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Within or The Kingdom of God is Whithin You
By Andrew Murray
Note: the first three Addresses contained in this volume were delivered at the Mowbray Convention,
Cape of Good Hope, and have since been revised and corrected by the author. 1897.
Contents
I. The Kingdom of God
II. The Indwelling of God
III. Jesus Christ in You
IV. Daily Fellowship with God
Oh! my beloved fellow Christians, this is the salvation Christ has won for us: a
deliverance from self by a death to it in the death of the cross; a restoration to the life
we were created for, with our heart a home for God.
And how now are we to become partakers of this salvation? Look once again in
the light of this blessed truth of the divine indwelling at Pentecost and the coming of
the Holy Spirit. Have you realised what the meaning is of God's sending the Holy
Spirit into our hearts? It is nothing less than this – Christ who had been with the
disciples on earth, but not in them, came back to them in the Spirit, now to dwell in
them just as He had before dwelt with them.
All that we read of the wonderous
change that came over the disciples – their selfishness changed into love, their pride
into humility, their fear of suffering into boldness and joy, their unbelief into fulness
of faith, their feebleness into power – as owing to this one thing – the glorified Christ
had come to dwell within them as their life. That was the joy of Pentecost in heaven:
God regained possession of His temple, and could now again dwell in men as He had
meant of which Christ had said that it should be broken down, was the temple of His
body, in its connection with our sin laid upon Him. The temple He was to build in
three days was His resurrection body, with its holy, heavenly life. In union with it we
are now the temple of the living God. The Holy Spirit takes possession in the name of
the Three-One God; and the Father and the Son come to make abode with us.
When we look at the great promise – "I will dwell in them" – and its fulfilment at
Pentecost, we are reminded of the great difference between the preparatory working
of the Spirit in conversion and regeneration, and His Pentecostal indwelling. The
former every Christian must have: without that there is no life. The life may be feeble
and sickly, still where there is life, it is the Spirit's working. But that is only to
prepare the temple. Pentecost is the glory of God filling the temple, God coming to
abide. Let us believe that the promise can and will be fulfilled.
One more thought. In the light of our text look at the state of the Church of Christ.
How many believers there are of whom one would never say that their hearts are a
temple that God has cleansed, and where He dwells. How much there is of coldness
and worldliness, and selfishness and sin, and inconsistency of profession, that makes
one sometimes doubt whether there are Christians at all. The state of Christ's Church
is sad indeed. How little zeal for God's honour, delight in His fellowship, devotion to
His service and kingdom, how little of a life in the power of the Holy Spirit. It surely
manifests that promise "I will dwell in them" has never been understood, or believed,
or claimed by a large majority of Christians.
Let me ask, Have you claimed it? Do you seek to live it out? If not, the one great
object of our Convention is to set before you this blessed life to which God has
redeemed you, to urge and to help you to enter upon it and walk in it.
Need I tell you what the way is. Begin by confessing how little you have even
sought to live as God's temple. Think of how it must have grieved the love of your
Father, that after all He had done through His Son and the Spirit to get His abode
again, you have cared so little to know about it or seek for it. Confess, too, your
helplessness. You have tried to be better than you are, and you have failed. You must
fail, until you receive His word that nothing less is needed, nothing less is offered,
than that God Himself become the strength of your life.
Set your heart upon the blessing. You know how desire is the great moving power
of the world. Fix your desire upon this divine, this wonderous grace: "I will dwell in
them." Let no thought of your unworthiness or feebleness discourage you. Here is
something that is impossible with man: but with God it is possible. He can and will
fulfil His promise. Let it become the one desire of your heart. Understand that this is
the salvation the Holy Spirit brings you as soon as you are ready to give up all for it.
As soon as the heart is ready to lose all, to be emptied of all, to be cleansed of all that
is of self or nature, the promise will surely be fulfilled – "I will dwell in them, and I
will be their God."
"Wherefore," hear now the words that follow immediately on my text: "Wherefore
come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the
unclean thing, and I will receive you." Come out from all that is of the world and a
worldly religion, from all that is inconsistent with the holy privilege of being God's
holy temple and dwelling. Come out and be separate, take your stand as one who is
going to live a life different from the crowd around you, be separate unto God and His
will. "And touch not the unclean thing" – be as a cleansed temple where nothing that
defiles in the very least may enter – be wholly for God and holy to God – and He will
make His word good: "I will dwell in you." He Himself will reveal and impart and
maintain within you all that the promise means.
Believer! will you accept of this full salvation? Will you do it now? I pray you,
reject not this wonderful love. Oh! let your God have you, to satisfy His love and
yours by dwelling in you. This moment accept it, and you can trust Him to work it in
you. Amen.
III. Jesus Christ in You
The words from which I wish to speak to you this evening, will take us back to the
subject that we had last night. It is one of such deep importance – the indwelling of
God – one to which believers are in many cases so unaccustomed, and one which,
even when its truth is accepted, cannot be apprehended in its fulness all at once, that it
may be well to come back to it again. My text is 2 Cor. Xiii. 5: "Examine yourselves
whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves how
that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?"
Every thoughtful Bible-reader knows that the state of the Corinthian Church was a
very sad one. There were terrible sins among them, and both epistles are full of
sorrow and reproof. At the close of the second epistle, Paul sums up all his pleadings
in this one question! Do you not know? I fear you do not, or you would live
differently; do you not know that if you are not entirely reprobate, Jesus Christ is in
you? Even as the text of last night, the words teach us that the great truth that will lift
a Christian out of sin and sloth is the promise of God's indwelling, the consciousness
that Jesus Christ is in us.
Know ye not your own selves? Every Christian needs to know himself. Not only
his own sinfulness and helplessness, but much more, the divine miracle that has taken
place within him and made him the temple and dwelling of the three-one God. Do
learn above everything to know your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you. There are
in every Christian community numbers who are living a low and feeble life, without
joy or power over sin, or influence to bless others. To all such the message of [the
apostle] Paul comes; pause and listen, and take in the wonderous thought, that will be
to you both the motive and the power to an entirely new life: Christ is in you. If you
but learn to believe this, and to give away to it, and to yield yourself to Him, He will
do His mighty saving work in you.
You see how we here get at once to the two great questions that occupy us at a
Convention like this. The one is, How is it that so many Christians fail? To this the
answer comes: They do not know aright that Jesus Christ is in them. Not one of us
could live a worldly life, could give way to pride and selfishness and temper, could so
grieve the Holy Spirit of God, if he knew, indeed, that Jesus Christ was in him. The
effect of this knowledge would be simply wonderful. On the one hand, it would
solemnise and humble, and draw man to say: I cannot bear the thought of grieving the
Christ within me.
On the other hand, it would encourage and strengthen him to say:
Praise God I have Jesus Christ within me, He will live my life for me. May God bring
us to the confession of how much we have lost because we lacked this faith, and teach
us to pray much that from moment to moment our life may be: Jesus Christ in us.
Then comes the other question. If I find that I have not known and lived this life,
am I ready to say to-night: Henceforth, by the grace of God, I will. I can rest content
with nothing less than the full experience, Jesus Christ is in me? Let us but come in
deep poverty and emptiness: He who did the work for us so perfectly on Calvary
undertakes to do it in our hearts too.
May God by the Holy Spirit, reveal to each of us
all the He means us to enjoy. I noticed in our meeting this afternoon many young
people: I want to speak as simply as possible, so as to help the very youngest
Christian to some right apprehension of this blessed life that God has prepared for us.
I want to answer some of the questions that may have suggested themselves last night
to those to whom this indwelling of God appears something too high and strange. Let
us listen in the faith that God Himself will teach us.
Let me say, in the first place, if you would know the power of this life: Believe in
and accept the indwelling Christ. Let me ask you the question: Do you fully and truly
believer in the indwelling Christ? You do believe in an incarnate Christ. When the
name of Christ is mentioned, you at once think of One who was born a little babe at
Bethlehem, who took our nature upon Him and lived as a man upon the earth. That
thought is inseparable from your faith in Him. You believe, too, in the crucified
Christ, dying on Calvary for our sins. You believe, too, in the risen Saviour, one who
lives for evermore. And you believe in the glorified Lord, now sitting on the throne of
heaven.
But do you believe as definitely – as naturally – in the indwelling Christ?
Have you made that one of the articles of your faith, as really as you believe in Christ
incarnate or Christ crucified? It is only as the truth is accepted and held that the others
can really profit. The experience of the love and the saving power of our incarnate,
crucified, glorified Lord depends entirely upon His indwelling in us to reveal His
presence and to do His work. If you find you life feeble or sickly, you may be assured
that it is because you do not know that Jesus Christ is in you. Do come to-night and
begin at once to say: I want with my whole heart to get possessed of this wonderful
knowledge, not as a doctrine, but as an experience; Jesus Christ is in me. Begin to
believe it at once. Accept of Him, even now, as an indwelling Saviour. Day by day be
content with nothing less than the blessed consciousness of His indwelling presence.
He loves to reveal Himself.
Continued
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