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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

SR: 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.

What's difficult to understand about that? God bore witness to the apostles' preaching with signs and wonders through the Spirit. This is an element of the equipping Jesus promised them in Acts 1, Mark 16, etc.

"Long time therefore they tarried there speaking boldly in the Lord, who bare witness unto the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands." - Acts 14:3

Here we read again of the gospel coming not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.

SR: Unregenerate sinners are carnal and cannot obey the word no matter how much you throw it at them.

But that's precisely who needs the gospel. How else can one be regenerated except by obedience to the gospel?

SR: The Lord opened her heart. Miracle of grace!

What's so miraculous about the Lord opening Lydia's heart to Paul's preaching? Here's a woman gathering with other women at a riverside place of prayer on the Sabbath. And along comes the first preacher of the gospel in that region. Of course her heart is going to be opened to listen.

Any surprise, then, that she was receptive to the gospel? She was a woman serving God according to the knowledge she had, obedient in accord with what she knew. Like Apollos and the Ephesians, she was ignorant of "the rest of the story." And like they, once she heard the gospel, she was baptized into Christ. These are those who "have ears to hear".

Not everyone is that way. Some don't have ears to hear, and so the things of God are hidden from them:

"Therefore speak I to them in parables; because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And unto them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall in no wise understand; And seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive: For this people's heart is waxed gross, And their ears are dull of hearing, And their eyes they have closed; Lest haply they should perceive with their eyes, And hear with their ears, And understand with their heart, And should turn again, And I should heal them."

They've distorted their hearts, and dulled their hearing, and closed their eyes. Does that sound like Lydia? Such people WOULD need a miracle! But God won't force open a heart like that, nor shout into such an ear, nor force open such eyes. Lydia's heart, by contrast, was closed to truth only in the sense that she hadn't heard it yet.

But what did Jesus say?

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." - Matt. 7:7-8

That sounds like someone whose heart the Lord will open to pay attention to the gospel when the preacher comes by, doesn't it? It's what we find all through the Bible stories of gospel preaching. Nor is it anything new:

"But from thence ye shall seek Jehovah thy God, and thou shalt find him, when thou searchest after him with all thy heart and with all thy soul." - Deut. 4:29

Anything miraculous going on there? Or has it always been this way with God and those who serve Him?

SR: we have the word of God written on our hearts, and no more just on stone.

This, too, is the way it's always been with God and those who serve Him:

"And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates." - Deut. 6:6-9

And all that, without even a miracle! :-) Do you begin to see how God becomes such a part of one's life that He can be said to dwell in him?

So what have we got so far?

- Two ways in which God, Jesus, and the Spirit dwell/abide within us: the Bible way and some other way.

- And two ways in which the Lord opens hearts: the Bible way and some other way.

False dilemmas? No, just a choice between what's in the Bible and what isn't.