Harold Best on “Mutual Indwelling”

“In Christ, we are members of one another. We not only worship, serve and participate together, we do so at one with each other, even in each other, even as we are commonly in Christ. I do not believe it stretches the point to suggest that spiritually we participate in each other. But let me clarify. I am not talking about a horizontal take on incarnationalism. I do not mean that we take up residence within each other. This would be a crass and twisted misinterpretation of what I believe to be a profound spiritual truth. Rather, because of the profound reaches of faith, hope and love, I am enabled to enter deeply into and live within—even if for a spiritual moment—the lives of brother and sister, so as to weep, to mourn, to rejoice, to identify with, to intercede for, to uphold, to support, even to correct. This cannot be done from the outside or by interpersonal comparisons. I do not mourn or rejoice simply by objectified observation but by entering into and participating in someone’s or some community’s grief and joy to the fullest extent possible, solely at the bidding of the Word and the Spirit. Such within-ness is profound; it is frankly mysterious, vicarious and, above all, presupposed by the overwhelming truth of Christ in and with us…

“As to the church itself, Paul says that we are God’s building (1 Cor 3:9). He said this even in the context of divisiveness and split loyalties within the assembly. Therefore the metaphor of a single spiritual building, created and owned by God, strikes hard at any attempt to disturb the unity that is born out of our redemption. Paul intensifies the argument by moving from the more neutral concept of a building to that of a corporate temple (1 Cor 3:16-17). The body of Christ is an indwelt temple, even as Christ, the eternal Temple, is the church’s continual abiding place…

“We have this so far: God in Christ is our eternal dwelling place, yet Christ is one of the stones, the Keystone, in a building made of redeemed stones. He is both the eternal dwelling place and the chief part of another dwelling place—the church, whose only life is to dwell in him. The church is a fellowship of mutually indwelling believers, members of one another.”

Harold Best, Unceasing Worship (IVP Books, 2003), 52-53.