Christ liveth in me

1
Once far from God and dead in sin,
  No light my heart could see;
But in God’s Word the light I found,
  Now Christ liveth in me.
  Christ liveth in me,
Christ liveth in me;
Oh! what a salvation this,
  That Christ liveth in me.
2
As rays of light from yonder sun,
  The flow’rs of earth set free,
So life and light and love come forth
  From Christ living in me.
3
As lives the flow’r within the seed,
  As in the cone the tree,
So, praise the Christ of truth and grace,
  His Spirit dwelleth in me.
4
With longing all my heart is filled,
  That like Him I may be,
As on the wondrous thought I dwell
  That Christ liveth in me.
91
Mahesh Unnikrishnan

Dover, NH, U.S.A.

Encourages me every day to live my life by faith in my Lord, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.

In the church meetings, we may enjoy singing, "Christ liveth in me, Christ liveth in me." However, when the meeting is over, we are the ones who live, not Christ. Instead of Christ living in us, our inward being is occupied with ourselves. But if we see the vision of Christ living in us, we shall stop all our doing. How blessed it is to do nothing and to let Christ live in us! The Lord does not want us to try to improve our behavior. He does not want us to try to be a good husband or wife. The Christian life is Christ living in us. In such a life, we and Christ have one life and one living. Christ lives in our living. Oh, we desperately need to see this vision! We need to pray, "Lord, show me the vision that God only wants one Person. He wants Christ to live in me." This vision will spontaneously terminate all of our efforts and doings. It will turn us from our trying to the indwelling Christ.

I appreciate the fact that Christ lives in us. There is even a hymn in our hymnal with this chorus:

Christ liveth in me,

Christ liveth in me;

Oh! what a salvation this,

That Christ liveth in me.

However, simply to say that Christ lives in us is to be too objective. We also need to experience living in Christ and doing all things in Him. What a salvation it is to live in Him! If we live in Him, we shall enjoy His salvation day by day. This salvation can be compared to riding in a car. As long as we remain in the car, we enjoy salvation. When I ride in a car, I am not worried about what direction I am going or anything else. I may rest, pray, or enjoy sight-seeing. I simply rest and enjoy myself. In like manner, when we are in Christ, we should simply rest and enjoy ourselves. We should enjoy the life in Christ.

The burden of this ministry is to produce Christ in the believers. This means that the goal of this ministry is not to teach you to be humble or merely to glorify God in your behavior. Rather, the goal of this ministry is to "inject" you with Christ, to impart Christ as an "antibiotic" to you. The more we receive such an injection, the more we will be able to sing, "Christ liveth in me,/Christ liveth in me;/Oh! what a salvation this,/That Christ liveth in me" (Hymns, #507). On the one hand, this injection of Christ will kill our old man; on the other hand, it will make us producers of Christ, those who minister Christ to others.

Piano Hymns