Making Christ Central Part 3

Now, who was the first Christian? You talk to me out here. The Lord Jesus Christ was not the first Christian, and the Christian life did not begin at Pentecost. It did not begin with the birth of Christ or the beginning of His ministry. The Christian life is the oldest thing there is. The Christian life was being lived in the Trinity long before creation. If you’re ever going to understand the Christian life, you’re going to have to go back to eternity past and get inside the Godhead to know, and that comes back to a point that I’m sure slipped by you earlier: that we’re never going to understand what the church is or what the New Testament is saying until we go back into God in eternity past and learn His mind by direct, personal, intimate encounter. That’s the only way we’re going to get clear on anything.

Now, the Lord Jesus Christ made an incredible statement. His statement is—and was — the Lord said, “I cannot live the Christian life.” Your Lord cannot live the Christian life. Now put that in your chewing gum and chew on it. If He cannot live the Christian life, what chance do you think you’ve got to live the Christian life? Well, Gene, the Lord Jesus Christ did not say that. He certainly did. He said, “Without my Father, I can do nothing.” There is only one Christian in the universe. There is only one person who has ever lived a Christian life, and there’s only one person who’s ever going to live the Christian life. And if He does not live the Christian life, it is not going to get lived. Because the Christian life is above and beyond the human being to live. That’s like asking a pig to use silverware to eat. He can’t do it because he’s the wrong species, and the Christian life belongs only to the species of God. It can only be lived by God the Father.

And now we’re back into eternity past. Now we’re back into the Godhead. Now we can ask the question: what is the secret to the Christian life? And the Lord Jesus Christ could not live the Christian life. I’m asking you, God the Father, the first and the only Christian, did He live the Christian life by prayer, Bible study, going to church, tithing, fasting, speaking in tongues, and evangelizing? Yes or no? Well, if that’s not how He lived the Christian life, it’s not the way I’m supposed to live the Christian life either. And He had His first convert, if you please, in the Son of the Living God. I don’t mean to make a big deal out of that. I’m just telling you that the second Christian is the Son of the Living God in eternity past, and He learned the living, the outliving of the Christian life from His Father. Then He became incarnate, and He did not pick up Bible study, prayer, speaking in tongues, going to church, tithing, fasting, living a good life, dressing this way and not that way, and doing this and not doing that. That’s not what happened. He brought into spacetime that which He had done in eternity past, and He continued doing it.

The question is, how did Jesus Christ live the Christian life? Well, immediately someone says He prayed. I’m a little nervous about that. I know my Lord went out early in the morning to be alone with His Father, but does that mean, if you press that far enough, that means that I get up in the morning and go out alone to be with my Father, then I go down to teach school, and that’s the end of it. Am I living the Christian life by that early morning prayer? Did my Lord really stop praying? Did my Lord really stop fellowshipping with the Father? I want to say that we take away His deity and His divinity when we do that. He was in constant fellowship with an indwelling Father. His Father was not there; His Father was in here, and He lived with Him constantly. And I’m going to tell you how Jesus Christ lived the Christian life. It’s really simple. He lived it the way He did in the Father. I’m going to do this really quickly, and all I can tell you is it’s an ocean to sail on, and yet, there’s a bigger one than that. Listen to this.

First of all, only the Father can live the Christian life. Therefore, He received from the Father the Father’s life. And He lived by the means of His Father’s life. He said, “I live by the life of my Father.” He said that. And He said, “In the same way, you will live by me.” I, therefore, have to have His life in me, and I have to learn to live by a life not human, a higher life, the highest life. So, I have that life given to me at salvation. That doesn’t do me one bit of good; I’ve got to learn to lay hold of that life.

The next thing that the Son of God did was He was loved by His Father, and He returned His Father’s love to Him by means of His Father’s life in Him. Everything is sourced in the Father. So, He loved the Father back with the love that He was loved with, and He beheld…these are His own words; I didn’t make this up. This is Him telling you how He lived the Christian life on this earth. He said, “I behold my Father.” The Father beheld Him, and He beheld the Father. And, brothers and sisters, without belaboring this, that’s how Jesus Christ lived the Christian life on this earth.

You tell me that that’s something everybody knows about? We do not know that life is in us. We do not know how to lay hold of that life. We do not know how to love Him back with the love He gives us, and we sure don’t know how to behold Him. When the twelve got together with Jesus Christ, you know what they really learned? The main thing they learned? They learned that He was living with someone else in another realm, and they watched Him live by the Father’s life. They watched Him, in fellowship, 24 hours a day with His Father.

Then came the resurrection, and He blew in them His Father’s life and put that life in them. They, having seen, then experienced and lived by that life, and then they preached that life to others. It was not prayer, and it was not Bible study. Listen, brothers and sisters, it couldn’t have been Bible study, because about 98% of people in the world couldn’t read at the time. And the few that could read…there was virtually no literature available on the face of this earth to read. The people who first followed the Lord were illiterate in almost their totality. They had to have some other means. That means there’s an indwelling Lord.

But I’m going to go a little further, and I’m going to challenge you to prove this, for me to prove this. I’m going to walk out of here today, but I’m nonetheless challenging you. I challenge you to send somebody to me. I challenge you to send somebody to me. Not a large group, a few people, and I’ll prove to you that what I’m about to say is true. It is possible for me, the believer, and I would not talk this way if I did not know that I am addressing the ecclesiae. I don’t really believe in the Christian life outside the ecclesia, and you don’t either. Your strength is in the church. That’s right. There’s no such thing for you and me. There are rare exceptions to this, but forget those rare exceptions. Those are dangerous people. They go around writing books telling you how to live the individual Christian life, and you’re not one of them.

You draw your strength from the ecclesia, and you and I will only survive in the church. We will only grow in Christ in the church. We’re not supposed to know Him outside the church, but it is possible because I am endowed with a living, breathing spirit. My spirit does not belong to this realm, and the life in me does not belong in this realm. It belongs in another realm. And my spirit does not have dimension. My spirit is not subject to space. My spirit is not subject to time. It is possible for my spirit to move out of space and out of time. It’s not possible for my body to, or my mind, but my spirit can go back to its origins. My spirit can go back to God. Outside of space, outside of time, outside of creation. And I, as a believer in Christ, and this is Ephesians chapter 1, verse 2 and 3, you have been given all the riches that are in the heavenly places that are in Christ. They are yours now.

I have the right to the heavenly places that are in Christ. I have the right to take a vehicle — my spirit, which is not subject to space and not subject to time. It is my privilege and my right to take my spirit into the heavenlies and plunge my spirit into the Father and fellowship with the Father in eternity. I have that…my divine right, and as I know Him there, and touch Him there, and embrace Him there, encounter Him there, intimately experience Him there, in places outside of space and time, I come back to the meeting to share with you a Lord I just had fellowship with.

I had a Lord who walked on this earth, but sometimes He got mixed up where He was. His mother said, “We’re out of wine.” But He was in the other realm. He said, “Woman, hush. My time hasn’t come yet.” He knew He was the wine. She was announcing something physical, and He heard it spiritually. There’s a verse in John 3 that ought to really bother you. He said, “The Son of Man who came down from the heavenlies and who is now in the heavenlies.” He said, “Where I am going, you cannot come.” They asked Him what He meant, and then He said, “Where I am, you cannot come.” His body and His soul were here. His spirit was with His Father, and His Father lives both here and in the eternals. He lived in the eternals as well as here while on this earth, and that’s my right and prerogative as a believer who lives and dwells not only in Christ but lives and dwells in the church. Brothers and sisters, we’ve got a world out there to know, and we need so much to make Christ central in our message and experience. We can drop all the foolishness, and we can also come back to lay hold of the mind of the living God.