A. T. Jones
The Present Truth | July 12, 1894
BEFORE the Lord Jesus Christ went away from the world, He said to His disciples, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you” (John 14:18).
As He was about to ascend to heaven from the Mount of Olives, He said again to His disciples, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature; . . . and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20).
The presence of Christ with His people is thus an assured fact. Nor is it only with them in an outward and separate sense, but with them in the inward and essential sense of oneness with them. He is with them by being in them. And so it is written, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (2 Cor. 6:16).
But His name is Immanuel, which is “God with us.” “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” Therefore the presence of Christ with His people is the presence of God also. It is the presence of both the Father and the Son, for they “are one.” And so He has said, “If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him” (John 14:23).
An abode is a dwelling-place. We will come unto him, and make him our dwelling-place. “For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit” (Isa. 57:15). “My presence shall go with thee” (Ex. 33:14). And as God is real, and Christ is real, so their presence is real. Their presence with the believer in Jesus is a real presence. This is the true real presence.
How, then, is this real presence manifested? Here is the answer to that question: “Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts, . . . that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Eph. 3:16, 17, 19). “For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” Col. ii. 9. Thus it is by his Spirit that Christ dwells with His people. It is by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer that the real presence of Christ is manifested to those and in those that are his. For “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (Rom. 8:9).