Everything Old Is New Again

Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.

Romans 8:10-11

Christ lives in you by his Spirit. That is the consummation of the gospel. He has moved in and taken up residence in you, expressing himself through your personality and transforming your mind to contain his thoughts.

Even though your physical body is winding down, growing older day by day, it is only the tent in which you live as you move through this world. Inside, where the Spirit of Christ resides, you are new and getting newer every day.

Paul says that the very Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you right this minute. Jesus’ body was dead. His heart didn’t beat. His lungs didn’t draw air. His brain didn’t produce brain waves. He was dead by every measure. Then, on the third day, the Spirit of God—the Spirit of Christ—entered his dead body and made him alive. The same body that was laid in the tomb walked out of it. From that instant, he lived in the power of resurrection, though present on earth in a form that could be seen and touched and recognized for forty more days.

We don’t have resurrection bodies yet. We are still living in our old, dying bodies. But everything else about us has access to the power of Christ’s resurrection. We have been brought from death to life by his indwelling. And no problem we ever encounter will be too difficult for the Spirit, who has already performed the universe’s grandest power display.

Resurrection power, flow freely in me and through me.

On the first day of Pentecost [Christ] returned, not this time to be with them externally . . . but now to be in them, imparting to them His own divine nature, clothing Himself with their humanity. . . . He spoke with their lips, He worked with their hands. This was the miracle of the new birth, and this remains the very heart of the gospel!

Major W. Ian Thomas(1914–2007), English writer and theology teacher