Christ the Man #3 — Major Ian Thomas

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Christ’s Humanity and the Indwelling Life of God

You men of Israel, said Peter on the day of Pentecost, hear these words, remember Acts 2 verse 25, Jesus of Nazareth, a man, one might well have imagined that on the day of Pentecost, in the light of all the events of which there had been witnesses, they might well have worshipped and adored the Lord Jesus in his deity.

But the strange thing is that when Peter stood up, what overwhelmed him was not his deity, for which long since he had set it. What overwhelmed him was the discovery of Christ's humanity. Because of the immense amount of comfort it was going to bring to him.

Jesus, a man, approved of God by miracles, signs and wonders which God did by him. And in that moment of revelation, Peter discovered the principle that governed the life of the Lord Jesus as man on earth.

That his was a disposition that the Bible calls faith, that allowed the Father as God to be God in action in the man. And you remember then that the Lord Jesus said, as my Father sent me, I'm going to send you.

And that as I, as a man, have walked on earth for 33 years, enjoying all the illimitable resources of deity by virtue of the presence of my Father as God in me, you as from now, by virtue of my presence in you, by the gift of the Holy Ghost whom you have just received, will be able to walk and engage in every activity in the plenitude of that divine provision which will derive from my presence as God in you.

That was Pentateuch. Little wonder that it revolutionized the lives of the disciples. And little wonder, little wonder that so, so many, the vast, vast majority of professing evangelical believers today live such dull, luxurious lives with so little consequence and so little to show for it.

Why? Because they've never got beyond the Jesus who died for them 2 ,000 years ago to get them out of hell and into heaven. Because nobody, by and large, has told them that the purpose of his dying was that he risen from the dead might come in the person of the Holy Spirit and be as God to them.

What by the same Holy Spirit, the Father, for 33 years, has been to the Son. Have you been living in the power of Christ in dwelling? Has it been patently obvious to your children and your husband, your wife, your neighbors, your fellow citizens, your workmates, your church members, has it been patently obvious that there's a stamp of deity upon your life, that there's a quality about the way you live that is beyond any possible explanation but the fact that God, as you profess to believe, lives in you.

Would that be true of you? I mean, is your life, quite frankly, miraculous? God doesn't ask that it be sensational or spectacular because you can buy that with money or business acumen or showmanship or personality thrust.

God doesn't ask that your life either be spectacular or sensational, but he does demand, because it's the very nature of a man, as he of God made man, he does demand that your life be miraculous. That it actually be beyond any possible explanation but Jesus Christ.

If your life as a Christian is beyond explanation, only in terms of Jesus Christ, then you're living the Christian life. But if your Christian life can be explained in terms of you, your dedication, your willpower, your enthusiasm, your endeavor, then you may have become a Christian, but you have not yet begun to be the Christian you have become.

Because the Lord Jesus, in his person, has given to us a magnificent demonstration that makes the mystery of godliness an open secret. God by him. So the image that the Lord Jesus, as a man, provided of his Father as God, derived from the presence of the Father as God in the Lord Jesus as man.

His was a derived life. Now we've seen this clearly enunciated by the Lord Jesus. Let me remind you, you don't need to turn to it, it's John chapter 14 and verse 10, said the Lord Jesus, don't you believe that I'm in my Father and my Father is in me?

The words that I speak, I speak not of myself, the Father who dwells in me, he does the work. God by me. Said the Lord Jesus to get his sermons, you know, the Father. Look at John's gospel, chapter 8, and first the 26th verse.

John 8, 26, said the Lord Jesus, I have many things to say to you and to judge of you, but he that sent me is true, and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him. So where did the Lord Jesus get his sermons from?

He spoke to the world the things that he heard from his Father. What about verse 28? Then said Jesus unto them, when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall you know that I am he, and that I do, how much?

Even when I am being crucified, even when they nail my hands and my feet to the cross, you'll know that I am doing nothing of myself. Because you see, the Father who dwells in me, he does the work. I'm simply presenting my body to him now, as one day I will expect you to present your body to me.

You will know that I am he, and you will know that I do nothing of myself, but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. What seminary do you think the Lord Jesus went to, to get his doctrines from?

Or as a brilliant theologian, do you imagine that he himself laid the tenets of the Christian faith, that from his fertile imagination he came up with certain philosophical and theological propositions that have been perpetuated and are now called Christianity, a form of religion among many on this world?

Do you think that's where he got his doctrines from? He tells you in the 7th chapter and the 16th verse where he got his doctrines from. John 7, 16, Jesus answered them and said, my doctrine is not mine, but whose it sent me.

So please don't credit me with anything that I say, I'm not the originator. Don't give me a PhD or an honorary DD, I don't deserve it. Because all I'm doing is making articulate what my Father has taught me.

I'm simply his mouthpiece. Because you see, though God I'm playing the role of man, though the creator I'm playing the role of creature. I've simply come here to communicate truth. And you'll discover as you read the teachings of the Lord Jesus throughout all the records of the Bible, of the gospels, he's saying the same thing again and again and again and again and again.

He comes up, sneaks up from different directions, but you know we're saying the same thing. Why? Because there's nothing else to say. You see, if you want to preach sermons and earn a reputation for being a great preacher of sermons, you've got to spend all your time being original.

Lord Jesus never had to be original, because he never deviated from truth and truth doesn't change. And why so much of our preaching is so weak is that we're always trying to please, you know, the congregation, come up with something original, smart, instead of introducing people relentlessly, again and again, to the truth that sets them free.

But it pays off, even though initially of course it looks a little discouraging. For three years, as we should discover, the Lord Jesus preached in vain, humanly speaking, at the end of his public ministry.

How would some candidate's board today evaluate his usefulness? What church would call him to the ministry? How many stood by him as a result of his preaching? None. He died alone. Even the twelve apostles, one already having to trade him for thirty pieces still, and all his disciples, the women who swept over his feet and wiped them with their hair, they all fled like a bunch of frightened sheep.

Even after his resurrection at Pentecost, how many were numbered amongst those who took part in that amazing event? A hundred and twenty? That's not too much to show for it, is it? Did it matter? No, because the Lord Jesus wasn't praying to the gathering, he wasn't building an empire, and he wasn't on the statistical rat race.

He was introducing just a handful of people to the truth that he knew would make them free, and being reproduced through them, would liberate hundreds of thousands of men, women, boys and girls, as they evangelized the then known world in one generation.

In the measure in which those to whom they ministered grasped the same principles of truth. And the truth that he proclaimed came from his father. He said, my doctrine isn't mine, it's his that sent me.

So when they listened to the Lord Jesus' preaching, perhaps the Sermon on the Mount or on any other occasion, do you think he would appreciate it? People coming and saying, well, thank you very much, you must have taken a long time thinking that up.

You're most convincing. Honour. You look what it says in John's Gospel, chapter 12. This may surprise you. Before I tell you the verse, I wonder how, if I were now to give you the opportunity in taking out a piece of paper, you would complete this sentence, something that the Lord Jesus said, the Lord Jesus cried and said, he that believeth on me.

If you had a piece of paper right now, how would you complete the sentence? The Lord Jesus cried and said, he that believeth on me. In the light of all that you've heard, say in the preaching of the Gospel, how would you complete the sentence?

Well, in all probability, most of you would put half everlasting life. Would you put that? It's true, but it isn't what he's saying. He that believeth on me shall not come into judgment if past and death delight.

That would be equally true, but it isn't what he's saying. What does it say in John 12 .44? Says the Lord Jesus, he that believeth on me, believeth not on me. You've got that underlined in your Bible?

He that believeth on me, believeth not on me. Don't credit, he says, me with anything that I'm saying. Because you see, all I've told the world is what I learned from my father. My doctrine isn't mine, it's his that sent me.

Though created God, I'm playing the role of creature man. And we, my father, I am the Holy Ghost, created man so that by what he does, says he is, in his physical, visible, and audible activity, he would give a valid expression of his divine content, God in the man.

For man was created in such a way simply to be the means whereby the divine potential could be released. Because in man, as God made him, engineered beautifully and fabulously as he is, there's no inherent capacity either to produce truth or be like God.

He's simply given a mind, emotion, will contained in a physical body that may be operated by the Holy Ghost, God himself from within the man, indwelling the human spirit, and having access from within the human spirit to the human soul.

And only one man ever walked this earth since Adam fell, who was prepared as a man, body, soul, spirit, mind, emotion, and will, to present himself without thought to God through the eternal spirit. So that he could make the Father God articulate, so that he could make the Father God visible.

So he says, he that believeth on me does not believe on me, but on him that sent me. Because everything I say, my Father says. Because everything I am, my Father is. Because everything I do, my Father does.

He that rejecteth me and receiveth not my word, verse 48, hath one that judgeth him. The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. That's why you better take very careful note of what I'm saying.

Not because I'm saying it, but because my Father is saying it through me. For I have not spoken, he says, verse 49, of myself. But the truth that I make articulate now, that has its origin in my Father God, will be truth then, as it is true now.

And that truth will judge you. You can shake it off. You can say, truth, forget it. You can say, that's a nice little philosophical concept. Yes, that's an emphasis that we ought to think about now and again, says the Lord Jesus, to do that in your parents.

Because the truth that I now make articulate is absolutely imperative to your humanity. It's absolutely imperative to your function. It's the only way that you could ever be the Christian that you say you have become.

And my presence in you, as the Father God's presence in me, is the only possible hope that you will be restored to that glory in which we, my Father, I am the Holy Ghost, made you. That glory that I, by virtue of my total availability to my Father, now declare our true glory.

So you listen at your parents. Unless you're prepared to obey the truth that I communicate. For I have not spoken of myself. The Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment. What I should say and what I should speak.

And I know that this commandment is life everlasting whatsoever I speak. Therefore even as the Father said unto me, so I speak. So when you listen to me, you hear him. So from where did they derive the authority of what he said?

The fact that he happened to be this person or that person? No. His words carried authority only by virtue of their divine origin. Not in Christ the man, but in the Father as God. Of course there's nothing that he said as man that he could not have said as God.

But he didn't come into this world to behave as God. So God, and never ever less than God, he came to this world to behave as man. So that he might be the kind of man who for men seemed the only one alive and therefore capable of dying, might pay the price of their redemption.

But you see if he had never come into this world to behave as man, when could he have died? When's God going to die? When are you going to be invited to God's funeral? You say God can't die. 1 Timothy 6 .16, 1 Timothy 6 .16, don't turn to it.

The apostle says God who only hath immortality is not subject to any form of death. So when can God as God die? Never. Only as man. That's why the Lord Jesus had to set aside the prerogatives that make God, God, and deliberately submitted himself to the limitations that make man, man.

And he derived his authority from the fact that as man he closed in totality his Father's activity. Let's check on that a moment, would you please, in John 10. This is a little frightening, but it's true.

Thirty-seventh verse of John 10. If I do not the works of my Father, if it isn't demonstrably obvious that what I'm doing is what my Father tells me to do, if it's not recognizable that the activity of my body represents the mind, will, and purpose of my Father God in heaven, what does he say?

Believe me not. You do not have the right to believe me. You do not have the right to believe anything I say simply because I'm Jesus of Nazareth. You don't have the right to believe anything I say simply because I was born a Jew.

You don't have the right to believe anything I say simply because you respect me as a very pleasant neighbor. You have only the right to believe me when it is demonstrably obvious that what I do say and am is motivated by the one who sent me.

If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. Because you see, his authority derived from his submission in a beast. Man's authority comes from what he knows and who he is, the office he holds, and the training that he has received.

If ever a man deserved to exercise authority on the basis of who he was, it was Jesus Christ. He was God incarnate. If ever a man had the right to exercise authority on the basis of what he knew, it was Jesus Christ who was the creator of all things, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge, and he never ever once exercised that authority.

The only authority the Lord Jesus ever exercised, and the only authority that you and I may ever exercise, derives from obedience. He says, if I do the works of my Father, if I'm told by my Father what to do and I'm doing what I'm told, though you believe not me, though you find it difficult to credit who I am as one whom you knew as a little baby in Mary's arms or an apprentice learning his trade, if you find it difficult to credit who I am, he said, if I do the works of God, though you believe not me, believe the works, let them demonstrate and vindicate the fact that a unique spiritual relationship exists between myself and my Father God in heaven, whereby I, through the Holy Ghost, present my humanity to him as God, and he, by the same Holy Ghost, presents himself as God to me.

In other words, says he, if you do not believe, if you find it hard to believe me, believe the works that you may know, notice it, verse 38, and believe that the Father is in me and I in him. Recognize by what I do and say and am that this unique relationship between me and my Father allows my Father as God in me to do the works.

That's authority. In other words, the Bible teacher and the pastor, the Sunday school teacher, the chairman of a deacon's board, the Christian mom or dad, seeking to communicate spiritual truth may only be least, may only be least.

If the quality of their life demonstrates the validity of their relationship to Jesus Christ. And no matter how true what may be said, may be. Nobody has the right to believe it. If the one who says it does not give demonstrable evidence that a relationship exists between him and Jesus Christ, that speaks of total submission to his authority.

If the pastor wants to get up and preach with the authority that is his, only by virtue of his office, I am the pastor, or I went to seminary, or I have some degrees after my name, forget it. The members of his church will have to leave that congregation and go somewhere else to hear authoritatively from the lips of another the truth that he has proclaimed, but who has the right.

If a mom or a dad is not prepared to give demonstrable evidence of their total submission to the authority of Jesus Christ in their lives, they can preach the gospel to their kids until the cows come home.

And everything they say will be true, but they'll have a bunch of kids who will grow up as rebels, they'll probably end on drugs, and they'll have to go to the other side of the world to hear from the lips of somebody with the right to say it, what they did not have the right to believe, on their own terms.

Let's not kid ourselves. The preaching of the gospel isn't mouthing a lot of evangelical jargon, and then trying to muscle people into some kind of a decision or twist their arms so that you can enhance your reputation.

Authority Through Obedience and the Roman Officer’s Faith

Authority comes from proclaiming truth in a relationship to Jesus Christ that allows him to be the one who offers what you say, and leaves him to take the consequences. A Roman officer, whose servant whom he loved was dying, said to the Lord Jesus that on the way, hearing that he was coming, that Roman officer said, I'm not worthy that you cross the threshold of my home.

You do not need to come. All you need to do is to speak the word. Because I, as a Roman officer, say to this man, go, and he goes. I say to this soldier, come, and he comes. And you, said that Roman officer, are also a man under authority.

What did you recognize? A man under authority. And said that Roman officer, I know perfectly well that others obey me only because I am as an officer obeying my emperor. And I recognize in you one who can exercise authority because it is patently obvious, demonstrably obvious to me, that you are a man who is walking under authority.

You know what the Lord Jesus said? I've not seen such great faith in Israel. There's a Roman Gentile doc who's grasped what I've been trying to teach my disciples for three years, and nothing has penetrated.

Authority derives from obedience. The superior authority. This is the Lord Jesus. So that for everything he did, for every word he said, for every activity in which he engaged, he received instructions from his Father, indwelling his human spirit in the person of the Holy Spirit, and who by his free consent had absolute access to his human soul, mind, emotion, and will, so that the Father as God controlled the activity of the Son as man.

So the Lord Jesus could say, I do only those things that please him, and even Christ could not please himself. Remember? Romans 15, 3. Now, turn to John 6, and it says that, verse 28, they said unto him, what shall we do that we might work the works of God?

What shall we do that we might work the works of God? Filly question. Is there any man who can do God's work? Who's the only person who can do God's work? I mean, work that truly has the characteristic subduity about it.

Who's the only person who can do it? God. That's why, faithfully, he who calleth you, who will also do it, because he's the only one who can. That's why, remember, Philippians 2, it is God who works in you, both will and do of his own will.

Why? Well, he's the only one who can do it. This is the divine logic, the hidden factor present in the divine logic, absent in human reason, that makes divinely possible what otherwise cannot but be humanly unreasonable.

It is God who works in you, both will and do of his good pleasure. So, I mean, what's all this stuff about man doing a great job for God? How often you hear speaking of another, he's doing such a big job for God, such great work for God.

Still impossibility. Defies the total revelation that God has given us, in his words, of the principles that are to govern man's relationship to God and God's relationship to man, principles that the Lord Jesus enunciated totally, that only God can do God's work.

You men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God by miracle signs and wonders, by a miraculous quality of life, that God did by him. God, by him. So they said, what shall we men do, that we men might do the works of God?

There was no answer the Lord Jesus could give to that stupid question. Instead, he redefined the work of God. How did he redefine it? Next verse, said the Lord Jesus, this is the work of God. In other words, this is God at work, that you believe on him whom he has sent.

For the Lord Jesus said, he that believeth on me, the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do, because I'm going to my Father. Because when I'm crucified and risen again from the dead, restored to thy rightful place with my Father and the Holy Ghost in deity, I will come by the Holy Spirit to work in them who believe on me, as I now, by my believing on my Father, allow him to work through me.

So the Lord Jesus said, this is God at work, this is when the world will see God is in action, when you believe on him whom he has sent. Well, that calls for another definition, because by a popular connotation, a believer is somebody who's made a decision for Jesus.

If I were to say, is he a believer, you'd immediately scratch your mind and wonder now, did he ever put his trust in Christ? You'd look back into the past, learn what it means to be a believer. A believer, as I indicated yesterday, is one who is settled for the principle that must govern man's relationship to God if he is to function as a man of God intended man to function, whose presence as God in the man is indispensable to his humanity as oil is to a lamp and gas is to a car.

How often does an oil lamp need oil if it's to produce light all the time? How often does a car need gas if it's to keep going all the time? Is it enough for oil just to believe in oil once? Is it enough for a car just to believe in gas once?

No, oil and gas in a lamp and car are imperative to their function, and God in a man is imperative to his humanity, and believing is to go on believing, which to recognize that principle for every step you take, for every word you speak, for every decision that you make, so you recognize at all times without God, in me, Christ, in the Christian, I am nothing, have nothing, and can do nothing, so at all times, in every situation, I must go on believing.

And by my disposition, my attitude, the man that was in Christ Jesus so invokes his divine activity that it's Jesus Christ as God, clothed in my flesh and blood, who walks this earth, who speaks, who acts, who decides.

That's the gospel. That is the gospel. Turn back the page. John 5, verse 19. Then answered Jesus and said to them, verily, verily, I say unto you, this time in the incarnate words, the Creator God saying the role of man, the Son can do what?

Nothing of himself. But what do you see if the Father do for what things do ever that he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. Look at verse 30. I, Jesus Christ, Creator God, who through the universe is into space, clothed with your flesh and blood, it beholding me in all points to be like unto my brethren, I can of mine own self do how much?

Nothing. As I hear I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which sent me. So how much could the Lord Jesus, as man do without his Father, as God in the man?

Nothing. And he said, as my Father sent me, I'm going to send you. So how much will you as men, redeemed in his blood, now indwelt by his Spirit, be able to do without Christ, as God living in you? Nothing.

Did anybody ever tell you that? When you were invited to come to Christ and receive him as your Saviour, were you told honestly by the person who invited you, that from that moment, by claiming him as your Redeemer, you would be capitulating every right, as from then, to make any decisions in your own life?

Were you told that? Were you told when you were invited to accept salvation, that it would involve the inhabitation of your humanity by Jesus Christ as God, so that he would have as much monopoly of your being, as he as man allowed his Father to have monopoly of his being?

Did they tell you that? If they didn't, they've told you down the road. They were out for quick results, and they went too, too concerned about the end product. Because this is the gospel. So the Lord Jesus said, as I reminded you yesterday, 15 .5, of the same gospel.

Without me, you can do as much as I could do without my Father. Nothing. My dear friends, do we have the right to depart from this principle? Can we dare stand up on a pulpit or on a platform and motivate people into action?

Oh, God! Then God, from Genesis to the Revelation, tells us that apart from his presence as God in the man, you and I can do nothing. What's the name of the game? Who are we kidding? That's a believer.

A believer is a boy, girl, man, or woman who, though they never ever deserved it, has been reconciled to God by the death of his son, and who on the basis of that redemption now lives on the basis that apart from Jesus Christ as God in him, he is nothing, has nothing, can do nothing.

And therefore, with a glad heart, he presents his body in totality to every decision that he ever makes, for time or for eternity, to Jesus Christ. That's a believer. Turn back to the second chapter of John, verse 23.

Believing in Christ Rather Than Merely Believing in Miracles

When the Lord Jesus was in the feast day at the Passover in Jerusalem, many believed in his name when they saw the miracles which he did. Were they believers? I mean, if you got that report back from Jerusalem, that a great big crowd believed on his name when they saw the miracles that he did, would you have been justified in calling them believers?

No. They weren't believers. They believed he could do miracles, and they were very impressed by the spectacular. They saw the blind feed, they saw the lame walk, on occasions there were those who saw the dead live, but they weren't believers.

They simply believed the fact that Jesus could do miracles. They believed that he could feed the hungry, heal the sick, cast out devils, and they believed that if somebody was sick, you know what they said?

Quick, go to Jesus, he can heal you. When somebody was hungry and hadn't got food, they said, go to Jesus, he'll feed you. In that sense, they were believers. But they weren't believers. Do you know why they weren't believers?

Because they were not committed to Jesus Christ for that to which Jesus Christ was committed in them, and because they were not committed to the Lord Jesus for that to which he as creator and redeemer God was committed in them, he did not reciprocate their commitment to him by his commitment to them.

Next verse. But Jesus did not commit himself to. Why not? Because he wasn't interested in numbers. He wasn't interested in popular acclaim. He wasn't interested in being successful. What does it say? Amen.

And he needed not that any man should testify of man, he knew what was in man. He knew that these people were all getting excited about the great mass rally, and people getting healed, and devils being cast out, and people getting fed.

He knew that in a very short time, they'd be shouting around the Roman gallows, crucifying him. We will not have this man to reign over. We don't mind him healing our aches and pains. We don't mind him making the lame walk and the blind see.

We don't mind him filling our bellies. But if he thinks he's going to call the shots, if he thinks he's going to run our lives, forget it. Away with him! And if you were invited to come to Christ on the basis other than that Jesus Christ would call the shots, then somebody was unfaithful in their discharge of their responsibility.

They were unfaithful sinners. They weren't gospel preachers. They were deluded. Turn back to John 6, verse 26. Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, you seek me not because you saw the miracles.

I mean, you saw the miracles, and of course that's why you're here. But that isn't really why you seek me, because it's miraculous, because it's the evidence of God at work. But this is explicable only in terms of my relationship to my Father as God.

Nothing could impress you less than that. You don't seek me because you saw the miracles. But why? Because I could serve your selfish interests. That's all. Because you did eat of the loaves and were full.

Your only interest in me is a full stomach, relief from your aches and pains, so that somehow you can get rid of all your worries. And you, God, and you, Jesus Christ. But in terms of the moral relationship that gives God his inheritance in you, uh-uh, that's why people pray in an emergency.

That's the only time that's so far as they estimate God to be useful. That's why the vast bulk of those who attend church on Sunday would have absolutely no intention, whatever, of coming Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, if that were to involve true discipleship.

That's why there are so many empty seats. You see, it's time we stop kidding ourselves and get back to first base, as the Lord Jesus did. You see, I'm sure it must be very, humanly speaking, very discouraging for a pastor who goes through an immense amount of trouble and negotiates, say, for two, three years to get somebody to teach them about Jesus Christ and then know perfectly well that when Monday comes, only a fraction of the folk who call themselves his church members are actually in attendance because they couldn't care less.

But although it may be, humanly speaking, discouraging, it's never, never surprising or even shocking to God, except that, you see, the Lord Jesus clearly enunciated to the disciples what was involved in believing.

Entering into this unique relationship, we in him and he in us, as he was in the Father and the Father in him. But it begins with the redemptive transaction that puts God back into the man and therefore life back into the lifeless.

Redemption, Eternal Life, and Christ Living Within Believers

Look in the sixth chapter of John's gospel, then said Jesus unto them, verse fifty-three, Verily, verily, I say unto you, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Yes, yes. In other words, until first you recognize the redemptive efficacy of my dying and that my blood alone can cleanse you from sin and reconcile you to God, you are in the condition in which you were born and you were born dead and you stay dead.

Now that's the redemptive message, but he didn't leave it there. He said, if on the other hand you're prepared to obey the redemptive message, eat my flesh and drink my blood, that first initial baby act of faith is designed on the basis of my redemptive transaction to reintroduce you to a living, working, permanent, continuing, relentless relationship with God your maker.

For he goes on then to say, verse fifty-four, Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood would claim redemption, have eternal life. And if you want to know what that involves, he says, I will tell you.

Verse fifty-six, He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, having received as God's gift to them in the Holy Ghost, that life which alone is eternal, my life dwelleth in me and I in him. So what's the relationship?

As I am in my Father and my Father is in me, and he does the work, so you will be in me and I will be in you, so that I may do the work. Because he continues, verse fifty-seven, As the living Father hath sent me and I live through the Father, derive my life, my authority, everything from him, as I have been sent by my Father and live through my Father, he that eateth me and drinketh my blood will live through me.

You are to live through me as Christians, as I live through my Father as man, as this then explains to you. How could you ever live through Jesus Christ as he lived through the Father until first you had come to grips with what was involved in his then living through the Father.