How can Jesus live in my heart?

If you’ve been around Christians long enough then you have no doubt heard people describe the moment of putting our trust in God as “accepting Jesus into your heart”. This is one of those Christian phrases that can get batted around in church and for our kids it can sound like a very strange concept. How can a person live inside of me? In fact, how can anything apart from blood be inside my heart?

The heart metaphor

In the same way that Valentine’s cards are plastered with heart shapes and filled with poems about someone special ‘holding your heart’, we have all come to understand that when we say “heart” we are not simply talking about the muscle that pumps blood - it’s a metaphor for the epicentre of life within us. Simply put in proverbs 4:23 “everything you do flows from it.” (If you’ve not yet explained the heart metaphor to your kids then that’s a great place to start!)

Paul says that faith (believing) is how Christ himself comes to dwell in us

It is hardly a surprise that with our hearts playing such an important role in sustaining life in our bodies, we attribute important feelings, people, and character traits to our hearts. If someone is kind we’d say they have “a heart of gold”. If we are getting to the most important part of an issue, then we might describe it as the “heart of the matter”. Or to assure me that you are sincere you might say it’s “from the bottom of my heart”. We use this metaphor more often than we realise in everyday speech! What we are expressing is an all-encompassing passion that is so entangled with our existence that you simply cannot live or be without it.

You’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this: Jesus becomes so integral to my life that he is in my heart just like my passions, personality, and favourite people - I wouldn’t want to live without him. The heart bit is a metaphor, but as crazy as it sounds, there is actually something literal about the rest of it, let me explain.

Jesus in me?

Christ living in me is a mystery (Col 1:27). Mystery might make you think of a detective puzzle but the Bible uses this word to describe a spiritual truth that had previously been hidden but is revealed through Jesus, like that moment in a book or movie when it all makes sense and you flick back through to see how the little details had all been pointing to this one big reveal. Theologians call the big reveal of Christ living or dwelling inside us ‘union with Christ.’

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The apostle Paul writes about this heart-dwelling union in Ephesians 4:17, “I pray that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”. The dwelling that Paul describes is more than warm fuzzy feelings or our thoughts or belief in God that we hold in our hearts. It is Jesus himself who lives in us. Paul says that faith (believing) is how Christ himself comes to dwell in us. So, if your child is wondering ‘how can Jesus live in my heart’ then your answer is right there. But I suspect most kids are actually wondering ‘how is it possible for Jesus to be inside me?’ As clunky as our Christian lingo often is, this is actually the right question to be asking. Because Jesus is not just with you when you become a Christian, he makes his home in you permanently.

Jesus in me?

Ok I’ll be honest, until recently I thought we’d kind of got the trinity confused when we talked about Jesus living in us, surely what we meant is that the Holy Spirit lives in us? But as confusing as it is, Scripture is abundantly clear. “Do you not realise that Christ Jesus is in you?” (2 Cor 13:5).

Jesus’ best friends must have felt the difference. They once walked with Jesus, talked with him, lived, ate, and laughed with Jesus. But now, after Jesus ascended to heaven they experienced what it was to have Jesus in them. They watched as the resurrected Jesus walked through locked doors (John 20:19), disappeared at will (Luke 24:31), and spoke as if from heaven (Acts 9:4-5) - he was not limited physically within time and space like our bodies are. He now had a spiritual body. No wonder they were ok with the logistics of how a man they had once walked with could now exist and dwell in them. His bodily existence had changed in front of their eyes.

Jesus described how this mystery union is possible through a plant. Take one off your windowsill and have a look with your children

Jesus described how this mystery union is possible through a plant. Take one off your windowsill and have a look with your children. Jesus is the life that pulses through the roots, up the trunk, and into the branches, who then produce flowers or fruit. “I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit” (John 15:5). If you were to break a branch off of your plant then it would be cut off from the life source and it would stop making fruit/flowers and would wither and die. We are only spiritually alive if we are in Christ, attached to the plant. And Jesus the vine, the source of life, produces fruit through the branches - that’s you and me.

When you put your trust in Jesus by faith, your life is united/joined/shared with Christ’s life - he exists in you and he continues to do his work through you by the power of the Holy Spirit who joins you together. You are grafted into Jesus, and him in you too, in the same way a branch belongs to a tree.

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Christ doesn’t just visit you when you feel holy or hang out with you in your best moments. He doesn’t abandon you when you’re bad or ignore you when he’s busy. He makes a permanent home in you to abide with you as his loved and chosen child. We can live with God the Father, because God invites us to live in God the Son, by the power of God the Holy Spirit.

As Christians, Jesus is in our hearts as the epicentre of our life, not just because we feel something about him, but because he is actually dwelling in us through his spirit. Not only because we don’t want to live without him, but because we spiritually can’t live without him. This is a big, life-giving, heart-filling wonderful mystery. Literally!