The True Secret of the Christian Life

Listen to it. Listen to it. I want you to remember how long ago it was, because this is important. The Father is the Christian, and the Son, the eternal Son, not yet incarnated, the eternal Son is there with Him. Somewhere in all of this is the Holy Spirit. But the Lord Jesus, in the times He leaked out this, He didn’t give us any clues to the Holy Spirit’s place in this. None at all.

What is going on? This one…the Son, is beholding the face of the Father. The Son is beholding the face of the Father. Praise the Lord. Say praise the Lord. Isn’t that simple? The Son is beholding the face of the Father. The Son is loving the Father, but that’s not exactly correct. The Father is loving the Son, and the Son is taking the Father’s love, the Father’s love, and loving the Father back with the Father’s love. Say something. Don’t just sit there. Amen. Glory.

The Son is listening to the Father. He is listening to His voice. Now, He is not answering; He is listening, and He is responding. There’s a difference between answering and responding. He is responding to the Father’s voice. He is beholding the Father. The Father is loving Him, and He is loving the Father back with the love the Father has given Him. He is listening to the Father’s voice, and He is responding.

Now, one more. He is obeying the Father, but He is obeying the Father by means of the Father’s life…by means of the Father’s life. His obedience is born of the life of God the Father. He is not obeying Him by the strength of the Son. The Son can do nothing. I would put it another way. The Son is living by the life of the Father, and in that living, by that life, He is able to obey His Father’s voice, and all that is demanded of him by means of the Father’s life.

Now, dear Christian, I want you to know that Jesus Christ, yes, but Jesus Christ not yet incarnated, Jesus Christ out there, the eternal Son, cannot live the Christian life by his own means, and he made that really clear on earth when he came later. I cannot live the Christian life. I lived that life by the means of the life of the Father. Brothers and sisters, there’s the only Christian there is, and there is only one way the Christian life is lived, and that’s by the means of the life of the Father. Any human effort to live the Christian life fails outside the life of God the Father. If the eternal Son could not live the Christian life, it’s for sure I can’t. And you can’t either.

There was only one other thing going on, and it is the totality of all that I’ve said. All that I’ve said is wrapped up in one word. All of that was simply this. Within the Godhead was an eternal fellowship between the Father and the Son. The Son beholding, the Father loving, the Son loving, the Son listening, the Son responding, the Father speaking, the obedience by means of the Father’s life. All of that was fellowship, and they simply fellowshipped, and that fellowship began by the eternal Son beholding the face of the eternal God. Are you with me so far? Now, I just would remind you, if you have that book, bring it to me. This is where we must begin as Christians. Aha. Now, how long did that go on? How long did that go on? Give me an idea. How long did that go on? Long time. Eternity plus. Long time.

Well, let me ask you something. Do you think that if that went on for a long, long, long, long time, that it could get to be a habit? Yes or no? Amen. That would be a habit, would it not? I’d say it is a very ingrained habit.  We have just looked at the Christian life, and we have seen its engine. We’ve seen the way it’s done and how it’s lived, and it is simplicity itself.

Then one day, the Son, and I’m imagining this, don’t hold me theologically to this, the Son bids the Father adieu, and the Son is placed into the womb of a woman. He goes through the door between two realms, two universes, and he enters this world. And he grows up with that eternal Father within Him.

As He grows in His soul, He grows in His Spirit, and He grows in the understanding of humanity; He grows in the understanding of His divinity. And as He grows in the understanding of his mind, He grows in the understanding of His Father within Him. And as He grows in the knowledge of human things around Him, He grows in the understanding of a Father who reaches from eternity to eternity. And now the eternal Son, who has lived the Christian life in the bosom of the Father for all eternity, has come to this earth, and he begins to live the Christian life by speaking in tongues, praying, and reading his Bible.

Yeah? No. Say no. Protest that. You’ve got a habit here ingrained for eternity. Boy, listen, I don’t know why you’re sitting there. You ought to be up, standing on the pew, shouting. This is liberation. Say something. Say a little bitty amen then. Can you muster that? He didn’t change. He didn’t change one bit. He didn’t change a bit. He’s standing in that carpenter shop, and He is beholding the face of His Father, and the Father is loving him, and he is pouring back his love upon the Father. And He is listening to the Father; the Father is speaking, and He is responding.  He is obeying and living by a Life not human. He is living, what he’s doing, by means of a Life in another realm, a Life not his own: the Life of His Father. And they are fellowshipping together.

Well, now we’ve got to move another stage down, and this whole thing is going to fall apart now. Now comes us. Us peasants. We were talking about the unfairness of this thing. Listen, he had…He wasn’t fallen, and I’m fallen, and I don’t like what’s going on that I see here.

Okay, here we come. We’re Peter, James, John, Didymus, and you know all those guys. Judas, not Iscariot, and what are some of the others? Matthew, the Levite, come on. Just the twelve. Bartholomew, Philip, and Andrew, is that enough? And Mary and Joanne and Margaret and Mary Magdalene. Okay. This little group and a few more. They’re watching the Christian. First time the Christian has ever made an entrance into time and space. You can see him now, and they’re watching Him.