How Christ Lived His Life

And what it means for us.

Have you ever wondered what it was like for Christ to live life here on this earth?  Unlike us, Jesus knew just how his life was going to end.  We know this because at the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus heard John the Baptist say, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”  No doubt Jesus understood even before his baptism that he was to be the innocent and righteous one who would carry the sins of us all when he died on a cross in our place.  What was it like to live knowing that? 

Jesus tells us what it was like. First it was a life of utter dependence upon his Father in heaven. Jesus depended upon his Father for everything that he did and for everything that he said. When the Jewish leaders accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath by his performing a miraculous healing, Jesus explained that he was only doing what he saw his Father doing.  In John 5:19, Jesus said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.”  

When Jesus bore testimony about himself and the Jews objected that such testimony was not admissible and therefore not to be believed, Jesus explained to them that he was not speaking his own words to them, but instead he was speaking only the words that his Father taught him.  In John 8:28, Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.”

When Jesus died on the cross, it was his Father who was having him killed as the sacrifice for the sin of the world; it was the Father who planned it and accomplished it.  To help us understand this reality, God gave us the story of Abraham and how God commanded him to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice on the very mountain where Jesus would one day die.  God provided a ram for a sacrifice to take Isaac’s place at that time, anticipating the day when Jesus would be sacrificed.  The Father is the one who offered up the sacrifice of His son Jesus, and the Father did this out of his love for us, just as John 3 :16 says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  Jesus was the sacrifice given by the Father to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

While it was the Father giving the Son as the sacrifice for sin, it was also the Son giving Himself as the sacrifice for sin.  The Son was doing what he saw the Father doing, and yet he did it freely of his own will.  We know that Jesus saw that it was the Father doing it because when Pilate warned him that he had the authority to crucify him, Jesus responded to Pilate by saying, “You would have not authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above,” referring to his Father in heaven.  We also know that he gave Himself as our sacrifice of his own free will because Jesus said, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father." (John 10:18).

Jesus did nothing on his own.  Even when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, he was only doing what he saw his Father doing.  He was utterly dependent upon his Father. The works that he did, he did because he saw his Father doing them, and the words that he spoke, he spoke because they were the words that his Father taught him.  In everything that he said and did, Jesus depended on his Father to such an extent that he could say, “I and the Father are one.”  

From another perspective, his dying on the cross was an act of obedience to the Father, and it was an act of love for us.  He obeyed and suffered death because he loved his Father with all his heart, soul, strength and mind, and he lay down his life for us because he loved his neighbor (that is, us sinners) as himself. While living in dependence upon his Father, Jesus was one with his Father in loving us.  

What does this mean for us?  How are we to live our lives?  Jesus said in John 13:15 that He is our example for how to live and love one another.  So this also means that we are to live our lives in utter dependence upon Jesus because our relationship to Jesus is very much like the one that Jesus had with the Father.  Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).  Keeping the commandment of Jesus is keeping God’s commandments, and we can do this only through the power of Christ in us, because our sinful hearts will otherwise control us.  Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”  We cannot love others with the love of Christ without Christ living in us by faith.  Since we know that without love anything we do is worthless (1Co. 13:2-3), we need Christ living in us and resurrecting us so that His power and love are in the things we do and say.  And it begins by our believing what God has said is true of us as believers, that we are in Christ and Christ is in us.

Where do we begin?  We begin by praying, praying for the faith to believe and depend upon Jesus as we should and must, if our lives are to count for anything of real value.

Dave Durant is the Operations Director of Ministry to State.