The Highest Life Form Part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

Now, your definition of what the church is. What is the church? Well, it’s certainly not this abominable thing that’s here on this earth made out of stone that has steeples and stained glass, and that has office hours between 11 and 12 every Sunday morning. The church is not a group of people who are gathering together living by human life. If they do that, they’re going to kill one another or something terrible. Take a look at us, and you’ll get some idea of what it’s like when Christians get together, living by and drawing from this fallen human life of ours. No. The church is when people who have named the name of Christ, who have been impregnated with the life of Christ, and who are living by that Life, come together, who are corporately then living not by human life, but living by the Life of God and expressing corporately that Life together. God will have a people who will live by a higher Life and will express that Life. This is the gospel; this is the church. This is what the church is to be: the gathering of God’s people living by a life not their own.

There’s a story in the book of Acts, Acts 5. The apostles are in jail, they’ve had a pretty rough day, and an angel opens the jail door and escorts them out on the street. Just as he does, the angel says, Go and speak to the people in the temple all the words of this Life. Do you realize that those same apostles had once cowered behind locked doors, fearing death, even though they had lived with Life for three and a half or four years, been living with the Lord, and living with the Lord who lived by the Life of God had not helped. For that life form was not in them. They were living by a lower life form. But after the resurrection and after the day of Pentecost, they got a new, higher Life in them, and they were enveloped in that Life. And the day the angel told them to go and speak of that Life, they knew what they were doing because that Life was in them, and they lived by it.

Now watch them. They go before the Sanhedrin. They’re in the Sanhedrin, in the prison, in the temple. They were proclaiming that life, and they did so unafraid. Now they didn’t care. They didn’t care about anything, for they had learned to live by another life, an eternal, uncreated Life that has no beginning and could not have an end. No matter what happened to them, they were becoming one with that Life. This, this Life, is what the apostles were bearing witness to. This higher form of Life is what grows them. This is what their gospel was, this is what they preached. This Life had invaded this tragic fallen earth, and this Life had come, could be implanted in them, and had been implanted in them, and they were living by it, and they were now proclaiming to others, “You need not live by a lower form of life, you can live by the Life of God, you can have that Life in you, and you can live by the Life the Lord lives by.”

And so, with that message, first-century Christians became legends, and it was with that experience that went with that message. They knew something that we never heard. They experienced something that we never dreamed could be experienced, and that is that we could have that Life in us, and not only have that Life, but live by it. They were unstoppable, and why not? They were thriving on an energy and drawing from a form of Life higher than their enemies. The angels said it. Go and bear witness to this Life. It was a Life that naturally has joy in prison and naturally gives peace in the face of death.

Now, this is what the church is. Part of the Lord’s work in our day, as He is moving in our day, is to show us how to live by His Life. If you live by His Life in the body of Christ, corporately, together with others, you will eventually be fulfilling his eternal purpose.

The Lord is saying this. I have come to give you a Life, not like the life you have now, not a life that you might see or seem to be the life of some pious Christian with a halo. You admire him and say, “This is the life.” No. That is not the life of the Lord. He has said, “I have come to give you a Life that has nothing to do with you. It’s not like you; it doesn’t have your characteristics or your character. It does not give you being. It does not have your attitude. It is not like you. It does not have your outlook. It doesn’t favor you in any way in any of the areas of your life. You’re not used to this life, nor are you well acquainted with this life.

Yes. This Life has virtually nothing in common with the characteristics of human life. The two life forms usually, almost always, look at things totally different and go in totally different directions from one another. This Life doesn’t think like, doesn’t act like, and most of all does not react like your life. Nor does it consider or apprehend the way that your life considers and apprehends. This is a Life that is lived by God in light and revelation and not in the attributes of humanity. The foundation of this Life, the way this Life looks at matters, the way this Life reaches conclusions; they’re totally opposed to all of your and my daily processes. This Life is not just higher but utterly different. Its values are as different as the level between a human and a little life form. From the view of this Life, its attainment, the way it sees problems, we can especially observe this in the matter of suffering. This Life does not hesitate to suffer. Everything that is in you and everything around you is in a totally different realm, different level, and from a totally different vantage point than the Life of the Lord. Third-level life is not like the Life of Divinity, for that Life is glorious.

Did Jesus say this to you? I have come not to give you a higher life, that is something neat and will cushion you from life’s woes. No, I have not come to give you that. I have come to give you a form of Life known in heavenly places in realms of light. I’m not going to give you a little scrap of this Life either. Not just a taste of it. Not just enough to squeeze by on. Not even an adequate dosage. I am going to give you this higher Life to live by, pressed down and running over. I’m going to dump it on you in superabundance.

Now, what’s your part? Well, your part is really very simple. Your part is to learn to live by that Life, and as you do, you won’t need me. You won’t need anything. All you need to do is learn to live by a Life not your own. Here, I give you all you need. Everything is in the One who lives in you.

To live by a Life not your own; now, that is wonderful, but it may be even more wonderful, and even more radical than you realize. Let’s see if I can illustrate this. Have you ever seen a tree longing to become a fish? No, of course not, or a bird willing to be a horse? No, all forms of life seem to be fairly contented from all that we can observe to be what they are…except man. Why does man have a natural descent in him that he is amiss? Innately, he realizes something is awry; it is because, hold on to your chair, God never planned there to be anything called man. I’ll qualify that. That is, his intention was not to leave you or me with no more human life than we’ve got right now to live by…or no more than human life to live by.