“The Father Living in Me”

Perhaps the clearest reference Jesus made to his life "in the Father" occurred in the Upper Room as he was preparing his disciples for his departure.

At that point his followers were still befuddled by his reference to leaving them, and asked him to show them the Father to whom he was going (John 14:8). In reply Jesus said that to have seen him was to have seen the Father (14:8). "Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?" he asked. "The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, who is living in me, who is doing his work."

What a striking statement. "It is the Father, who is living in me..." Jesus understood his Father not simply to be present with him, but living in him. That is to say, his Father was a dynamic, active personal presence within him – within his mind and heart and will. The Father was in him working, influencing, directing and empowering. And as a result, Jesus could say that the Father was actually "doing his work." Jesus, of course, was active. But it was nevertheless the Father living in him who was behind his actions. And the works he (Jesus) did, and the words he spoke, were not his own, but the Father's. That's why he could say that to have seen him was to have seen the Father. The Father was so much at work in Jesus that all he did was really a revelation of the Father working in him.

This is exactly what Paul meant when he wrote about Christ "living in him" (Galatians 2:20). And it is what the Westminster Confession refers to when it speaks of the Christians' good works in this way: "Their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ. And that they may be enabled thereunto, beside the graces they have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit, to work in them to will, and to do, of his good pleasure..." (WCF XVI:3)

The Christian life is an empowered life; a life that manifests the indwelling of God within us.