The Highest Life Form Part 2 – Living by the Life of God – The True Christian Life Explained

Man is running around on this planet living by human life, and that was an unplanned matter. In fact, it’s an unplanned disaster. God never intended for the species we call homo sapiens to live by human life. That was not his original purpose in creating it. Humanity was never intended to be a life source. God never intended man to be a life form. God intended for man to take on the life of God and become the Lord’s own people, His own divine race, a race after His own kind, bearing after His own kind. That was his plan. Praise his name.

Now, I’m still not sure that you realize how radical this whole fact is. I would like to make another point about this, but it’s not going to be easy. I could spend a great deal of time considering, and so could you, this very subject. What does it really mean to be a Christian? Have you ever noticed the great gulf that exists between forms of life? Each life form has little or nothing in common with forms of life above it or below it.

Now let’s illustrate this. Do you think that a fish has the idea it would like to have its tail planted in soil, lift its fins toward the sky, and sit in the sun all day? The idea is ridiculous. Do you think a dog ever just longed and panted to get up in a tree and sit on eggs all day? Absurd. Well, let’s take it from the other direction. Has a bird ever wanted to wallow around in a pig pen, or dig a hole and bury a bone? Would a dog enjoy listening to an opera, watching a play, or baking a cake? No, there is an awesome gulf between all major classifications of life forms. Furthermore, in the history of creation, fish life has never really shown any interest in animal life. They’re hardly conscious that one another exists, and animal life has shown virtually no interest in sea life or life that exists in the air. Consider it.

Let’s go further. Have you ever heard of a blackbird setting up a society to take care of elks? Have you ever seen a rhinoceros pass the hat for kittens? Each has their own patterns, their own instincts, and their own unique interests. Their own sense of things, their own values of things. All their interests are considered central to their own life form, and their interests are centered there. This is true of all species, including men. Now, I realize that we have our humanitarian societies for the protection of this and that, but that’s a very minor consideration in human life.

About the only interest one life form ever shows in another life form is to learn how to stay out of its way. There is a sense within them to live at peace with one another, unless one happens to be a predator, in which case the other is very interested in staying out of the predator’s way. As I said, there is a staggering leap between the fish and the bird life, and yet they are only one category separated from one another. Fish do not think like birds, nor do they travel or live like birds. They have virtually nothing in common with birds, yet a bird’s life is a life form only one step higher than a fish.

Have you ever thought about the two life forms next to you, the one above you, and the one right below you? Would an angel enjoy learning calculus, running a computer, or sitting around for years trying to come up with a great new technological breakthrough, like a better smog device for trucks? Can you see an angel doing that? It would be repulsive to an angel. Just as repulsive as it would be for you to go sniffing around the ground and stick an old bone in the dirt and cover it up with your feet. As a matter of fact, you could hardly conceive of being an angel. First of all, you wouldn’t be a boy or a girl. You’d have to be neuter, and shooting into space faster than light, generating messages from heaven to earth and from earth back to the heavens again, could really get to be a drag for a human. The angels enjoy it. Well, at least two-thirds of them do, anyway. They wouldn’t seriously want to become a crummy old human any more than a crummy old human would like to become a polecat.

There’s a vast gulf between you and the two life forms nearest to you. The angels above and the land animals beneath. You have no interest in living the life of an animal; you never even thought about it. If you ever longed to be a little animal, it would probably put you into some kind of institution. And right now, it probably never crossed your mind.

The patterns of existence, thought, purpose, instincts, desires, and outlook are so radically different that it’s inconceivable. Do you realize that you are twice removed from the life form of divinity? The life form of God is as far from you as the life form of a fish is from you, yet the Lord himself came to give you his life, that radical life, and to allow you to stop living by your life and to begin living by a life not your own, to begin living by his life. Here’s one obvious fact: that event is going to produce quite a radical change in you. That’s putting it mildly.

Let’s see if we can begin to conceive of how radical a change this implies, and as we do, you can get some idea of just how off course we are as Christians; how ridiculous some of our understandings of what the word Christian really means. And what Christian undertakings are, or I should say, are not. Certainly, we’re not talking about works here. You can’t act out another life form and become that life form. This can only be done by the life form being implanted in you, and by you then drawing on that life form as a source.

Let’s say that the first explorers on the South Pole, when they discovered the penguin, decided to make it into a human being. The explorers began demanding that all the penguins put on suspenders. And shoes. Sit at the table and hold a fork. Determined to make penguins into humans. Well, the penguin is terribly disinterested, and to say the least, the whole thing is not only a study in absurdity, but a total failure. The explorers insist; they tell the penguins, “Oh, there are many things you need. For instance, you have to be a democracy. We’re going to teach you how to stuff a ballot and vote for a leader. You can’t go on just having herd instincts.”

Now remember, they’re not going to make penguins act like men, but they’re going to change them so that they’re interested in streets, technologies, schools, colleges, inventions, and philosophy, committed to making penguins men. Can they do it? No. Why? Because a penguin doesn’t have the right life form. Try all that you may. You will never make a penguin be stirred up about slums, the poor, the next election, or any of these things. That is so obvious that to even think of it seems ridiculous. But when we turn this around, it doesn’t begin to be ridiculous at all.

Men do not try to get other life forms to be like humans. Our interest in other life forms is small at the very best. But look at the Christian. Look at the Christian today. Men are constantly calling us, as Christians, to do certain things. To accomplish certain things. To become certain things. And yet the Christian, having heard this, seeks to respond, and he cannot. The Christian life is an activity of a higher form of life. It is not an attainment. It is not something you do. It is not something you accomplish. It is not something God expects of you to perform. The Christian life is Life not human.