Chapter 29: His Presence

There is a moment in the Old Testament that reveals the very heart of God—and the heart of a man who knew Him. After Israel’s sin with the golden calf, God told Moses that He would send them on to the promised land, but that He Himself would not go up in their midst, lest His holiness consume so stiff-necked a people. And Moses—who might have been glad of the land—refused to take another step without the presence of God. “If thy presence go not with me,” he said, “carry us not up hence” (Exodus 33:15). Better a wilderness with God than a paradise without Him.

Now, we know that God is Spirit and is everywhere present; there is no place we can flee from His presence (Psalm 139:7–10). So the presence Moses longed for was something more than the bare fact that God is everywhere. It was God’s manifest presence—God drawing near to cover, to guide, to give life, and to have fellowship with His people. That is what Moses could not do without. And God answered his plea with one of the tenderest promises in Scripture:

And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest (Exodus 33:14).

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Psalm 16:11).

A Presence at a Distance

When Israel journeyed from Egypt toward the promised land, the presence of the Lord was visible among them—a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. And yet, for all its glory, it was a presence kept at a distance. When God came down on Mount Sinai, the mountain was wrapped in cloud, in lightning and thunder, in thick darkness; and the people were terrified. They begged Moses to be their go-between: “Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die” (Exodus 20:19). They could not bear the nearness of a holy God.

And so, all through the Old Testament, if the people wished to hear from God, they had to go to a particular place—the tent of meeting, and later the temple—and even then only a priest could draw near, and only the high priest could enter the innermost room, and he but once a year. The presence was real, but it was fenced about with barriers, mediated through cloud and veil and priest. It was, as we have said throughout this book, fellowship from a distance. Yet God’s desire was for something far closer than this—closer even than His walks with Adam and Eve in the cool of the garden. He desired to dwell not merely among His people, but within them.

Worship in Spirit and Truth

When Jesus came, He began to unveil this astonishing desire of God. To a Samaritan woman at a well—a person of the wrong nation, the wrong reputation, the wrong mountain of worship—He revealed one of the great secrets of the new covenant: that the day was coming when worship would no longer be tied to any temple or mountain at all, but would rise from within the worshipper’s own heart:

But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24).

No longer a building made with hands; the worshipper himself would become the temple. Paul makes it explicit: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). The God who once filled a tent in the wilderness and a temple on Mount Zion now purposes to fill you—to make your very body His dwelling place. This is the destination toward which the whole story has been moving.³⁰⁵

Another Helper Who Abides Forever

Before His death and resurrection, Jesus prepared His disciples for this new nearness. He promised them the Holy Spirit—and notice how personally, how intimately, He speaks of Him:

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you (John 14:15–18).

Weigh those words. The Spirit will not merely visit—He will “abide with you for ever.” He does not merely walk beside you—He “shall be in you.” And then, most tenderly of all: “I will not leave you comfortless [literally, as orphans]; I will come to you.” Do you see what Jesus is saying? He speaks of sending the Spirit, and in the same breath says, “I will come to you.” For the Spirit He sends is His own Spirit; to receive the Spirit is to receive Christ Himself. Again and again, in effect, He is telling them: I am He, and I am coming to live in you.

He presses the wonder further in the verses that follow:

At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you… 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 14:20, 23).

“We will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” The word Jesus uses for “abode” is the same word He used a chapter earlier for the “mansions” in His Father’s house (John 14:2). He goes to prepare a place for us there—and here He promises to make a dwelling place in us. Heaven comes down and makes its home in the human heart. When Judas (not Iscariot) asked how He could reveal Himself to the disciples and not to the world, this was the answer: not by a public display, but by an inward indwelling, known only to those who love Him.

Fulfilled at Pentecost

This promise was gloriously fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit of the risen Christ came upon the waiting disciples:

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:1–4).

The same glory-fire that once rested on the mountain, and filled the tabernacle and the temple, now came to rest on people—a tongue of fire on each of them. God had found His true temple at last: not a building of stone, but a people of flesh and blood, indwelt by His Spirit. The presence that Moses would not travel without, the presence fenced off behind the veil, had now come to make its home inside ordinary believers.³⁰⁸

Christ in You, the Hope of Glory

This indwelling is the great mystery that God revealed to the apostle Paul—a truth so staggering that Paul calls it a secret hidden for ages and only now made known:

Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:26–27).

“Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Not merely Christ for you, or Christ with you, but Christ in you. Paul could speak of his whole Christian existence in exactly these terms:

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20).

“Christ liveth in me.” Because we are His children, “God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6). And Paul urges every believer to test the reality of this: “Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” (2 Corinthians 13:5). The indwelling of Christ by His Spirit is not the privilege of a spiritual elite; it is the birthright of every true believer.

His Spirit Is the Seal of His Children

How may we know that we truly belong to God? By the presence of His Spirit within us. The Spirit is God’s seal upon His children—a mark of ownership and a guarantee of the salvation to come:

• “Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30).

• “Ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession” (Ephesians 1:13–14).

• “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16–17).

• “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Romans 8:9).

A seal, in the ancient world, marked a thing as owned and guaranteed its safe delivery. The Spirit within us is God’s pledge—His down payment—that He will surely bring us home. And note the sobering flip side of Romans 8:9: “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” The indwelling Spirit is not an optional extra for advanced Christians; He is the very mark of belonging to Christ at all.³¹¹

One Spirit Within Us

Recall what we learned earlier: that we are made of spirit, body, and soul. When we are born again and receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, something profound takes place (John 3:3–6). By inviting Jesus in, we welcome the Holy Spirit to take up residence in our hearts (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). The Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Christ, who is God Himself, now dwells within us—and so we have constant access to fellowship with our heavenly Father, wherever we are and whatever our circumstances.

Let us be clear on one point, lest anyone stumble: we do not receive three Spirits—one of the Father, one of the Son, and one called the Holy Spirit. We receive one Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who is also the Spirit of Christ, who is God. The one God, revealed to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, comes to dwell in us by that one Spirit.³¹³

The indwelling Spirit fills many vital roles. He teaches us and guides us into all truth, revealing the deep things of God (John 14:26; 1 Corinthians 2:10–12). He comforts us in sorrow and directs our steps according to God’s will (Romans 8:26–27; Galatians 5:16–18). Through His indwelling we are no longer left to make our way through this life alone; we carry the very power and presence of Almighty God within us, empowering us, equipping us, and enabling us to walk in unbroken fellowship with our heavenly Father (2 Corinthians 13:14).

This is the precious gift made possible by faith in Jesus Christ: that we may know the nearness of God at all times through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s age-long desire—to dwell with His people and to share an intimate relationship with us as our loving heavenly Father. The distance is not merely narrowed; it is abolished. God has come to live in us.