Saint Patrick was a man of incredible faith and one whom God used powerfully to reach the Irish people. While today the holiday that bears his name is mostly associated with a day of drunkenness, there is good reason for this saint to be remembered more than fifteen hundred years after his death.
Born in Britain sometime between AD 385–387, Patrick was raised in a Christian family. As a teenager, he was captured by Irish pirates and forced to work as a slave and sheepherder for a high priest of Druidism, the predominant form of paganism the Irish practiced at that time.
Patrick leaned into God during his six years of enslavement, practicing nearly constant prayer. He was eventually able to escape the slavery and, after an adventurous journey, was reunited with his family.
He pursued religious education and one day had a dream where a man named Victorious came and handed him a letter titled “The Voice of the Irish.” As Patrick read the letter in the dream, he was forced to stop reading because he was so moved by the voice of the Irish that asked him to return and evangelize them. This became his goal, and eventually the pope sent him to spread the Good News in Ireland.
Patrick lived the rest of his life in Ireland and was powerfully used by God to reach the Irish people. In fact, the reason he is celebrated with a holiday is that he almost single-handedly introduced the Christian faith to the Irish people. He brought multitudes to faith and walked in great power. Some of the accounts of the signs and wonders worked in his ministry are pretty awe-inspiring. Here is just one example:
For the blind and the lame, the deaf and the dumb, the palsied, the lunatic, the leprous, the epileptic, all who labored under any disease, did he in the Name of the Holy Trinity restore unto the power of their limbs and unto entire health; and in these good deeds was he daily practiced. Thirty and three dead men, some of whom had been many years buried, did this great reviver raise from the dead, as above we have more fully recorded.1
My favorite part is the almost nonchalant mention of his resurrecting people who had been dead for many years!
How did Patrick learn to walk in such power? Clearly, he was a man of deep prayer, which I suspect was part of it. There is a famous prayer he wrote, called “Saint Patrick’s Breastplate,” that he would pray for protection and empowerment against the pagan powers and magicians with whom he constantly interacted. The prayer includes a meditation on Christ’s presence in his life:
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.2
Saint Patrick was connected to the reality that Christ lived within him and that Jesus was walking every day alongside him. This was not a quaint idea to Patrick; it was a reality to which he was connected, one he experienced and that framed the way he lived his life.
Too often, we have no connection to this powerful truth. It is abstract and distant from our experience, and we cannot picture it having any relevance to our everyday lives. This is a great shame, because the reality that Christ lives within us is not meant to be a comforting theology, but an invitation to live on a new level.
Christ Lives Your Life
The apostle Paul was in touch with this same reality of Christ living within him. In fact, he described it as a cornerstone of the Gospel:
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20
In addition to seeing himself as dead to sin and living every moment in faith, Paul knew he no longer was the one living his life. Instead, Christ was living through him. In both letters to the Corinthians, Paul wrote that he expected them to be in touch with this reality, too, and to live from this same starting point:
For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?
1 Corinthians 3:4
Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?
2 Corinthians 13:5
Paul expected the Corinthians to realize they were not “merely human.” In fact, Jesus lived within them and wanted them to act accordingly. This truth was to be the starting point for all their actions and how they lived their lives.
We can live from that same starting point—and if we do, it changes everything. Think about it. If God is living in you, what else matters? Does anything hold a candle to the reality of God Himself living in and through you? Of course not!
So, why does that not feel more real to us?
There are at least two reasons. The first is because we are not clear on the righteousness that has been given to us. The second is because we have not spent much time thinking about or exploring this idea.
The reality of our righteousness—the fact that we are fully dead to sin and that God has regenerated our humanity to match the original template intended for us of the image and likeness of God—is foundational if we want to come in contact with the reality of Jesus dwelling within us. But we cannot access this reality if our perception of our righteousness stands on shaky ground. If we see ourselves as a “house divided,” with a nature that wars against itself, then we will relegate the reality of Christ dwelling within us to an abstract concept. We will know God is holy and pure but believe ourselves incongruent with that standard, and how can we expect to experience a reality that does not make sense to us? We pile it up with a number of other theological truths that are mysterious to us. We tell ourselves God sees Himself living in us, but we do not have any expectation to find Him there ourselves.
If, however, we recognize that God has cleansed us and made us brand new, holy and pure, then we can begin to see ourselves as fit vessels for Him to dwell inside. The work of Christ that has dealt with our sinful nature has made us into the kind of temple the Lord finds appealing. Jesus really did cleanse the temple of all its corruption—a symbol of our being cleansed—and God’s Spirit dwells within us now. We know this is not a metaphor but a reality. He has made His home in us!
Christ Unites Humanity and Divinity
What does it mean for God to live in us, then? It means you are not the only one inside of you.
What a very strange thought.
But in fact, if you are to take Galatians 2:20 as it reads, then you must come to believe there is more of God in you than there is you in you! Paul says:
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20, emphasis mine
Think about that. There is more God in you right now than you in you.
But what does it mean to live with two beings inside of you? How do you make contact with that reality?
One of the first things this does is redefine what it means to be human. Many of us carry an assumption that our humanity is opposed to God’s divinity—that humanity and divinity are like oil and water; they do not mix. Our goal, when we believe this way, is that of submitting our humanity to God’s divinity. We pray things like, Less of me and more of You, Lord.
But this kind of thinking, which pits our humanity against God’s deity, is unhelpful and a roadblock that needs to be overcome. Our humanity is not opposed to God’s divinity; remember, we were made in His image and likeness. Rather, our humanity is a vehicle of expression of God’s divinity. It is not something God tries to work around. It is something He wants to work through.
In Jesus, everything that God is was put into a human body. Everything! No part of God was left out, and no part of God was constrained when Jesus became human. Paul says, “For in him [Jesus] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9).
Think about that. God does not fit in the room you may be sitting in right now. God does not fit in your city or on this planet. God does not fit in the entire universe. And yet He fits inside a human—every part of Him, every last bit, the whole fullness of Him does.
To further clarify, let’s consider a contrasting example. Pardon the oddness of this example, but it was the closest illustration I could think of. Suppose you had a dog you were really attached to. This dog was such a good friend that you wanted to experience relationship with that dog even more. Suppose, as well, that science had made it possible to transplant you from your human body into a dog’s body.
If you chose to do that, elements of yourself would need to be left behind. A dog cannot carry your capacity for rational thought. A dog cannot hope or dream the way you do. A dog does not have the creative capacities you have or the ability to steward resources like you can. You would have to leave behind major elements of who you are in order to become a dog.
Yet when God became a human being, He did not leave anything behind. Nothing at all. No part of Him was sacrificed or dropped when Jesus became God incarnate.
Most of us think of God as a level profoundly above us. We are the dog to His human. And yet Scripture points to the opposite. This is what it means when Scripture teaches we not only carry His image but are like God (see Genesis 1:26). Our humanity has been created to fit God. We are made in the same “shape” He is.
Strong’s concordance defines the word likeness in Genesis 1:26 as “resemblance; concretely, model, shape.”3 We were made with God’s model, God’s shape. It is like we are a glove His divinity fills. We are specially designed for His hand. We have all the fingers in all the right places, and His divinity is made to fill and animate our humanity, with no facet left out.
Many of us are not at peace with facets of ourselves. We think our emotions hold us back. We do not see ourselves as relational enough, or we see ourselves as too relational. We do not love the shape our body takes.
The important thing to realize is that each and every aspect of who we are exists as something God has, too. The reason you have emotions is that God has emotions. You have relationships because God does. You have a physical frame because that reveals something of God. You have finances, rational thought, hopes and dreams, a will, a spirit and everything else because God does. Each and every one of the slices of your life exists because each and every one is a “finger” on God’s hand, so to speak.
Our journey is one of discovering the God who lives in us through the mold of our humanity. It is our humanity that God fills and uses to reveal His image.
This is how we make peace with ourselves. It is a part of the journey of coming to know God. You have emotions because God does, but what would it be like for God to feel His emotions through you? What would it be like for God to live out relationship through you? For God to think His thoughts within you? For you to experience God within your physical frame?
I love to be in nature. It is refreshing and rejuvenating to my soul, and I carve out time to walk in the beauty of God’s creation as often as I am able. Since I live in central Illinois, which is devoid of mountains and beaches, I often immerse myself in the woods. There is a forest preserve about fifteen minutes from my house, and I often stop there on my way home from work and spend time walking about or reflecting on what may be coming up next.
One day, as I was walking there, I was struck by how good it is for me to spend time in the woods. I remember asking the Lord, Why is it that I like walking in the woods so much?
Ever have one of those times when God answers back with actual words? That does not happen to me every day, but sometimes it does. This was one of those times. I felt the Lord reply, What makes you think you’re the one enjoying them here? I’m the One who made them.
Mind. Blown.
Here I was, thinking the woods were rejuvenating to me, and the Lord revealed He was looking through my eyes and enjoying—through me—the creation He called good. I just got to enjoy the by-product of being a part of that process.
Ever since that day, I have felt God so much more involved in my life than I previously realized. He is in me, living through me every day.
He intends to live through you in the same way.
Have you ever noticed that hearing God often feels fuzzy and subjective—that as we learn to recognize His voice, it becomes difficult to distinguish whether a thought is from Him or from us? The line gets fuzzy because we are more intertwined with the Lord than we think. Paul says:
But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
1 Corinthians 6:17
We can struggle to differentiate between our thoughts and God’s because we experience God’s thoughts in our mind.4 God does not navigate around our humanity to interact with us. He uses it. Our humanity is a perfectly designed vehicle for that purpose.
This means the whole of our life can be a path to discover God and a map to reveal Him. We can expect to discover the Lord in every facet of ourselves. The relevant question is this: Are you looking for Him there?
Rather than being at odds with your hopes and dreams, what if you accepted that having hopes and dreams is a part of being human and began to ask the Lord to reveal what He is hoping and dreaming in you? What if your hopes and dreams have as much to do with His heart as they do yours? What if they have more to do with His heart? If we come to peace with ourselves, we can begin to see God using our humanity to draw us closer into relationship with Him.
The journey is not just one of relationship, though. It is also one of stewardship. Once we begin to connect with the Lord’s hopes and dreams in us, that portion of our humanity has an opportunity to enflesh God. Our life becomes a living picture of what God is like.
This is true for every element of our humanity. We live not only our relationships, but God’s through us. We think not only our thoughts, but God’s, as well. We steward not only our resources, but also God’s. Our life—the whole of it—becomes a living picture of who God is.
In some sense, you could say that while Jesus was fully the incarnation, God has also granted us to become an incarnation. God has taken up residence within us. As we live yielded to Him, in connection with Him through trust, or faith, God lives His life through us. (This is the second portion of Galatians 2:20 in action—when we live by faith, it is not our life we live, but Christ’s.)
Here is the completion of our original design: to bear God’s image and likeness to the rest of creation. We are a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood picture of what God is like. We reveal His nature through the life we live in this world.
We Experience God’s Attributes
This means God’s attributes, who God is, should not just be a set of ideas we learn. Rather, they are an invitation for an experience we are meant to step into. This is what Peter meant in a passage that sounds so extreme, it is hard to know what to make of it:
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
2 Peter 1:3–4
Peter says everything we need has been granted to us through a growing relationship with God. As the relationship grows, we partake of God’s nature. We do not become God, but we get to experience what being God is like. We live our lives as if we have not only our nature, but His, as well.
A study of the attributes of God can take place in an abstract, logical kind of way: God is portrayed as omnipotent (all-powerful), omnipresent (present in all places) and so forth. Theologians enumerate His attributes as a description of His nature.
While I do believe there is value in this kind of study, I think it largely misses the point. God reveals Himself and relates to us relationally. His Son came as a person, someone we could relate to, not as an abstract idea. This means the attributes of God are not meant to exist within the structure of logic. They are meant to be something we experience through our relationship with Him.
Believe it or not, we can come to participate in the omnipotence of God:
And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”
Mark 9:23
And Paul seemed connected to some form of God’s omnipresence in this statement:
When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
1 Corinthians 5:4–5
Honestly, I am not sure what to make of what Paul is saying here, other than to say he believed some part of himself could be present with the Corinthians, even if he was not with them physically.
The point is this: God invites us to participate in Himself to such an extent that we experience life like we are Him. This is what it means to be a “son of God.” Remember, to the Jew, calling yourself a son of God made a statement not just about your relationship to God, but also your likeness to God in nature:
This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him [Jesus], because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
John 5:18, emphasis mine
This may stretch you as you read this. I understand. It stretches me. This is something I struggle to believe. If the Bible did not say it, I would throw it out. But it does say it! Again, we must learn to align our lives with what Scripture says, even if it does not (yet) match our experience, because it is God’s truth, not our own.
The early Church was much more in touch with this concept. Many of the early Church fathers wrote about it, and in a more extreme way than I am suggesting here. For instance:
Irenaeus (130–202): God became what we are in order to make us what He is Himself.
Clement of Alexandria (150–215): He who obeys the Lord and follows the prophecy given through Him becomes a god while still moving about in the flesh.
Athanasius (296–373): The Word was made flesh in order that we might be made gods. Just as the Lord became a man, so also we are deified through His flesh and inherit everlasting life.
Augustine (354–430): To make human beings gods, He who was God was made man.
I will be honest with you. I am uncomfortable with some of the things these men said. I can push myself to accept that we get to partake in God’s nature—but saying we become gods feels like taking it too far to me!5
Honestly, though, Jesus said almost this exact thing, quoting Psalm 82, when the Jews objected to His claiming likeness with God by calling Himself God’s Son:
The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?”
John 10:33–36
Jesus says those who received the Word of God are gods. Not even sons of God, but gods themselves. I have a difficult time with this, but apparently the line between God and ourselves blurs a lot more than any of us realize.
Jesus, as the incarnation, is a picture of what we are becoming. In Him, humanity and divinity permanently united, never to be separated again. As we become one spirit with Him, the same begins to happen in us. God’s divinity begins to unite with our humanity, and we take on the same quality of enfleshing who God is.
In this sense, we are fit to be the Bride of Christ. We take on the same nature and character as Jesus did. Jesus will not be unequally yoked. His bride will take on the same quality He did: God enfleshed in humanity, the visible image of the invisible God.
I remember a time this became real to me. I was roughhousing with my oldest daughter one day on our bed because she loves to wrestle and play.
At one point, I pushed off the bed with my arms to stand up. As I did, I felt two of the vertebrae in my lower back pull apart and then come back together in about a second. It was an odd sensation, and I knew something bad was underway.
As soon as the vertebrae came back together, my lower back locked up with severe tension and pain. As my mind listed off the various injuries I could have experienced, maybe a slipped disk or a pinched nerve—Oh no, will I need surgery?—I hobbled to the living room, unable to bend my back.
I told my wife what happened and asked if she would get a heating pad so I could try to relax the muscles in my back. She went to the other room to get it, and I tried to sit down on the couch. To sit down, I sort of dropped onto the sofa. I could not control myself well enough to let myself down easily.
When I began to lean back, I had an epiphany. Hold on, I thought. Jesus lives in me. It was not a thought I was trying to summon, but rather a simple realization, like, Oh yeah. He’s in there.
It was the only thought in my mind for that moment. It was the most real thing—the only real thing—for that sliver of time.
By the time my seat hit the sofa, at least 90 percent of the pain in my back was gone. I had mobility. Other than some muscle tightness, my back felt strong and stable.
I was stunned at what had just happened. In a second of being connected to God’s presence inside me in a real way, my back had been repaired. I sat with the heating pad for a while to loosen up the tight muscles but had no further pain or problems.
Now, do not make the mistake of thinking this is my everyday experience. It is not. But I am committed to keep growing in touch with the way God wants to fill my humanity with His divinity.
God lives in His people. This is a powerful reality when we begin to get in touch with it.
THINKING LIKE JESUS