The indwelling of the Spirit

He will be in you

In the Old Testament God set his name in the tabernacle and the temple and dwelt among his people. The Spirit came upon particular people, judges, prophets and kings, for particular tasks, and Ezekiel foretold a day when God would say, "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes" (Ezekiel 36:27), speaking of the whole people. On the night before his death Jesus renewed the promise:

the Spirit of truth. The world cannot receive Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you do know Him, for He abides with you and will be in you.

John 14:17

Chrysostom paraphrased the promise: "He will not dwell with you as I have done, but will dwell in your souls" Chrysostom. The verb Paul uses, oikeō (οἰκέω), means to live in a place as one's home. "You, however, are controlled not by the flesh, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ" (Romans 8:9). The indwelling Spirit is not a special experience of a few advanced believers; it is the condition of every Christian.

A people who are God's temple

God is present everywhere, but the indwelling is a different, saving presence. Paul asks the whole church, "Do you not know that you yourselves are God's temple, and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16), and tells each believer that "your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you" (1 Corinthians 6:19). So the indwelling is also a call to holy living. The Spirit pours God's love into our hearts (Romans 5:5), cries "Abba, Father!" in us (Galatians 4:6), and seals us for the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30). Because the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus lives in us, God "will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you" (Romans 8:11).

The Spirit's indwelling is never apart from Christ. Paul prays that, strengthened by the Spirit, "Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith" (Ephesians 3:17): the Spirit is the bond that joins us to Christ, which is union with Christ. It does not mean that we are mixed with God or become God by nature. The Heidelberg Catechism confesses that the Spirit

is also given unto me, makes me by a true faith partaker of Christ and all his benefits, comforts me, and shall abide with me forever.

Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 53

Where the traditions differ

Every tradition confesses that Christians live with the Spirit dwelling in them. They differ in how they describe its beginning. The Catholic, Orthodox and Lutheran churches teach that God gives new life and the Spirit through baptism, and Catholic confirmation and Orthodox chrismation are understood as sealing the gift of the Spirit. Reformed, Baptist and many other evangelical churches say that the Spirit gives new birth (regeneration) and dwells in a person from the moment of faith. Pentecostal churches hold that every believer receives the Spirit at conversion, and speak in addition of a later baptism in the Spirit for power. The Orthodox tradition has also meditated deeply on the indwelling Spirit as the way by which we become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). See the lesson New birth and the indwelling Spirit.