When we say that God’s Spirit is in us, what do we mean?
Some think of God’s Spirit as a divine, invisible, vapor-like entity who lives under our skin, perhaps in our hearts or brains, or perhaps evenly dispersed throughout our bodies. But scripture paints a very different picture.
Just as believers are said to be “in Christ,” meaning “united with him,” God’s Spirit “in us” means that he is united with us because we are united with Christ.
“Since it is the primary task of the Spirit to glorify Christ (John 16:14), and since Paul names Christ as the “head of the church” (Eph 5:23), the indwelling ministry of the Holy Spirit should be directed primarily toward causing the church to come under Jesus’s headship. Obviously this emphasis on the Spirit’s bringing the church under Jesus’s headship does not exclude the glory that Christ receives from the holiness of individuals, but the primary metaphor used to describe the relationship that Christ has with believers is as bride and Lamb (Eph 4:25–33; Rev 19:7–9). The holiness of individuals becomes a part of the marriage only as individuals are part of the church.”1
Q&A:
Q: In 1 Corinthians 6:17, Paul tells his readers that “the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” Doesn’t this mean that God’s Spirit lives in believers?
A: Paul says believers are one with God just as a man is “one body” with a woman during intercourse. But a man does not literally become “one body” with a woman during sex. His point is that believers are united with another in both situations.
Q: In 1 Corinthians 6:19, Paul tells his readers that the Holy Spirit lives “in you.” (“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?”) Was Paul wrong?
A: Paul is addressing and arguing against the Corinthian view that a person can do anything they want with their own body (“Every sin a person can commit is outside the body.” v18). And he is reminding them that they must live holy lives because they are united with, and indebted to, God–he uses the metaphor of the believer’s body as a temple of God’s Spirit. (In other places, Paul use the metaphor of the church as a temple of God’s Spirit, Eph 2:19-22.)
*Paul made the same point in Cor 6:15 but with a different metaphor: Christians as parts of Christ’s body.
Q: Wouldn’t the fact that Jesus was in Mary’s womb show that God can be spatially located within a person?
A: We cannot compare Jesus to the Father or the Holy Spirit since Jesus was not an omnipresent spirit. There is no evidence, prior to his death and resurrection, that he could be in more than one place at a time.
Q: Why can’t we take the indwelling of the Spirit literally?
A: If we take the indwelling of the Holy Spirit literally, we are also going to have to take the indwelling of God’s children literally. The Bible says we are ‘in’ him and he is ‘in’ us (1 John 4:13). Are we ready to say we literally live in God?
We will also have to rethink God’s nature. The Bible says God is spirit, and it says that he created all things (all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy). This means he is a non-physical, immaterial being beyond space and time. Therefore, it makes no sense to say “God is here” or “God is there.” It would be absurd to say a non-spatial, omnipresent spirit can spatially indwell a specific object. When we say “God is in heaven” or “God’s Spirit is in us,” what we mean is God is active here or there.
Jesus said he would send the comforter to be “with” his disciples. We make God to be like us when we speak of him as though he were a substance that could spatially indwell an object.
“Indeed,…[indwelling] must not be conceived of as the Godhead spatially possessing individual physical bodies. Such a conception flies in the face of the biblical data…”2
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1Heide, System and Story: Narrative Critique and Construction in Theology, 183.
2Zemek, Metaphorical Continuities: A Case for the Primacy of Corporate Indwelling, 32.
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