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When we say we believe in Jesus Christ, we are acknowledging Christ in the flesh (John 1:14). If you oppose this truth you are considered antichrist.
If you reject the son, you reject the Father also. Therefore, when we say, “You must abide in Christ” we are saying that you must abide in the Father & the Son.
You cannot get to the Father except through the Son. (John 14:6)
Before you can understand/realize that Christ is in you, you first have to understand Christ! (Christ = Father + Son) [Check previous Sessions of Part 2]
Only once you start to understand the nature of Christ, can you begin to comprehend that Christ dwells in you as well.
v1 – 5: Jesus was explaining to his disciples that he needed to leave to prepare a ‘place’ for them. That one the preparations were done, he would come back and take them with him to where he is.
But where is that exactly? Where is the ‘place’ that Jesus was talking about? The answer lies in the previous chapter:
John 13: 1 “Jesus knew that the hour had come for Him to leave this world and go to the Father.”
The place was the Father. The place was God. Jesus had to fulfill his mandate and take his rightful place by the Father’s side and also complete the ‘preparations’ for us to regain access back into the presence of the Father.
Now what exactly were the preparations that Jesus were referring to? In short… It was to die on the cross for us.
Remember that up until that point, because of sin, we were separated from God. We were helplessly stuck in sin and the preparations that Jesus had to make to get us access to this ‘place’, to God, was to get us out of sin/ to free us from sin. He had to cleanse our sinful spirits with a perfect sacrifice.
Take note that at that point in time Jesus alone had access to the Father.
In John 13: 33, Jesus himself says to his disciples: “…Where I am going, you cannot come” And again in verse 36 Jesus replies to Simon Peter: “Where I am going you cannot follow, but you will follow later.”
See they couldn’t follow because the preparations weren’t yet done! (the sacrifice wasn’t completed)(the price for sin wasn’t paid) etc.
v5 – 11: In these verses the exchange with Jesus and his disciples continue. See Jesus was trying to reveal a spiritual truth to them, rather than a physical one. The truth that they (after the completion of his ‘preparations’ could, just as He, dwell in Christ. That is what the preparations were for. That is what the conversation in this chapter was meant to reveal. And that is what the communion/breaking of bread is meant to symbolize! (partly anyways)
So how are we able to dwell in Christ?
The short answer is through accepting Jesus Chris! Jesus answers this himself in John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth and the life, No one gets to the Father except through me.” But making a way for us to dwell in Christ is only half of it because the other half is that this entire process makes it so that Chris Can Dwell in us as well!.
We can get a better understanding by reading v10: “Just as Jesus is in the Father, and the Father in him, so do we also dwell in Christ and Christ in us.”
So the Second reason for Jesus’ ultimate Sacrifice was to enable Christ to dwell in us as well.
Lets elaborate. How exactly can Christ dwell in us?... John 14:16 – 20 explains this well.
Jesus reassures them that he will not abandon them and says that he will send a helper/advocate. He promises to send the spirit of truth. (this happens in Acts 1:4 – 5) God gives us the Holy Spirit, according to his promise that he will not leave us as orphans (v18) and says that the day that we receive him, that we will come to the realization of Christ, and to the realization that we are in Him and He in us.
Additionally we can look at John 2: 15 – 21. After Jesus had destroyed and overtured the people’s stalls and animals I the temple, he was told to justify his outburst, and Jesus replied with verse 19: “… Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in 3 days” And two verses down He reveals that the temple he was referring to was his body.(v21) Similarly, Jesus made a way for us to become the temple for God as well. He took our sin-bound spirits, crucified it on the cross with him and gave us a new spirit man. One that is buried, dead to sin. One that is made righteous. One that can access the Father and house the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ.
This is how we have been made one with Christ. All this is summed up perfectly in John 17:22- 23 “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity."
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