Christ In Us (1)

How can we know that Christ is in us?
(1) If Christ is in us by his Spirit, he will work great matters in us and there will be tumults in the soul. For when Christ comes to us, he finds all in rebellion and in opposition. As soon as Christ was born into the world, Herod was mightily troubled and all Jerusalem with him (Matt. 2:3). Herod thought one was born that would depose him, and therefore he was jealous, much troubled, and laboured to kill him if he could. So it is when Christ is born in the soul, there are tumults. Those lusts that held sway before, those desires, down they go, they plead allowance, and are loath to yield. Natural desires, that have been from before, are loath to yield to Christ, a newcomer. He is as a new conqueror that comes with new laws, fundamentally new. He overturns all the laws of lust and of the flesh. He comes in with strength. In conversion, where Christ is born, there is first a strife, the soul does not quickly yield to him. There are some now in the bosom of the church, that had no violent conversion from a wicked state to a good. But from a less degree to a greater, they grow more and more. They were brought up in the Spirit of Christ from the beginning. They are not much troubled with such inward oppositions.
(2) Where Christ is, he will drive out all that is contrary. As when he entered into the temple, he drove out the money changers, and whipped out the corrupt persons there (Matt. 21:12), so, as soon as he comes into the soul by his Spirit, out go those lusts, those desires that were there before, worldliness, profaneness, fury, and rage, those things the soul was consumed with before, that possessed the habitation that God should dwell in. When Christ comes in, he scourges out all. Where these therefore are in any force, there certainly Christ is not.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
The Matchless Love and Inbeing, Works, vol. 6, p. 403
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