Daily Reading for April 9 • Friday in Easter Week
And what, then, on this “our triumphant Holy Day,” should his Life be? What but the sealing to us of all which he had wrought for us? What but the bursting of the bars of our prison-house, the restoration of our lost Paradise, the opening of the Kingdom of Heaven, the earnest of our endless life? . . . Can there be more than this? There can. The text unfolds to us a yet deeper mystery, that all this is to us “in Christ,” “In Christ shall all be made alive.” The Endless Life . . . shall be a life “in God.” “In Christ shall all be made alive.” We shall live then, not only as having our souls restored to our bodies, and souls and bodies living on in the presence of Almighty God. Great and unutterable as were this blessedness, there is a higher yet in store—to live on “in Christ.” For this implies Christ’s living on in us. . . .
To dwell in God is not to dwell on God only. It is no mere lifting up of our affections to God, no being enwrapt in the contemplation of God, no going forth of ourselves to cleave to God. All this is our seeking God, not his taking us up; our stretching after God, not our attaining him; our knocking, not his opening. To dwell in God must be by his dwelling in us. God takes us out of our state of nature, in which we were, fallen, estranged, in a far country, out of and away from him, and takes us up into himself. God comes to us, and if we will receive him, God dwells in us, and makes his abode in us. He enlarges our hearts by his sanctifying Spirit which he gives us, by the obedience which he enables us to yield, by the acts of faith and love which he strengthens us to do, and then dwells in those who are his more largely. By dwelling in us, God makes us parts of himself, so that in the Ancient Church they could boldly say, “He deifieth me”; that is, God makes me part of him, of his Body, who is God.
From a sermon for Easter by E. B. Pusey, in Sermons during the Season from Advent to Whitsuntide (Oxford, 1848).