JESUS ‘AT HOME’ IN US

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on February 26, 2023 under 2023 |

Bethany Bible Church Sunday Sermon Message; February 26, 2023 from Ephesians 3:17

Theme: We should ongoingly allow Jesus to make Himself ‘completely at home’ in every area of our hearts.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

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Over the past while, we’ve been studying together from the words of a prayer.

It’s been a very good prayer to study. It’s found in the third Chapter of the New Testament letter to the Ephesians. And it’s the prayer that the apostle Paul prayed for his dear brothers and sisters in Christ in the ancient city of Ephesus.

For much of the first half of this wonderful letter, Paul had been writing to tell them about all of the rich blessings that were already theirs—as a gift of God’s grace—in Christ. But it wasn’t enough that he just told them about these things. He also wanted the truth of these things to sink in deeply, and transform them into practical ways of Christian living. And so, he prayed that the heavenly Father would also give them certain other things that they needed. In Ephesians 3:14-19, he wrote;

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:14-19).

Do you see the end goal of it all? It’s stated in verse 19. He wanted his fellow believers to “be filled with all the fullness of God”. He wanted them to fully experience all the blessedness that comes from a relationship with the heavenly Father through faith in Jesus His Son. And so, he prayed for certain things to be given to them—three things in particular—that would enable them to experience that fullness. He prayed (1) that God would grant them inner strength by the Holy Spirit, (2) that Jesus would dwell in their hearts by faith, and (3) that they would comprehend just how much Jesus loved them.

In our last time together in Ephesians, we considered the first thing that Paul mentioned in verse 16; that God would grant his believing friends—“according to His riches in glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man …” We considered how humanly impossible it is to live the Christian life in our own power—how only the Holy Spirit can live that life in and through us. And so, we were encouraged to pray for one another—and for ourselves—that we would increasingly submit to the strengthening work of the Holy Spirit in us to help us to live as God wants us to live.

And this morning, I’d like for us to take up the second thing that Paul prayed for. It’s what we find in verse 17. It’s “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”; or as I like to put it, that Jesus would be allowed to make Himself ‘completely at home’ in us.

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As I was studying this verse the other day, my mind went back to a little pamphlet I read many years ago—very early in my Christian life. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It was written about 70 years ago by a Presbyterian minister named Robert Munger; and it was titled, “My Heart: Christ’s Home”. I’m pretty sure that Pastor Munger drew his inspiration for that pamphlet from what it says in Ephesians 3:17.

In Pastor Munger’s little pamphlet, he tells a story—in the form of an allegory—of how a man invited Jesus into his heart as if inviting Him to come and stay at his home. It changed the man’s life. Everything became bright and joyful because Jesus—the Son of God—now lived within. And in joy, he told Jesus that he wanted Him to feel welcomed and become perfectly at home in his heart. According to the story, Jesus took the man up on his offer. And so, the Lord began to go—as it were—from room to room to make Himself truly at home in the man’s heart.

The man tells of how Jesus first went to the library of his heart—where he kept his thought-life. Jesus looked around at the bookshelves, magazines, and pictures on the wall. But the man was a little embarrassed. There were things there that he wished Jesus wasn’t seeing. And so, he invited Jesus to go through the library and get rid of things that he shouldn’t be reading or looking at. And Jesus did … making Himself at home in the man’s thought life.

Next, he invited Jesus to the dining room of his heart. That was where he kept his appetites and desires. But again, he was grieved by what Jesus found at the table—his love for money, or his interest in secular ideas and worldly philosophies. He was embarrassed that the Lord saw his appetite for such things. And so, once again, he invited Jesus to clean out the dining room of his heart. And Jesus did so … making Himself at home there too.

The man tells of how he invited Jesus from room to room in the ‘house’ of his heart. Jesus went to the living room; and was invited to make Himself welcome in the area of the man’s personal time. Then Jesus went into the workshop; and was invited to make Himself at home in the area of what the man was doing for the work of the kingdom of God. And then, Jesus went into the rec room; and was invited to make Himself at home in the man’s leisure time and friendships. As the story unfolded, the man let Jesus go from room to room in the house of his heart—remove the things that made Him feel unwelcome—and to truly make Himself at home.

But then came the hall closet. One day, Jesus told the man that it seemed there was a peculiar odor in the house. Something smelled bad—as if there was something dead in the house, and it seemed to be coming from the hall closet. The man was ashamed. He knew what it was; and he didn’t want Jesus to go there. In that closet, he had been keeping some things that were left over from his old life of sin. He was ashamed to admit that they were still there and that he was still hanging on to them. He hadn’t wanted to let them go. He gave Jesus access to every other room. But he thought, “Did He really have to go into the hall closet too?” But Jesus could not feel welcome with that smell. Reluctantly, the man gave Jesus the key to that closet. But he told the Lord that he just didn’t have the strength to clean it out himself. Jesus would have to do it. And once he gave Jesus the key, it was done in an instant. He removed the ‘dead thing’ from the past, cleaned the closet, and painted it like new.

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Dear brothers and sisters; I had an experience recently that was something like that. About two weeks ago or so, I was sitting up late at night reading. And suddenly—perhaps because of something I had just read—my mind started to wander back to some things that happened to me in the past. They were things that were done and said to me in my earliest years—painful things that wounded me deeply and that have plagued me all the way into my adult life.

In talking objectively with my wife about these things over the years, we agreed that they’re things that I have allowed to rob me of much of what I could have been in life. I had, at times, become inordinately meek and timid and overly ‘apologetic’ because of them. And just when I think that I’ve gained some kind of victory over them by my own efforts, they would come back suddenly to haunt me again. I hear those old voices saying those old things; and what I hear brings me down into despair and contempt for myself. They leave me angry and resentful. I relive those things in my mind, and I end up wallowing in bitterness. If I may use the analogy of a home, they would be something like the pictures that we sometimes have hanging in the hallway. They would be images of sorrowful past events, portraits of harsh people in my life, hand-embroidered quotes of hurtful words that were said—all kept as reminders of things that scarred me deeply early in my years, and that left wounds that still hurt when touched today.

Well; I closed the book I was reading that night, sat in my chair, and engaged in harsh debates and angry and defensive arguments with people who aren’t even around anymore. It was like a bunch of poison had suddenly risen up in my soul. I felt justified in remembering these awful things; and also in being bitter about them. And it was right then—almost as if out of nowhere, it seemed—that I felt the Lord Jesus speak to me in that quiet voice of His; saying, “How long is this going to go on? Don’t you think we’ve had enough of this?”

He was, in effect, saying that He didn’t feel at home with those pictures on the hallway wall; and He wanted to help me take them down.

Dear brothers and sisters; I had an amazing time of fellowship with the Lord Jesus that evening. In prayer, I went through the memories of those past events—and the hurtful things that were said—and the people who said them. And, as best I could, I brought them—one by one—to Him. He gave me His perspective on them. He helped me to understand how I had—many times—responded in sinful ways to some of those hurtful things. And He taught me about how I should love and forgive the people involved. He helped me to see more clearly that my value was to be found—not in what those other people have said or done—but in Him; and that He had already made me 100% acceptable in the sight of the Father. He taught me that it was time to quit looking at those pictures all the time. He didn’t like seeing them on the wall when He passed by; and He didn’t like the way they affected me. And besides; there was no point in keeping them up anyway, because they didn’t accurately reflect who I was in Him. It was time to hang up pictures of my life with Jesus instead—and to put a big portrait of Him right in the middle of it all.

Now; I know that I have a long way to go yet. This process has only really begun; and I will—no doubt—need to come back to Him repeatedly and ask Him to help me remove more of those pictures. But I tell you about this experience of a couple of weeks ago because it really brought to bear to me the practical value of this verse; where Paul prays “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”. Jesus doesn’t stand outside of my heart—as if He was a distant ‘adviser’ or ‘counselor’ or ‘life coach’. He dwells in me as a permanent resident; and He offers to help me—from the inside—to leave those things behind. But I must take Him up on His offer—and keep on doing so; because otherwise, He will not truly be ‘at home’ in me as He should be.

And so; as this verse helps us to see, we should ongoingly allow Jesus to make Himself ‘completely at home’ in every area of our hearts. That’s what Paul prayed that his readers would do. And that’s what we need to be praying for each other to do.

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Now; look back for a moment at verse 16. In that verse, Paul prayed that God would grant, according to the riches of His grace, that his readers would be “strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man”. And I have grown to appreciate how important that is to what Paul is praying for in verse 17.

It’s humanly impossible for us to go through the remarkable process—in our own power—of allowing Jesus to make Himself completely at home in our hearts. There’s just too much weakness and frailty in us—and sometimes too much of a love for the old sins of the past—to do it on our own. I certainly know that I could never do it on my own; otherwise, I would have done it long ago. We all need the Holy Spirit’s enabling. And praise God that, when we first placed our faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit took up permanent residence in us as the divine Helper. He gives us the strength to welcome Jesus in and make Himself at home.

But in the mystery of the Trinity, it’s not that we must have the Holy Spirit in us first before Jesus can take up residence. The Holy Spirit ministers the presence of Jesus to us in such a way that ‘the indwelling of the Holy Spirit’ also means ‘the indwelling of Christ’. The Bible puts the two realities together. In Romans 8:9-10, Paul wrote about how we cannot please God—in our own strength—through the power of the flesh;

But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness (Romans 8:9-10).

Do you see it? If you don’t have the Holy Spirit, then you don’t belong to Christ. But if you have the Holy Spirit indwelling you, you also already have Christ indwelling you. Jesus Himself even said so. He told His disciples that, after He rose from the dead, He would send the Holy Spirit to dwell in them. And then, immediately afterward, He told them,

“I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18).

So; we can take it by faith that, if the Holy Spirit indwells us, Jesus Himself has already taken up residence in us. And the Holy Spirit helps us to make Jesus increasingly feel at home.

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So then; in the confidence that Jesus already dwells in us as believers, let’s take Paul’s prayer apart just a bit; his prayer “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”. Let’s consider the ‘who’, the ‘what’, the ‘where’, and the ‘how’ of what it tells us.

First, let’s consider ‘who’. And that’s none other than Christ Himself. Paul’s prayer is that Christ Jesus—the Son of God—may increasingly dwell in our hearts. What a wonderful thing that is! Nobody loves us more than Jesus. There’s no one else who has given more of Himself to us than He did—even to the point of dying on the cross for us to take our sins away from us—and even to the point of sharing all of His eternal glory and rich inheritance with us. So; to have Christ dwell in us is to have the closest possible relationship with the One who loves us infinitely—the One who will only ever do us infinite and eternal good!

Think for a moment about what the apostle Paul has already told us about Christ in this letter. In Ephesians 1:3 we’re told that it is by Christ that we have been blessed with “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places”. In verse 6, we’re told that it is by Christ that God has made us “accepted in the Beloved”. In verse 10, we’re told that it’s in Christ that God the Father will “gather all things together in one”. In verses 19 and following, we’re told that it is in Christ that God has demonstrated “the exceeding greatness of His power”. In verse 22, we’re told that God has made Christ “head over all things”. In 2:6, we’re told that God has raised us up with Christ and made us to “sit in the heavenly places” in Him. In 3:12, we’re told that, in Christ, we now have “boldness and access with confidence through faith” before the Father. In 4:10, we’re told that Christ ascended to the Father “that He might fill all things”. In 5:2, we’re told that Christ is “an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma”. And in 5:25-27, we’re told that Christ loved us and gave Himself for us “that He might sanctify and cleanse” us “that He might present” us to Himself a glorious church”. Can there be anything greater than to have this divine Savior and loving Friend—Christ Himself—take up residence in us and dwell in us?

When I think of this, I think of what Paul wrote in Colossians 1:15-20; where he said,

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.

For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross (Colossians 1:15-20).

And to think, dear brothers and sisters, that this Christ is willing to take up residence in you and me!—and in fact does! He wants to make Himself at home in poor, weak, frail sinners like us! No wonder we need the Holy Spirit’s enabling help!

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So; that’s the “who” of this prayer. And now, let’s consider the ‘what’. It’s “that Christ may dwell in your hearts …” Jesus wishes to “dwell” in us.

Now; you may hear that and think, “But wait. You already said that if I’m a believer in Jesus, then the Holy Spirit already indwells me. And if I have the Holy Spirit dwelling in me, I already have Christ dwelling in me. Why, then, would Paul need to pray that Christ will dwell in me?” Well; here’s where the original language of Paul’s letter helps us. I hope that you’ll bear with me as I share with you a couple of details from the Greek text.

First, it helps to know that the word that Paul uses means more than just simply “dwelling”. The word that Paul used is a compound word in the Greek—that is, two Greek words put together. The word oikeō means “to dwell”—as in a house. And the word kata is a preposition that means “down”. It intensifies the verb; so that the word Paul used—katoikeō—means something like “to dwell down” in a deep and permanent way; that is, to really make one’s self at home.

You know—don’t you, dear brothers and sisters—that we can pray a prayer to ask Jesus into our lives. We can truly say that we “know” Jesus as our Savior. We can sincerely say that we have invited Him to take up residence in our hearts; and can truly take it by faith that He has. But it could still be true that we have not yet really made Him feel “at home” there. We can treat Him like ‘a guest’ only; a truly wonderful and blessed guest … but still only ‘a guest’. And He doesn’t want to be merely ‘a guest’. He wants to “dwell down” in our hearts in such a way as to have full and free access and lordship over every area of our inward being. And so; that’s the first thing that it helps to know. What Paul is praying for is that Jesus wouldn’t simply “dwell” in our hearts; but much more than that, that He would “dwell down” in our hearts and be truly at home there.

And a second thing it helps to know is the way that Paul puts this particular word to use. If you want to get technical about it, he puts it in what’s called the aorist ingressive tense. And what this means is that Paul is not describing a ‘once-for-all-time’ kind of past event in which Jesus took up a “deep dwelling” in our hearts. Rather, what he is describing is the beginning of a process. You can translate it this way: “that Christ may begin to dwell-down in your hearts”.

That’s certainly what I found in my own experience. Once Jesus had come to dwell in my heart, my life began to change. But it was only the beginning of the change. At certain points along the way—when He knows best to do so—the Lord Jesus comes to us and, as it were, says that there’s something not right in us. There’s something that He would like for us to get rid of in our lives—or something that He wants us to take up and begin to do—before He can really feel at home in us as He would like. I have felt very strongly that—a couple of weeks ago—He confronted something in my life. Those old pictures in the hallway really needed to go; and His portrait needed to go up instead.

I’m grateful that this is a process; aren’t you? It’s not a matter of ‘instant perfection’. I love how Paul puts this in 2 Corinthians 3:18;

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:18).

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So then; that’s the “what” of Paul’s prayer; that the process of Christ increasingly and ongoingly dwelling-down deeply in our hearts may begin and be carried on in earnest. And that leads us next to the “where” of Paul’s prayer. Where does all this go on? Paul says, “in your hearts”.

This means something more than just mere sentimentality, or a matter of mere feelings. It means something very real—something very substantial. It means that Jesus doesn’t want a mere ‘surface’ relationship with us. He wants to dwell-down deeply in us, and make Himself completely at home in the deepest level of our inner being—where He can have free access and total lordship over everything about us. Proverbs 4:23 says,

Keep your heart with all diligence,
For out of it spring the issues of life (Proverbs 4:23);

and that’s the place in our lives where Jesus wants to dwell-down and be completely ‘at home’—in the very seat of our being from which all the issues of life spring forth. He doesn’t want to just dwell in our religious life. He doesn’t want to just dwell in that part of our lives that we might ‘set apart’ for Him … while we keep the rest for ourselves. That would be to only keep Him as a mere ‘guest’ and not as a fully welcomed ‘occupant’. He wants to dwell in us in the sense that He is fully welcomed into every room—our library, our dining room, our living room, our workroom, our recreation room, and even every closet and into the attic and the basement—so that He is free to do whatever in those rooms He wants to do in order to make Himself truly at home.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ; could it be that the reason so many of us do not experience what it means to be “filled with all the fullness of God”—the reason that we don’t experience the kind of joyful and fulfilling life before God that He wants us to have—is because we have not allowed Jesus to dwell-down into the deep level of our hearts where He wants to be? Could it be that we’re afraid to let Him draw that close to us, because He might clean out things from us that really need to go?

Unless we let Jesus make His home in the deepest level of our heart, we haven’t made Him fully at home in us yet.

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And that leads us to one more thing in Paul’s prayer. We’ve seen the ‘who’, the ‘what’, and the ‘where’. And now, we see the ‘how’. It’s through faith. Paul prays “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”.

You and I will never have to try to earn the unspeakably great honor of having Jesus dwell in our hearts. We never could. He has already made it possible for us by taking all of our sins upon Himself on the cross, and dying in our place. He has already been raised from the dead to show that the Father has accepted His sacrifices for us. The Father has already shown His love for us by giving His Son for us; and Jesus has already demonstrated His love for us by saving us in obedience to the Father. We take it all as a gift of God’s grace to us through faith.

But we must also allow Jesus to dwell-down deeply in our hearts by an ongoing, step-by-step response to His call by faith. When Jesus says that it’s time for this thing to go in our lives, or that thing to go, we must release it to Him by faith. When Jesus says He will not feel welcome in us unless we obey Him in this area of duty or in that area of responsibility, then we must obey Him by faith. When Jesus promises that we will be happier, and more fulfilled, and more satisfied in the deepest level of our being if we allow Him to make Himself at home there, we need to trust Him by faith—and let Him do so.

Jesus made a wonderful promise to us. He said,

“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23);

and we must take that promise by faith.

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Now; do you remember that story I shared with you at first?—the story of the man who allowed Jesus to go from room to room and make himself at home? Before we close our time together, let me tell you how the man’s story ended.

Once Jesus cleaned out that hall closet with the awful smell in it, the man had a thought. Wouldn’t it be best if he just let Jesus have complete management of the inward ‘home’ of his heart? In the story, the Lord told him that He would love to do that for him—and that He could then take care of things for the man in a way that the man couldn’t do for himself But Jesus was hesitant to do so; because He was still only a guest in the man’s house—and that it wasn’t His house to do with as He saw best.

And with that, the man ran upstairs, opened up the safe, and came running back down to Jesus to give Him the title deed to the house. He signed the deed over to the Lord and said that it all belonged to Him now—and that from now on, he would just remain in the house as Jesus’ servant and friend. Jesus was made ‘completely at home’ in the man’s heart.

Dear brothers and sisters; let’s so let Jesus feel at home in us that our hearts become completely His … and that we live with Him as His servant and friend. Then, we’ll truly be filled with all the fullness of God.

AE