Salvation by Christ's Life — Major Ian Thomas

The Purpose of Christ’s Life and Victory

I'm certainly very grateful to Dr. Rothschild and to the Spiritual Light Committee for the great privilege of joining with you for this special week of meetings. It's a privilege that I have looked forward to for several years, and I'm sure that as we meet together day by day, in the presence of our Risen Lord, dependent upon His Spirit as our Teacher to lead us through the Word into all truth.

He will enrich our hearts in such a way that it will enrich His joy. We claim our inheritance in Him. He has His inheritance in us. And it is to that end that we shall meet day by day, that the Lord Jesus, in the fullest possible sense, will see of the travail of His soul in us and be satisfied.

Certainly very grateful for the very gracious arrangements that have been made for my entertainment this week and for the opportunities that this will present for many personal contacts. This country, and in Canada and Japan, possibly Formosa elsewhere, our students here at the College, it'll be difficult for me to find you, but it shouldn't be too difficult for you to find me.

So I'd be happy to visit with you, if maybe from different places you've come to know that I've come to know, folks that you've come to know. In the 16th, 27th verse, himself lovers of deity, of divine origin and divine destination, he washed his disciples' feet, something which was even for his own disciples, who felt themselves above such condescension.

Did it take all the illimitable resources of deity to wash his disciples' feet on his knees?". Well, you see, the Lord Jesus, again, was demonstrating a principle that it is not the nature of what you are doing that determines its spirituality.

The origin, not its nature, but its origin, without divine significance. Never anything he did, there was never anything he said, never any step he took, which did not spring from a divine origin, that was not the activity of the Father in and through him, established and agreed, as between the Father and the Son, before ever the world was.

When did the Father give all things into his hands? Completely magically. He was completely available. Fell into sin, there was arm to two passages in the epistles of the Hebrews, appear a little bit strange.

Christ’s Victory as Positive Obedience

Hebrews chapter 2, we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. Christ is man like a flint. He did not live a victorious Christian life because he did not commit sin, in the negative sense, but in adultery.

This had been the nature of the victory of the Lord Jesus. If this simply had been the criterion of his righteousness, he could have stayed in heaven. The nature of his victory was that as man, he positively implemented that purpose for which he was incarnate.

Not doing the things that were wrong, he positively accomplished that his absolute availability to the Father for every moment of 33 years, enabled the Father in deity, to do him, through him, in his humanity, all that had been agreed between Father and Son, before ever the world was, so that he could say, it is literally finished.

He was sent to the Father. His perfect manhood, in the meantime, made him absolutely available, that between his coming from, to God, it was possible for the Father, in him and through him, the redemptive purpose.

Christ Presents Himself to the Father

I want you to notice, he made himself available to the Father. And if you'll turn, in the same epistle, to the 10th chapter and the 5th verse, Hebrews 10, verse 5, reading from the Amplified New Testament, to which I shall depart, if I depart from the King James's version, Hebrews 10, verse 5,.

Hence when he, Christ, entered into the world, he said, Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but instead you have made ready a body for me to offer. In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no delight.

Then I said, Lo, here I am, come to do your will, to fulfill what is written of me, in the volume of the book. Even as the whole redemptive purpose had been foreshadowed by the prophets to the Fathers, and recorded under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in the volume of the book, the Old Testament Scriptures, so now the Lord Jesus, as the living word, you have prepared for me, I now present to you, that all that has been written in the volume of the book, now finds its complete consummation in my person.

The Eternal Spirit and Christ’s Offering

Chapter 9, and verse 14,. How much more shall the one who through the eternal spirit, from dead works to serve the living God, through the eternal spirit, offered himself faultlessly to God. How did he present this, his body, to the Father, thirty-three years, that the Father in and through him might implement all that had been written in the volume of the book, through the eternal spirit.

So the Father, God, gave himself to the Son, Man, through the eternal spirit. Through the eternal spirit, he walked, he moved, and had his being. Every step he took, every word he spoke, everything he did, all that he was, in the Son as Man, through the eternal spirit.

The Father’s Life Expressed Through the Son

The Lord Jesus summarizes this, in the 14th chapter of John, and the 10th verse. And then we get, the complete picture. John 14, 10, Witness thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you, speak not of myself, but the Father.

I presented my body to the Father, for my Father who dwells in me, to do in my body his works. And he, my Father, who dwells in me, does his works through his Spirit, through whom I have offered myself without spot, thoughtlessly, to my Father.

So we understand that the whole activity of the Lord Jesus, on earth as man activity, through the eternal spirit, through whom his body was presented to the Father. Through the Father, to the Father. In me, my office, says the Lord Jesus, as man, is to be.

The Father's office, in me, as God, is to do. He does. It tells us, and it comes from the lips again and again of the Lord Jesus, relationship to him is to be identical with his relationship to the Father.

That as the Father sent him, so he sends, 57, which we should explore probably fuller later. As I lived by the living Father, so he that eateth me shall live. The basis of the life of Christ, in his relationship to the Father, inevitably we shall discover that this will be the basis of your life of mine, in relationship to him.

That shouldn't surprise us. Indeed, if it isn't so, it should. Turn with me to the 11th chapter of the epistle to the Romans. Last verse, Romans 11, and verse 36. Whom be glory, for I see the relationship that existed between the Son as man, and the Father as God.

Eternal Life Is Christ Himself

Of him, through whom I have eternal life. You say, yes, thank God, he's eternal life. Did you ever give yourself a satisfactory answer to that question? What is eternal life? Is it a place that you're going to when you're dead?

Is it a peculiar feeling inside? You'd be amazed, you might think this is rather elementary, but you'd be amazed at the strange answers that you get if you ask a normal congregation or any sort of Bible class or Sunday school in an evangelical church as to what eternal life is.

You'd be amazed. Staggered. What is eternal life? Well, tell me this, when does it begin? I noticed just the other day, I forget where it was. Oh, it was in a hospital chapel where I was speaking. There was a tablet on the wall in commemoration of one of the previous chaplains.

And giving the date of his death, it says he entered into eternal life. Is that accurate? If he was a Christian? What is implied in such a tablet on the wall that eternal life begins when a man is physically dead?

Is that true? This is the record, 1 John 5, this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life and this life is in his Son. That eternal life and Jesus Christ the Son are synonymous terms and he that hath the Son hath life.

This quality of life, eternal life. And he that hath not the Son of God hath quality of life, eternal life. So eternal life is none other than Jesus Christ of whom it is written in the first chapter of John's Gospel, in him was life and this life was the light of man.

You have eternal life, it simply means that you have the Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus said I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. Eternal life is not a peculiar feeling inside, it is not the ultimate destination to which you will go when you are dead.

Christ’s Indwelling Life in Believers

Eternal life is the quality of life that you possess right now at this moment in your own physical body with your own two feet. Where does this life come from? Of him. When was your Bethlehem? In the day that Jesus Christ was formed in you by God's Spirit.

In the day that Jesus Christ came to take up residence and inhabit your redeemed humanity for God by his gracious presence through the eternal Spirit. So that your body became the temple of the living God and you were added to that body corporate called the church which Paul to the Ephesians describes as a habitation of God through the Spirit.

Through the Spirit of God's dear Son. For if any man have not the Spirit of Christ in him, he is none of his. So if you have eternal life, it means that you have some body, Jesus Christ, and the life that you possess is of him.

Where is that life going to? If you were to die physically, what would happen? The Bible says you would be absent from this body, this earthen vessel, and you would be present with the Lord. That the life that is his imparted to you now by his indwelling Holy Spirit would return to the origin, the source of that life, Jesus Christ.

And if the Lord Jesus were to come again today, as well he may, we're told that we shall not precede them who sleep in Jesus but we shall be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the earth.

And the life which is his life that he has imparted to us through his eternal Spirit will return to the one who is the author of that life in us and to him. What is the in-between? Thirty-three years?

Could be. Or three years. Or fifty years. Or six weeks. Whatever period of time you remain physically alive on earth, indwelt by Jesus Christ through his eternal Spirit. Your vocation, your purpose for which as man you exist on earth is not just to have your inheritance in Christ, heaven one day, but that Christ might have his inheritance in you, now available to him as his humanity was once unreservedly available to the Father.

Presenting the Believer’s Body to Christ

Verse one of chapter twelve draws the logical conclusion of the last verse of chapter eleven. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye also present your bodies a living sacrifice, just as he did to the Father, you do now to the Son.

Holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Don't be conformed to this world. Don't ape its methods, its techniques, or its ways. By the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good will of God, that as the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God was implemented by you in the Son, so the good in the Son may be implemented through you by him, that you present your body to him as he once presented his body to the Father.

For as the Father sent him, he, now the Son, sends you. To implement this divine vocation to which you have been redeemed, as his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that you should walk in them, how are you to implement this program?

Only by virtue of what he is in you through his eternal Spirit. In the energy and power of the one who indwells you now by his Spirit, as he walked once only in the energy and the power of the Father who indwells him through the Spirit.

Living Only Through Christ

For the Lord Jesus said, can do nothing apart from my part. But he says of you and of me in the fifteenth chapter of John, without me, how much can you do without him? So what is everything you do without him?

It's amazing how busy you can be doing nothing. Did you ever find that out? Everything that you do apart from him, profited? Nothing. The awful possibility, if you don't discover this principle, is that you would be trained here at Westmont to spend a lifetime in the service of Jesus Christ, doing nothing.

You wouldn't be the first. And you won't be the last. And that, above everything else we seek this week to avoid. So you discover that the life that you possess as a born again Christian is of him, and it is to him, and every moment that you are here on earth it must be through him.

Of him, through him, to him. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies in this way, if it's of him, and through him, and to him, all things. Where do you come in?

You don't. That's just where you go out. And that's what Paul meant when he said, to me to live, is Christ. Is Christ. And the only person whom God credits, says Paul, in me to be alive, is Jesus Christ.

So I reckon myself to be dead to all that I am apart from what he is, and I reckon myself now to be alive unto God only by virtue of what he is. To me to live is Christ. Of him, through him, to him, all things.

And my holy ambition is to be to him that he might do as he was to the Father that the Father might. When the world took Jesus Christ, they saw God. They heard him speak. They saw him act. When you walk in this relationship to him, when the world looks at you, they see Jesus Christ.

They hear him speak. They watch him act. This is the purpose of your redemption, and nothing less.