To Live Christ, Life-Study of Colossians, Message Thirty-Nine, pp. 329

TO LIVE CHRIST

Scripture Reading: Col. 2:13; 3:4; John 6:57; 14:19; 15:4-5

When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He did not live by His human life. Although, as a man, He was a perfect and complete individual person with a life of His own, He lived by the life of the Father, not by His human life. Since the Father's life is divine and eternal, the Lord Jesus lived by the divine life. He and the Father had one life and one living. The Son lived by the Father's life because the Son's intention was to express the Father. Since the Son is the image, the expression, of the Father, and since He lived by the Father, the Son expresses the Father in a full way. The Son lives, but it is the Father who is expressed.

In John 6:57 the Lord Jesus said clearly that the living Father sent Him and that He lived because of the Father. The Father sent the Son, and the Son lived on earth through, because of, or by, the Father. I prefer to say simply that the Son lived the Father, for the Father was the Son's life.

The Bible reveals that the Son is a seed who is to be reproduced in the believers. According to John 12:24, the one grain of wheat needs to fall into the earth and die in order to produce many grains in resurrection. When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He lived the Father's life. Now, after His resurrection, He has become our life. He wants us to live His life, not our own natural life. As individuals, we all have our own life. But in His economy, God does not intend that we live our natural life; He intends that we live Christ. As Christ lived the Father, so we should live Christ.