Life of Christ #11 – How Did Jesus Live the Christian Life? Fellowship With the Father

Now I’m going to tell you why we are studying the life of the Lord. There is a very particular, specific reason. It fits into a very special place. Looking at His life has a major purpose for us all, and how we look at His life is central. I doubt you could find five paragraphs in the entire English language, or in all the books ever written on the life of the Lord, from the viewpoint we’re going to use to look at His life.

You and I began with a Christian concept almost from the day we got saved, a concept that is so ingrained not only in the mind of evangelicals, but throughout Christendom, and for hundreds of years. We not only start our lives on this particular path, but so do all Christians of all faiths. It’s inbred in us, and I’m challenging it. I’m challenging it as a starting point, and I’m even saying it’s not proper for us as Christians to begin here, and I don’t think it will hold up to anything but tradition. I don’t think it’ll even hold up to a leisurely inspection from the viewpoint of the Scripture itself.

We start the Christian life with someone telling us how to live it, and we are introduced immediately to things. Now, under pressure, someone might back off and say, yes, these things are to lead us to Christ, but I am challenging the very concept of the things we do not consider in terms of the fountainhead of our faith, the wellsprings of our faith, the foundation stones of our faith. In fact, we have an almost dualistic standard of the Christian faith. There is the means of living the Christian life.

The Lord Jesus Christ lived the Christian life one way. We Christians live the Christian life another way. He did not live the Christian life by the means we’re taught to live it. He lived a totally different way, and I think we sense it immediately that we are second-class Christians. We must live the Christian life differently.

The very fact that you and I have been presented with the means of the Christian life the way we have is, in itself, evidence that something is desperately wrong, and the desperately wrong part is we do not see the deep aspects of the Christian faith. We do not see the unseen. We cannot understand truly where Jesus Christ, our Lord, has come from, what tremendous backlog of experience He had, nor do we see that He is passing on to us in succession that which is His and which had its genesis, its fountainhead, its wellsprings, its foundation long, long ago; long before He came to earth and long before the first Christian on this earth was saved.

I think the best way to begin is to ask: who was the first Christian? All right, who was the first Christian? John the Baptist. Mary Magdalene. Who was it? Philip and Andrew were the very first to follow Him. Who were the first Christians? Well, one of those brothers. Well, immediately we catch on, and we say, well, the Lord Jesus Christ was the first Christian. Great. Then there is our standard. We have to look at Him, then, and say, by what means was He a Christian? How did He live the Christian life? It’s obvious how He lived the Christian life. If He lived the Christian life the way we’re taught to live it, then Jesus Christ was a devout student of the Bible. He spent many hours in prayer. He was baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues with signs following. He lived a good moral life, kept sin out of His life, and confessed sin. Again, I got to be careful here, because, of course, that is not true. He witnessed. This is empowering Him. He had the Holy Spirit, and He probably tithed. That’s what I was taught to do and to be.

Well, I know if someone hearing me speak now would get defensive and say, well, no, you know, that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and His situation was a little different. We should indeed look at Him, but remember, Gene, He did know the Bible. I challenge that. I challenge it. I challenge it right now, right here. I will say that my Lord did not know the Bible. I will say He wrote the Bible. So He didn’t have to study it. Well, then we should study it because He wrote it. I challenge that. Hold steady.

He prayed…and I will say, no, He did not pray. Well, He did pray, Gene. The Bible says He prayed. I doubt that His prayer was anything like prayer today, or prayer of the 1800s, or the 1700s, or the 1600s, or the 1500s, or the 1900s, or the 2000s, or the 2100s, or until this recording rots. I am a little familiar with what prayer is in my generation. I have heard preachers pray my whole life. I have watched congregations pray. I listen to Christians get up in the morning and pray. I’ve heard devotional prayer, and I’ll tell you: if that is prayer, He didn’t pray.

You know, in one of the times that the Lord prayed out loud, and we know what He prayed out loud, He apologized at the beginning of His prayer. He apologized. There is no other way to describe it. The Lord Jesus Christ apologized. He said, Father, you know and I know that I don’t need to pray this way, but I am doing it for the benefit of those who are listening. It was not His way.

Yes, I think we have to lay down the kind of prayer we pray and learn whatever it was that He was doing, and start there, or we will always suffer from the wrong kind of prayer, the kind of prayer we pray today that we are told will help us as Christians…will not help us as Christians. That kind of prayer does not strengthen the inner spiritual man, or if it does, it’s so minute, it’s of only trivial significance.

What is the wellspring? What is the means of living the Christian life? Well, obviously, whatever it was with the Lord, when He got through living the Christian life, He laid it aside, and a new standard was given to us. That is not true. And the whole idea that it’s Bible study and prayer cannot find its foundation in historical fact. I don’t care how many people tell you it’s the Bible you have to study to have the means to live the Christian life. It cannot be historically backed up. First-century Christians could not have conceptualized it in such terms. They had to draw the means from some other source. We have forced a modern-day concept into the first-century Christian mind that wasn’t there, and I will prove it now.