True Humanity

On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.

John 14:20-21

There is nothing more important for us than to understand the earthly life of Jesus Christ. There is a very mistaken concept among Christians that Jesus came to show us what God was like and how he would behave among men. This is far from the truth, for Jesus did not come to show us how God behaves. It is true that he came to reveal the Father in his character, but in his activity he came to reveal humanity as God intended humanity to be. In everything he did we see humanity acting as God intended us to act, from the very beginning.

At the very heart of that manifestation is the key and secret of human life. The principle on which he lived is the principle on which God intended man to live and by which we are to live. Throughout our Lord's ministry he reminded us continually of that great principle, not only by his words, but by his deeds. You put Christ back into the Christian and you put God back into the man. This is the revolutionary claim of Christianity. Unfortunately, it is often obscured in our day. This is why there are so many false claims and so many attempts to substitute something dramatic, something which would appeal to the human heart to distinguish Christianity from other faiths. The radical claim of Christianity is that Jesus Christ offers to live his human life all over again in you, in the midst of the situations that you daily face.

There are few who seem to step out into this kind of living, but wherever it is attempted, strange things begin to happen. Not that the life becomes suddenly spectacular and people go around doing miracles and other wonders, but in the quiet daily experience of life, in the various decisions that come to us, there is a quiet trust in the wisdom of God to meet our need, and things begin to work out in unexpected ways. Extraordinary things follow ordinary activity, as God begins to work in human life. This is the secret of human life, as our Lord demonstrated it, making it available to us as we by faith receive Jesus Christ, that his life may be lived again in us.

Father, thank you for this mighty revelation of the basic secret that makes life make sense. I pray that you will open my minds to teach me these things that are so different from what I have learned in the world.