Andrew Murray on Christ as the Indwelling Life
⏱ 11 min read
You have prayed for years to a Christ who feels, on a Tuesday evening, like a Figure across the room. The verses about Christ in you have always been there — Galatians 2:20, Colossians 1:27, John 14:23 — and the verses have been read and underlined and re-underlined, and still the felt sense is of a Person you speak to rather than a Person who lives inside. Andrew Murray, in Holy in Christ — a small companion volume to Abide in Christ, written from the same pastoral chair in the Cape Colony in the late 1800s — wrote the most patient extended treatment of this gap that English devotional literature has produced. The question what does Christ in you mean is, in Murray’s hands, not a doctrine to be assented to but a Presence to be slowly received, and the receiving is what closes the gap. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries the slow daily form of this practice, if you would like a place to take the next stretch. For now — read slowly.
Murray was not writing for the new convert. He was writing for the woman who had been a Christian for decades, who had performed every devotional task faithfully, and who had begun to suspect — quietly, in evenings she would not admit it to anyone — that the indwelling part of the gospel had never quite landed. The three passages below are the spine of his answer.
The first passage — the heart as His resting-place
Murray opens his treatment of the indwelling Christ with a sentence that inverts the entire posture of the praying Christian.
“It is where Thou enterest to rest, to refresh and reveal Thyself, that Thou makest holy. O my God! may my heart be Thy resting-place. I would, in the stillness and confidence of a restful faith, rest in Thee, believing that Thou doest all in me. Let such fellowship with Thee, and Thy love, and Thy will be to me the secret of a life of holiness.”
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
Read it once at speed. Then read it again, slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is may my heart be Thy resting-place. Notice what Murray has done. The modern reflex is to ask how do I rest in God — as if rest were a posture the Christian achieves by trying harder, by reading more, by sitting still longer. Murray turns the verb around. The sentence is not about your resting in Him. It is about His resting in you. The question what does Christ in you mean is, in Murray’s vocabulary, not the question of whether He is technically present — He is — but the question of whether your heart has become a place He can rest in.
This is the part of the gospel the long-time Christian woman has not, yet, let land. She has agreed, doctrinally, that Christ is in her. She has not, in the felt sense, let her heart be the resting-place the doctrine describes. The two are different. The first is theological assent. The second is hospitality. Murray is asking for the hospitality. May my heart be Thy resting-place is a small daily prayer — repeated at the start of the evening half-hour, repeated in the morning before the day starts — and the repetition is what slowly turns the heart from a Christian woman’s well-furnished doctrinal room into a room the Lord can actually rest in.
The second half of the passage is the part the trying Christian needs to hear. I would, in the stillness and confidence of a restful faith, rest in Thee, believing that Thou doest all in me. Murray’s emphasis is on Thou doest all in me. The work is His. Your part is the stillness, the confidence, the small daily believing. The doing is His to do. The indwelling Christ is not a static fact. The indwelling Christ is the One actively doing the inner work that you had been trying to do yourself for years. (For the sibling reading on the receiving posture, why Andrew Murray said abiding is not effort walks the same shift in a different vocabulary. For the foundational treatment, what Andrew Murray meant by Abide in Christ is the opening essay of this hub.)
The somatic — for the body that has been holding Him at arm’s length
Pause here. The mind has been thinking Christ in me as an idea for years. The body has been holding Him at arm’s length without your noticing — the chest tight, the shoulders raised, the small chronic posture of a woman whose interior is full of other things and has not, in years, been a resting-place for anyone, least of all the Lord.
Sit somewhere quiet. Both feet flat on the floor. Place one hand, lightly, on the centre of the chest — over the breastbone, where Scripture so often locates the heart.
Take one slow inhale. Let the breath travel down behind the hand, into the chest cavity itself. On the exhale, let the chest soften under the hand by a small amount. Say, in the silence of your own interior: may my heart be Thy resting-place. Not as a performance. As an offer.
One more slow inhale. One more longer exhale. One more silent offer: may my heart be Thy resting-place.
Then take the hand away.
The body has just made an interior room. You did not produce the indwelling Christ. He has been there. The body has made a small acknowledgement that the room is His. The hand on the chest was the somatic translation of Murray’s first passage. The room has not changed shape. The hospitality has. And the hospitality is what the question what does Christ in you mean has been waiting on, in the felt sense, for years.
The second passage — like the air that surrounds me, like the light that shines on me
Murray’s second great passage on the indwelling Christ uses an image so quiet it is almost easy to miss on first reading.
“Like the air that surrounds me, like the light that shines on me, here is my Lord Jesus with me in His hidden but Divine and most real presence. My faith must in quiet rest and trust bow before the Father, of whom and by whose Mighty Grace I am in Christ: He will reveal it to me with ever-growing clearness and power. He does it as I believe, and in believing open my whole soul to receive what is implied in it: the sense of sinfulness and unholiness must become the strength of my trust and dependence. In such faith I abide in Christ.”
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Like the air that surrounds me, like the light that shines on me. The two images are doing precise work. Air and light are the two presences the body never stops touching. You do not notice the air; you breathe it. You do not notice the light; you see by it. Both are everywhere you are. Both are the medium of your existence rather than an object inside it. Murray is saying: the indwelling Christ is of this kind. Not a Figure across the room. Not an Object you turn toward at prayer time and turn away from at work time. The medium. The air your soul breathes whether you notice it or not. The light by which your soul sees whether you remember the source or not.
This is the answer to the question what does Christ in you mean. Christ in you is the medium of your interior life, not an item inside it. You have been treating Him as an item — Sunday’s item, prayer time’s item, hard-evening’s item — and the item-treatment has produced the felt sense of distance, because items are always either present or absent, and on a Tuesday afternoon He has felt absent. The medium is never absent. The air is the air whether you breathe deeply or shallowly. The light is the light whether you look at the lamp or at the floor. Christ in you is His hidden but Divine and most real presence, surrounding the moment you are currently inside of, regardless of whether your conscious attention has, this afternoon, turned toward Him.
This re-arranges the whole project of feeling Him. You stop trying to summon Him. You start trying — much more gently — to notice what is already there. The breath that just came in did not bring Him in. He was in the breath. The light coming through the window did not deliver Him. He was in the light. He does it as I believe, and in believing open my whole soul to receive what is implied in it. The believing is small. The opening is small. The receiving is His to give. (If the Bible Study Workbook for Women sits open beside you on the next evening, the daily structure on the page is built to walk this exact noticing — one short passage and a verse, with room for the slow recognition that He has been in the air the whole time.)
The third passage — gazing on the life of Christ in the Father
Murray, in Abide in Christ, gave one final passage on the indwelling that completes the picture from the third side.
“What we only need is this: to take time and study the divine image of this life of love set before us in Christ. We need to have our souls still unto God, gazing upon that life of Christ in the Father until the light from heaven falls on it, and we hear the living voice of our Beloved whispering gently to us personally the teaching He gave to the disciples.”
— Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
Read it twice. Slowly.
Gazing upon that life of Christ in the Father until the light from heaven falls on it. Murray is naming the slow practice that produces the felt sense of the indwelling. The practice is gazing. Not analysing. Not striving. Not journaling toward a conclusion. Gazing — the slow, undirected, contemplative reading of the gospel scenes in which Christ Himself lived inside the Father, until something quiet shifts and you realise the same life He lived inside the Father is the life He is now living inside you.
The line worth keeping near the page is until the light from heaven falls on it. The light is not yours to produce. The gazing is yours. The light falls when it falls. Some evenings the light falls early. Some evenings it does not fall at all, and the gazing was still the practice, and the soul was still the resting-place, and the indwelling Christ was still the air. The light, when it falls, is what closes the gap between the doctrine of Christ in you and the felt sense of Him. The closing is not violent. It is the slow quiet realisation that the One you were addressing across the room has been speaking from inside your own chest the whole time.
This is what Murray means by the indwelling life. Not a phrase. Not a verse to be memorised. A Person who is, in His hidden but Divine and most real presence, the medium of your interior life, who rests in you when you let your heart be His resting-place, who reveals Himself with ever-growing clearness as you gaze on Him and let the light fall when it falls. (For the next slow reading in this hub, the daily Word Andrew Murray spoke to his soul walks the morning practice that holds the indwelling close through the day. For a complementary voice on the same Presence in a different tradition, how to recognize God’s voice — Brother Lawrence’s quiet answer is the bridge essay.)
What the slow reading will do over a year
If you sit with Murray’s three passages — one a month for three months — and let the question what does Christ in you mean be a slow companion for the rest of the year, what shifts is not your theology, which was already correct, but the felt location of the Christ you have been addressing for years. He moves, very quietly, from the other side of the room to the inside of the chest. The move is not dramatic. It is the slow re-locating of your attention. The air becomes the air it has always been. The light becomes the light it has always been. The Presence becomes the medium He has always been. The question what does Christ in you mean stops being a question and becomes the quiet underneath of the rest of the day.
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A daily home for the slow practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women. Each evening, one short passage and a verse, with room for the honest sentence — a small daily place to let the indwelling Christ become the medium He has always been. Holy in Christ, the small companion volume to Abide in Christ this article reads from, is on our list to reprint through Everspring Press in the coming year, for the readers who would like to walk Murray’s slow treatment of the indwelling life at the page.
The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries Murray’s slow vocabulary — the heart as His resting-place, the air and the light, the gazing until the light from heaven falls — into a daily companion for the woman whose theology of the indwelling Christ is correct and whose felt sense of Him has, for years, been distant.
