After re-reading your post, I don't see much more to answer.
It's one thing to try and explain the word, or to have thoughts about what it means. It's quite another thing altogether to take multiple passages and cancel their plain sense meaning in order to preserve some other doctrinal objective, whatever that might be.
I applaud and share your commitment to fidelity to the Scriptures. If we're told one place that Christ dwells in us, and told in another place HOW Christ dwells in us, it seems to me we've been given the "plain sense meaning" of indwelling. Would you agree?
And if we're given the meaning, then those who insert a meaning of their own are the ones canceling the meaning God gave us.
Is it different with the Holy Spirit? If so, where does the Bible explain what this indwelling is? Does the Spirit dwell in the disciple the same way faith does (2 Tim. 1:5)? The same way God dwelt among the children of Israel (2 Cor. 6:16)? The same way the word of Christ dwells in the saints (Col. 3:16)?
I applaud and share your commitment to fidelity to the Scriptures. If we're told one place that Christ dwells in us, and told in another place HOW Christ dwells in us, it seems to me we've been given the "plain sense meaning" of indwelling. Would you agree?
False Dilemma again. The Scriptures never say that our obedience to the word is the only sense or even the best sense in which to understand the indwelling of the Spirit. I showed you in an earlier post that Paul makes a distinction between a Gospel preached in word only versus a Gospel preached and received in the power of the Spirit. Unregenerate sinners are carnal and cannot obey the word no matter how much you throw it at them. But those born from above are new creations, are led by the Spirit, are indwelt by the Spirit, and so have not only obedience but joy and love and peace and all the fruits of the sanctifying work of the Spirit. They are a living miracle. The life of a believer MUST begin with a miracle:
And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.
(Acts 16:14)
You see how both things are happening here? The Lord opened her heart. Miracle of grace! It is not enough to sit and listen to the word, nod your head in agreement, go and do all you think is required, because if the Lord doesn't work in your heart, if the Lord doesn't raise you from spiritual death, then anything and everything you do is carnal, fleshly, because it is not grounded in faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God.
Which gets us back to the problem of interpretation. It is just as erroneous to oversimplify something because we do not fully understand it, as it is to add undue complexity. It is our intent to veer neither to the left nor to the right, but to stay on the straight path. We know the Holy Spirit, a Person, indwells the believer, also a person. That language is plain. What we lack is an exhaustive catalog of all the ways in which that personal relationship might play out. We have some understanding that the word of God can also dwell in us, and be instrumental in how the Holy Spirit leads us and works with us.
But this in no way prevents us from taking "indwelling" in the ordinary sense we encounter in so many passages, that of a close proximity of and intimate interaction between two living persons. What we never see is any passage which says that ONLY the word of God indwells us, that there is no OTHER sense in which the Spirit of God inhabits us. You remember the Shekinah Glory? The Glory of the Lord at the burning bush, then manifesting in the wilderness as the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, filling the tabernacle, and filling Solomon's Temple, with the presence of God in such a direct and powerful way?
We who believe are that Temple now. Like the ark of the covenant, we have the word of God written on our hearts, and no more just on stone. But we also have the same fire of the burning bush, the same fire by night and cloud by day, to lead us where we should go. We still have the glory of the Lord filling us, the Temple that He has chosen to occupy, and within which He still manifests Himself as
He sees fit, and not with any preconditions we can place on Him with our limited understanding of His ways.
Peace,
SR