The True Secret of the Christian Life

By this time next year, and we’re not even started yet, by this time next year, we will have four people with master’s degrees in counseling, and I’m hopeful that we will have one Christian counselor for every 50 people in the fellowship, and they will be the busiest four men in America handling 50 needy souls.

I believe in balance. I’m not up here peddling to you a cure-all. There is no cure-all. Never listen to the merchant who has a panacea. He has a panacea for himself; he has a cure-all for himself. The body of Christ is too diverse to be cured by any one thing. Then, Gene, why did you say what you said this morning, that you were going to tell us the secret to the Christian’s life?

Okay, let’s talk for a minute. Let’s go back to the first century. Do you consider Paul an outstanding Christian? You do. Okay. Well, previous to Paul, there were Peter and John. You consider them outstanding Christians. And something motivated them, didn’t it? We’d like to sit down for an hour or two and talk with them.

Okay, let’s go back. Who’s the first Christian? Who was the very first Christian? I’m sorry? Jesus Christ. Alright, now here’s where I cheated. I’m sorry. This morning, I said I would tell you the secret of the Christian’s life. I’m going to repeat that sentence, and I want you to listen to it very carefully. I am going to tell you the secret of the Christian’s life. Did you understand? I’m going to talk to you about the Christian and how He lived the Christian life. Gene, I just got cheated. No, you didn’t. We will never understand who and what and where and when and how about us until we understand the who, what, when, and how about Him. You do not start in Galatians, Philippians, or Ephesians. You start at the headwaters of your faith. You start with Jesus.

Now then, I ask this question: how did Jesus Christ live the Christian life? Well, Gene, He was good to people. That didn’t make him a Christian. He prayed a lot. That was not his secret. He…oh, I don’t know, you could go on and on, and we get the impression we’re supposed to imitate his life and do what he did, and that is disastrous. Don’t ever fall for that, brother. Don’t ever fall for that, sister. That’ll lead you up a blind alley.

How did Jesus Christ live the Christian life? Okay, you tell me. By the Spirit. By obedience to the Father. Oneness with the Father. One with the Father, okay? Alright, fine. This is good. You people are two or three notches above. Those are good answers. I’ll accept all of that. If he did that, how did he do that? Huh? He was God. That certainly helped, didn’t it? I feel a little cheated because he was God, and he lived the Christian life, and I am not God, and I didn’t get to live the Christian life that way. He’s demanding an awful lot of me to ask me to live the way he lived. I don’t particularly feel like that’s fair. Do you? That doesn’t sound fair. Was someone else saying something over here? Humility. The great Catholic teaching, “humilium”, held sway for a thousand years, asserting that humility was the key to the Christian life. No. No. No, no, no.

I don’t know how to go from here. For one thing, we have made a disastrous decision, and we have come up with the wrong conclusion. We have all of our thinking concentrated right now on the earth, and we have it on performance, and brother and sister, if you start there, if you even have a little bit of that there, it’s going to drive you crazy.

Listen, I don’t care how hard we try to remember that it is the Lord, and not ourselves, who lives the Christian life; we are going to get involved. Is that not true? We’re going to be filled with the Spirit by grunt, by gum, and by golly. Uh… We’re going to be humble if it kills us. There is the human grunt element in the Christian experience. Now, I’m coming up to sacred territory, and I really don’t know how to impress you with this, but boy, I want you to know something. I’m going to make an effort at this, and in order to do so, I am going to tell you something right now.

You see, I’m still an evangelist, and I still like to do things. I like to feel that I’ve accomplished something. I don’t like to preach sermons; I like to make sure that something is done, so I’ve asked your pastor for permission to do this. And that is, I’ve asked two things, and one of them is if I could get his permission to get you out of bed early two mornings this week to pray. And the second thing I’ve asked is that would he let me plan next Sunday night’s meeting? Peter, being the gracious adventurer that he is, has trepidatiously, I’m sure, allowed this perfect stranger into this place to do that very thing.

So… I’m going to tell you before I go any further. I don’t want you to come back next Sunday night unless you have gotten up a couple of mornings to pray. Now then, I’m going to give you something I want you to do tonight, but I want to meet you again at 6:15 on Tuesday morning. Think about it. Now I’m getting serious. I’m getting really serious. I’m going to talk to you tonight about getting up with someone tomorrow morning and praying, and then on Tuesday I’m going to meet with you, and I’m going to ask you to get up with someone on Thursday and Sunday morning early to pray. Only it won’t exactly be prayer. Alright, have I pricked your curiosity? Just say amen. Make me feel good. Okay.

Alright, now let me come back. We have made a tremendous blunder. Jesus Christ was not the first Christian, nor was the Christian faith born at Pentecost. Nor was the Christian faith born in the waters of the Jordan when John the Baptist baptized Jesus. Nor did the Christian faith have its origins and beginnings in Bethlehem. The origins of the Christian faith, the origins of the Christian experience, are older than antiquity. They have only recently invaded time and space.

No, Jesus Christ, God incarnated on this earth, was not the first Christian. Nor did the Christian life have its origins on this planet. Nor did the Christian life have its origins inside the confines of time or space. Nor did the Christian life have its origins within creation. The Christian life was here previous to creation. And I’m going to tell you something else that’s really breathtaking. Church life did not begin on this earth at Pentecost. And church life did not begin in Galilee with the Lord fellowshipping with twelve men. Church life also began before time and before space. Its origins are in antiquity, nay, before antiquity.