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

What did the son do? He listened to the father. The Father spoke, the Son listened, and the Son responded to the Father according to what the Father said to Him. The Father poured into Him His life, poured into Him His love, and poured into Him His word. He was the spoken and the unspoken fellowship that came into the Son. The Son listened and then responded. The Father spoke, the Son listened, the Son responded.

Now this is the basic, may I even use the word primitive, thing that was going on in the Godhead. An exchange of life, an exchange of love, always originating from the Father, and an exchange of speaking. The Son was obedient to the Father, but He was obedient to the Father only by means of the Father’s life, which was poured into Him. His obedience came from the life of the Father.

Now, if we could take all of that and put it together, then we could call all of that one thing. We could say it simply. It was that which was the fellowship of the Father and the Son, beginning with the Father, pouring into the Son, the Son responding, reciprocating, and turning back whatever it was the Father gave Him to the Father. It was the fellowship of the Godhead.

And this was how the Son of God lived the Christian life.

There’s no prayer here. There is a church service: it’s the fellowship of the Trinity. And that’s really the origin of church life, as we should know it here on this earth. There is the interchange of divinity, and that is how the Christian life was lived. Here’s what I want you to understand: the Son of the living God, back there before creation, Spirit of Spirit, the Son, the eternal Son of God, was very practiced at living the Christian life in this simple way. This simple way was His and the Father’s. And he had practiced, how long had he practiced this? Oh, millions, billions, trillions, how long do you want to say years? It doesn’t matter; it doesn’t mean anything out there in eternity, but forever. For sure, if the eternal Son of God should come to earth, He would not have forgotten how He lived, if you please, the Christian life. It was the fellowship of the Father with the Son.

Now then, let’s come to the Incarnation. The Son of God is about to be to leave the heavenlies and go to earth to be born of a virgin in Bethlehem, and the Father says to the Son, ‘Son, up until now you have lived by My life, you have lived by My words, you have lived with Me in perfect fellowship and an interchange of love between us that always originated with Me.

But now, Son, you’re going to that dirty planet down there, and the Christian life as you and I have known it, that’s all off. Forget everything that you’ve ever known here in eternity with Me, within the fellowship of the Godhead, you’re going to earth, you’re going to be a Christian down there, you be sure and read your bible, pray, go to church, tithe, and witness, and that’s the secret to the Christian life on earth. Do you believe that? If you do, as the old saying goes, I’ve got a bridge I want to sell you.

Dear Christian friend, that is not what happened to the Lord Jesus as he grew up, and it would really be exciting to take time to study the very growth of the Lord through the years. We shall not do that now, but as He grew up, He remembered eternity past, and He remembered how He lived the Christian life, if you please, with the Father in eternity past. And He did not drop that for some sort of second-class Christian status. He continued on earth what he had known forever back there in eternity. The Father gave him the Father’s life, and He lived by means of the Father. And that was His confession on this earth, that He lived by the Father’s life. The Father loved him. He sensed that love. He loved His Father back. My Father loves Me, and I love Him.

He kept on listening, and His obedience was perfect in that He never spoke except what He heard from His Father. Where was His Father? In eternity, yes, in the heavenlies, yes, but his Father was within him, and the fellowship of the Godhead that had gone on in eternity was now going on bodily. The fellowship of the Godhead had moved inside a body. And inside that body, inside His Spirit, inside the inmost chambers of the Lord’s being, He fellowshipped with His Father.

And what was going on, and the secret to the Christian life as lived by the Lord Jesus Christ, began; its headwaters, its fountainhead, its wellsprings, were in that fellowship. And you say, ‘But Gene, He read the Bible.’ He may have, but I kind of doubt that He read it for success as a Christian. Please, dear friend, do not forget who He was; He didn’t read it; He wrote it. He was the inspirer of Holy Scripture. He prayed, but that was a constant prayer. Sometimes it intensified because of the crises, but He was in constant fellowship with His Father. He said, I never leave My Father’s face. I see Him always before Me, not with His physical eyes, but with His spiritual eyes.

He had learned this in eternity past. He had always beheld the face of His Father. He had always lived by His life. He had always heard and responded. He had been loved, and He loved back with the love wherewith He Himself was loved. And He beheld. And that’s how He lived that life in eternity past, and that was the stronghold, the fortress, that was the Christian life as He understood it on this earth.

Now don’t tell me that his going to the synagogue is parallel with our going to church I remind you that the church is a people not a building, and bless the hearts of all the poor little Jewish children who had to go to a synagogue, little or no lighting, sitting on the floor for hours listening to something they didn’t understand, words that were spoken in a language not native to them, sitting there in the hot summer months, sweating and perspiring, in ancient old dead rituals that the Lord Jesus Christ would one day nail to the cross. That was not His Christian experience.