I.　For the new man we all need to take Christ as our person—Eph. 3:17a:

A.　Christ is both the life of the Body and the person of the new man—Col. 3:4; Eph. 3:17a; 4:24:

1.　The church is the Body, and this Body needs Christ to be in it as life.

2.　The church is also the one new man, and this one new man needs Christ to be in him as his person.

B.　In the one new man the natural man has no place, for here Christ is all and in all—Col. 3:10-11.

C.　Christ is in all of us, so we all have only one person—1:27; Eph. 3:17a.

II.　For the practical existence of the universal one new man, we must reject our old person and live by our new person—Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 3:17a:

A.　The crucial question in our Christian life is not what we are doing but who is doing it—Gal. 2:20.

B.　In our living we should care for the inward shifting from the old person to the new person—Rom. 6:6; Eph. 3:17a.

III.　When we live our life by taking Christ as our person, especially in making decisions, our living will be the living of the universal one new man—John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38; 17:4; Rom. 15:32; James 4:13-15:

A.　The Body is for moving; the new man is for living, and eighty to ninety percent of our living is in making decisions—Phil. 1:21-26; 2 Cor. 1:17-20.

B.　In the new man we take Christ as our person to make plans and to decide how we should live—Rom. 15:32.

C.　If we take Christ as our person, we will not decide anything in our life by ourselves—Philem. 14:

1.　Since we are part of the new man, our decisions and our living should not be ours; they should be the decisions and living of the corporate new man.

2.　The living of the new man is a corporate living; therefore, our decisions are corporate decisions and not our personal decisions—Acts 15:22-29.

IV.　Paul is a pattern of taking Christ as our person for the one new man— 1 Tim. 1:16:

A.　"It pleased God…to reveal His Son in me"—Gal. 1:15a, 16a:

1.　Nothing is more pleasing to God than the unveiling of the living person of the Son of God.

2.　We need to be brought into a state where we are full of the revelation of the Son of God and thereby become a new creation with Christ living in us.

B.　"I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me"—2:20a:

1.　Paul did not say that the life of Christ lived in him but that Christ the person lived in him.

2.　God's economy is that the "I" be crucified in Christ's death and that Christ live in us in His resurrection.

C.　"My children, with whom I travail again in birth until Christ is formed in you"—4:19:

1.　To have Christ formed in us is to have Christ fully grown in us.

2.　Christ has been born into us, He is now living in us, and He will be formed in us at our maturity.

D.　"That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith"—Eph. 3:17a:

1.　God the Father is exercising His authority through God the Spirit to strengthen us into the inner man that God the Son may make His home deep downward in our hearts.

2.　If we allow Christ to have all the room within us and if we give Him the full liberty to do whatever He wants in us, our heart will become His home.

E.　"God is my witness how I long after you all in the inward parts of Christ Jesus"—Phil. 1:8:

1.　Paul did not live in his natural inner being; he lived a life in the inward parts of Christ, experienced Christ in His inward parts, and was one with Christ in His inward parts.

2.　Paul did not keep his own inward parts but took Christ's inward parts as his; Paul's inner being was reconstituted with the inward parts of Christ.

F.　"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus"—2:5:

1.　To let Christ's mind be in us is to take Christ as our person by denying our natural mind and taking His mind.

2.　If we intend to take Christ as our person, we must be willing to deny our mind and have our mind replaced by the mind of Christ.

G.　"For also what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, it is for your sake in the person of Christ"—2 Cor. 2:10b:

1.　Paul lived Christ in the closest and most intimate contact with Him, acting according to the index of His eyes.

2.　Paul was a person who was one with Christ, full of Christ, and saturated with Christ; he was a person broken and even terminated in his natural life, softened and flexible in his will, affectionate yet restricted in his emotion, considerate and sober in his mind, and pure and genuine in his spirit toward the saints for their benefit.

H.　"That the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit"—Rom. 8:4:

1.　In practicality, to take Christ as our person is to have our being wholly according to the mingled spirit.

2.　In our daily life we should not have our being according to teaching, feeling, concepts, or circumstances but according to the mingled spirit, taking Christ as our person for the universal one new man.