our view.
The all-inclusive Life-giving Spirit is revealed to us to be one with us for the expression of Christ.
Nothing is more pleasing to God, may Christ be revealed more in us today
Amen, brother. Thank you Father God for giving us your Son.may we know Him subjectivity, receive Him as our life,and become sons of God.
Ameen!!!
Nothing is more pleasing and precious to God than the unveiling, the revelation, of the living Person of the Son of God in us.
Ameen. Thank You Father🙏🙏🙏
Amen. Revelation is the opening of the veil in order to reveal somthing hidden.
We need a continuous revelation of Christ as our person, so that we could become one with Him and that He would be everything to us.
Love that Christ reveals himself to us.
Thank You, Lord, for the inner subjective revelation of Your Son in us 4 our living and expression of the invisible God in Christ!!
Occupy our lives with Your desire, Lord!!
Just as it pleased God who set apart and called Paul to reveal His Son in Him subjectively, so we need this revelation, the inward seeing, that the Son of the Living God, God Himself in His divine Trinity processed to be the All-inclusive Spirit, is in us to be our life and everything to us that we may express Him as we enjoy Him. Lord, increase such a seeing in us so that the gospel we announce to others is according to our revelation of You as a real and living person! Amen.