The Secret to the Christian Life: How Jesus Lived It (June 1986)

Now, let me just take a moment to say what I mean by fruit. We’ll not go into horticulture here, but fruit drops from a tree because the tree is so full of life. It has no place to put the fruit, so it has to drop it onto the ground. Fruit is a result of a superabundance of life. Whatever comes out of the superabundance of your walk and your life with Christ, that’s fruit. It’s not something you pump. It’s not something you’re threatened with. It’s not something you are badgered to do. It is not something that you live in guilt over because you do not have it. It comes out of a deep, abiding walk with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, I’d like to go back to the first century and ask a really simple question. What’s the secret to the Christian life? How did the Christians of the first century, what was their taproot? What did they have that we don’t have? What were they in touch with that we somehow have overlooked? And have we overlooked the main point?

I think the best way for me to say to you, this is the secret to the Christian life, is to go back and ask how the first Christians lived the Christian life. No, let’s not do that. Let’s go back and ask how the first Christian lived the Christian life. In fact, who was the first Christian? How did he live the Christian life? Well, the first Christian. Was that Andrew, Philip, Nathaniel, or Peter? They are among the first four believers. Shall we go there? Or was it John the Baptist, the first who seemed to really believe in the Lord Jesus? Was he the first believer? And if so, how did they live the Christian life? And what was their model, and what did they see? And then, of course, if you think real, real hard and you recognize the fact that they were not the first Christians, the Lord Jesus Christ was the first Christian. How did He live the Christian life?

Now, I have to ask this question at this point, and I’d like for you to ask it too. Did those first-century believers live the Christian life in a way different from us, that was available to them, that is not available to us? In other words, are we second-class Christians? And I come to the Lord Jesus Christ, and I look at Him, and I say, was the secret to the living of the Christian life by Him different than the secret of the Christian life for me? Did He have an edge on me to live the Christian life that I simply cannot live, and I cannot identify with in any way?

And the answer comes when we make this great discovery, and that is this. The Lord Jesus Christ was not the first Christian. Maybe one of the biggest mistakes we make is to believe or take for granted that the Christian life is about 2000 years old.

Dear Christian friend of mine, the Christian life is not 2,000 years old. The Christian life is probably the most ancient thing that ever was. And Jesus Christ was not the first Christian. I’m going to get way out here on a limb, saw like crazy. Not only was Jesus Christ not the first Christian, but Jesus Christ could not live the Christian life. Now, if Jesus Christ could not live the Christian life, surely, I cannot live the Christian life.

Now, before you turn your television set off, would you please listen to his own words? Without the Father, I can do nothing. Without the Father, I can do nothing. Now we come to the first Christian. We come, let me come first to the first three Christians.

These were the first three Christians who ever existed. And they were Christians for a very, very long time, still are. By the way, they’re all three victorious Christians. Their names, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And they’ve been Christians forever. But the Son said, I can do nothing except by the Father. Without the Father, I can do nothing. So the origin of the Christian faith and the first Christian is God the Father. All life, all Christian victory, all secrets of the Christian life flow from the Father. And that’s where we begin in order to begin to understand the Christian life. Praise the Lord. Start there and work back.

And if it happened to you the way it happened to me, it happened to me that somebody took a verse out of Revelation and out of Hebrews and put them together and told me, This is where you, Gene Edwards, begin the Christian life. That’s starting on the wrong end of the book, and on the wrong end of the experience. Take me, take me to my Father, and let me see Him. And let me ask, how did he live the Christian life? I repeat, how did the Father live the Christian life?

Well, everybody knows how the Father lived the Christian life based on what we’re told that we must do to live the Christian life. So, let’s look at Him. There He is. Can you see Him? God the Father is sitting in a rocking chair, reading the Bible, praying, and getting ready to go to church. Well, that’s absurd on the face of it. He is the origin of the Christian life. He not only does the Christian life, He is the Christian life. Whatever He does, that’s Christian. If He doesn’t do it, that’s not Christian. Whatever He is, that is Christian. Whatever He is not, that is not Christian.

The Father is the source of the Christian life. That’s all we can say. But we can ask this question, and it is pertinent. Long before creation, before I got here, before you got here, before anything got here, back in the Godhead, how did the eternal Son live the Christian life? And the answer is: the same way He later did on earth. But if we can look back to that primordial era, we can get insight into the origins of the Christian experience that will mean everything to us here now. What was happening in the Godhead?

The Father was the Christian life. The Christian life, I repeat, is very ancient. The Son was the recipient of the Father’s life. They were in fellowship together. By his own words, the Son lived by means of his Father. This is what was going on inside the Godhead. The Father was taking His life, the only life, the Christian life, God’s life, the Father’s life, and pouring it into the Son. And the Son was living by means of His Father’s life. The Father was loving the Son, and the Son was loved by the Father. Then the Son took the love which the Father had poured upon Him, and using the Father’s love, taking the Father’s love, He took the Father’s love and loved the Father back with the Father’s love.