Christ in You the Hope of Glory - Version 1 — A.W. Tozer

The Mystery of Christ Among the Gentiles

Was made a minister, according to God's dispensation given to him, to fulfill the word of God and to preach the mystery which is in generations, not even Abraham knew or David or Isaiah, but was made manifest to his saints, to whom, to the saints, God would make the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles.

Now he's building us up to something. What is this? Christ in you, the hope of glory. Christ, whom we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.

He works at it according to the working of God in him, I believe. What is the supreme benefactor? That which is a gift and treasure above all other treasures and gifts which even God could give. A little child gives you a gift.

Maybe it's a homemade potholder, a wiper, or a little thing. It's not worth much, but it's worth a lot to you. That's all a child can give. We give according to our ability. Well, now the Almighty, who owns heaven and earth, and who is fabulously rich beyond the power of the human mind, wants to bestow a supreme benefactor upon one and to give him that which is above all other gifts, worthy of its source.

Christ Dwelling in the Believer

A gift worthy of the one who gives it, Christ, to be in our natures forever. Now this is the final test before God, though not before man. Christ in me, I can't show that to the world, but before God, this is the test.

Second Corinthians 13, 5. Know yourselves how that Christ is in you, except you be reprobate. If you're false Christians and not truly Christians, then Christ is not in you. But don't you know yourself that if you're truly Christian, Christ is in you?

This is God's supreme and final gift. Now, who is this that he gives to his people as the best God can do? God cannot rise higher than this. Nothing in heaven is higher than this. All the earth scraped together and all its riches would not be as this.

All the celestial heavens and the astronomic heavens rolled together would not be as much as this. Not all those strange and mysterious beauties we see, told of, we read about in heaven and see by the eye of faith, not all of these taken together would be as much as this.

Christ in you, the hope of glory. Well, who is this that he gives us? This one is the one who all the metaphors. Go to the Old Testament and you will find every metaphor, every figure of speech, every image, every type, and every symbol.

Everything the human mind could understand. Everything that could make the mind understand, was exhausted to set forth the glories of this one lettering. The one that we call by the simple five-letter name Christ.

Old Testament Images of the Promised Christ

All right, this is who he is. And he is the one that the prophets of the Old Testament and the seers and the psalmists and the saints tried to show forth and were frustrated because they couldn't. And the scripture says in 1 Peter that the prophets who prophesied of old times sought to look into these things and were not able.

But these inspired prophets soared as high as their human minds could go and beyond the depths of the sea they climbed the mountains and they journeyed across the plains and everything they saw the Holy Ghost turned into expectation and promise.

They looked at the sun and said he is the son of healing in his wings. They looked at the stars and they said he will be the star of the morning to tell of the coming. They looked at the mountains and said he will be the great mountain in Israel and under him shall all the nations come.

They looked at the rock and they said he is the rock in the midst of a weary land. They saw the bold and raging lion is the lion of Judah. And they saw the lamb yielding himself and they said he is the lamb of God to take to the world.

Why Christ Is Exalted Above All

Now this is who he is. He is that one that was promised. But that isn't enough yet. Not yet. What is he? What is this one who was promised? What is this one? Not who, but what is this one who was prophesied?

This seed of the woman, this Passover lamb, this prophet of destiny, this child, this shepherd of Israel, this Lord of the new heaven and the new earth. What is he? Why should any glorious as all this?

What is this one above all others? And why should God place him as he did above Abraham, placing above Moses who was faithful in all his house, or above Melchizedek, priest of the most high God, or above Aaron, or above angels, for he was placed above angels and principalities.

And why is he the central of the beasts and the living creatures before the sea of God? Why? And why does he hold men in his hand? And why must the universe finally kneel before him and not some other?

Now the answer, the explanation, it's so simple you can tell it to a child, and so profound the human mind can understand it. So simple that you can teach it to, and so profound that Paul said it was the mystery of godliness and gave up trying to understand.

The answer to the question, what is this? Who is this? And why does he have the place he has? I say it's a pure sea of sacred mystery, and yet it can be grasped by any humble. Now let me try to break it down and show it to you, and may the dear God Almighty that gave us this truth make it understandable to our hearts, and honor us with hearts worthy to understand.

The One God in Three Persons

What is the answer? To God, as everything goes back to God. God, the one true God, exists in three persons. God subsists in three persons. This is what the Bible reveals. To reveal that God is one here, O Israel, is one Lord.

God is one, but he's one in nature, one in substance, and God in his unitary being. But he exists, as I might use the word, all rooted in this one being. So there are not three gods, but one God. There are not three substances, but one.

Not three divine natures, but one divine nature. Only one God, who was before any creature was. The God who existed in himself, and trusts to nobody, and leans on nobody. The one to whom nothing can be added, and from which nothing can be taken away.

The fountain of all creation. The origin of all created things. This one God, three persons. The Father, the eternal Father, out of whose heart the eternal Son was created. For God did not create the Son out of anything external to himself.

He created the heart of God, equal with God, equal to God, himself God, never having a beginning. How could this be? How could the uncreated God assume to himself nature that was created? For the nature Jesus at one time wasn't.

Then it was by the fiat of God. When God said, let be, it was. And man was created. Nature was created. Now how could it be that this, this eternal God who had no creation, origin, this mighty God, how could it be that he could assume to himself the nature which he had himself created?

The Incarnation and the Union of Divine and Human Nature

The explanation is so simple you can tell it to a child, and so profound nobody in the University of Toronto can understand. It is simply this. That human nature was originally made in the image of God.

And because human nature was made in the image of the appropriate and consistent, that the divine nature could assume the human nature. Because the human nature, the divine nature, though a creature, now when God decides to do it, the second person of the Trinity, to himself, human nature once made in his image.

And he can be born of a being, a man, and lose nothing of his deity. He loses nothing of his deity, and his deity, for deity can't gain anything. But what deity did in Jesus, in the eternal Son, was to take our human nature into itself.

And he retained all of his uncreated attributes. And yet he was a normal and true man. This is the man of glory whom the prophets wrote. That's why one man can be the one to bruise the devil's head. That is why he can be the Passover lamb to redeem men.

That is why he can be the knee that brings all nations to his feet. That is why he can be the child the prophets saw whose name was wonder peace. That's why he can be the shepherd of Israel to call God's ancient people home.

That's why he can be earth's king of righteousness to rule the ends of the earth. And that's why he can be and will be and is the Lord of the new heaven and the new earth. Now Christ can enter a regenerated man's nature.

Because man's nature entered and was taken up to God and united to God in the incarnation. Do you see this, my brethren and sisters? The nature, it's human nature that he came to say, that man with all the man is.

The human nature that makes a human being a human being. And it's this, it's this that enters us. It's the nature of God. Because God took the nature of man, he can now give the nature of God unto man.

Christ in You as the Supreme Gift

This is the supreme gift of God to mankind. When Dr. Ordon Mann, and about to give up his pulpit in New York, an old gentleman who had been an usher 20 years, walked 20 years in Dr. Simpson's church, he said, and he meant it to be a compliment, he said, well, Brother Simpson sermon in 20 years.

Now wherever Brother Simpson began, he always ended up with this, Christ Jesus in you. This is it, this is it. That Christ can dwell in your nature, so that divinity can dwell in humanity. That's what, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't mean to be saved from cigarettes, although that'll drop off.

It doesn't mean to be saved from beating your wife and play. No Christian does either. But it means infinitely more than that. And that's why I get sick to my stomach. Find whole groups of Christians that never get beyond the simple matter of, I used to be a bad boy, and I'll quit it.

Well, of course, of course, of course. But that isn't what's important about you, Brother. What's important about you is that God made you a Christian. And when he made you a Christian, he honored you above angels and seraphim and archangels.

He honored you above Abraham and David and Isaiah and Melchizedek and Aaron. He honored you by giving you of his own nature. Peter said it in simple language. He said, by these promises we become part of nature.

He said it. Or I would never have dared to say it. He said it. So this is the greatest benefaction. Then why is the Holy Ghost given to men? Why is the Holy Ghost come on men? Well, he gives gifts to men.

I believe in all the gifts of God. I believe they are all in the church. Not one, only, but all. But that's not the main reason he gives the Holy Spirit to his church. He gives the Holy Spirit to his church in order that he might take the things of Christ and show them unto us.

So that the worst is to reveal to you the supreme benefaction, the of all gifts, the gifts which God himself can't do better than. The salvation bestows is the nature of God in the nature of man. Christ in you, hope of glory.

Experiencing the Hope of Glory

This is the Christian's hope of glory. Sin can be broken in Christ because Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now do we know this in experience? That's all I'm asking. Do we know this in experience? Christ in you, the hope of glory.

If I didn't want to be filled with the Holy Spirit for any other reason, I want to be for this reason, that I might know more of what this means to be converted, to have the nature of Jesus in my heart, joined to my nature forever and ever and ever.

He said, the Son abides. See, he doesn't visit you. He abideth ever. Now how about it? What about you? Do you think Jesus Christ can break every fetter and set you free and turn you loose? I hope you do.