My God and My Country

Christ in the Heart

By Alexander Maclaren; Edited by Doktor Riktor Von Zhades

17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith: 18 That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all Saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height: 19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all fullness of God
The Epistle to the Ephesians 3:17-19

Open the Door Through Which Christ Comes in to Dwell

Faith is here represented as the means or condition through which this dwelling takes effect. To have but to believe in Him and He comes, drawn from Heaven, and enters into the heart to abide here within us.

Trust in Him is faith, "I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit." Rivers do not run on the mountain tops, but down in the valleys. So the heart that is lifted up and self-complacent has no dew of His blessing resting upon it, but has the curse of Gilboa adhering to its barrenness ; but the low lands, the humble and the lowly hearts, are they in which the waters that go softly, scoop their course, and diffuse their blessings. Faith therefore is trust in Him, and not in ourselves.

Never in the history of the world has it been or can it be that a longing towards Him shall be a longing thrown back unsatisfied upon itself. You have but to trust, and you possess. We open the door for the entrance of Christ by the simple act of faith, and blessed be His name ! He can squeeze Himself through a very little chink, and He does not require that the gates should be flung wide open in order that, with some of His blessings, He may come in.

Christianity of the false sort has much to say about the indwelling of God in the soul, but it spoils all its teaching by insisting upon it that the condition on which God dwells in the soul is the soul's purifying itself to receive Him. But you cannot cleanse your hearts so as to bring Christ into them, you must let Him come and cleanse them by the process of His coming, and fit them thereby for His own indwelling. And, assuredly, He will so come, purging us from our evil and abiding in our hearts.

But do not forget that the faith which brings Christ into the spirit must be a faith which works by love if it is to keep Christ in the spirit. You cannot bring that Lord into your hearts by anything that you do. The man that cleanses his own soul by his own strength, and so expects to draw God into it, has made the mistake which Christ pointed out when He told us that when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man he leaves his house empty, though it be swept and garnished. Moral reformation may turn out the devils, it will never bring in God. And in the emptiness of the swept and garnished heart there is an invitation to the seven to come back again and fill it.

And whilst that is true, remember, on the other hand, that a Christian man can drive away his Master by evil works. The sweet song-birds and the honey-making bees are said always to desert a neighborhood before a pestilence breaks out in it. And if I may so say, similar quick to feel the first breath of the pestilence is the presence of the Christ which cannot dwell with evil. You bring Christ into your heart by faith, without any work at all ; you keep Him there by a faith which produces holiness.