Over the years I've attended quite a few conferences, not to mention more sermons than I care to count. Somewhere along the way I heard a quote that has stuck with me. Stuck with me like a piece of roast beef between your bicuspid and molar. I honestly have no idea who said it, and I can't find it quoted anywhere on the Internet (which usually means it's old). I've never forgotten it because it never has set well with me. I never wrote it down but never forgot it. For many years I didn't know if I really liked it or not. I wasn't sure what it meant and didn't know if I agreed with what I thought it might mean. In the last couple of months I has come roaring back like an old case of shingles.
It's come to mind on a daily basis as I've been studying scenes from the life of Christ:
"Everything Jesus ever did He never did"
Do you see why I didn't like it? It's hard to explain, but you might feel the same way.
At first glance it seems as though it is questioning whether what we know of Jesus is actually accurate. I'm sure that was NOT the intent of the person saying it. Most of the speakers I listen to know the Lord, love Him, and trust the accuracy of the Bible. They were not questioning the veracity of the biblical account. But I've known that. Something else bothered me about this saying.
The all or nothing side of it bothered me ("everything" and "never"). Was it saying that Jesus lived some extraordinary life-style of extreme submission or super servitude? Were they trying to say that He had absolutely no will of His own. What sort of life would that be?
Or were they subtly saying that we should live this way? Like Jesus. It sounded like it was pushing for some super pious way of looking at life. Well that sounds good, but how practical would it be for someone like you or I to pull it off. Could I live my life with nothing but a 100% total desire to do God's will? Unlikely. Then what was the purpose of throwing this quote at us?
The trouble was, as I carefully meditated on several scenes from the life of Christ this concept emerged loud and clear. Jesus did indeed have very unusual relationship to God the Father. In numerous places he asserted his extreme dependence on the Father. For what He did; for what He said; that He came only to do the Father's will; that He could only do what the Father taught Him; that the Father had commanded Him what to say; that the Father residing in Him performs His miracles through Him. Finally, in the Garden of Gethsemane the famous exclamation, "My Father, if possible, let this cup pass from me! Yet not what I will, but what you will."
Check them out for yourself:
John 5:19 So Jesus answered them, "I tell you the solemn truth, the Son can do nothing on his own initiative, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.
John 5:30 I can do nothing on my own initiative. Just as I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of the one who sent me.
John 6:38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.
John 8:28 Then Jesus said, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and I do nothing on my own initiative, but I speak just what the Father taught me.
John 12:49 For I have not spoken from my own authority, but the Father himself who sent me has commanded me what I should say and what I should speak.
John 14:10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father residing in me performs his miraculous deeds.
Matthew 26:39 Going a little farther, he threw himself down with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if possible, let this cup pass from me! Yet not what I will, but what you will."
Maybe that curious quote is not so bad after all. It does capture something pretty profound about the Lord Jesus Christ and His approach to life (and to the Father).
But then it raises further questions... What does it mean for me? What does it mean about how I live my life. How I make decisions. What is important to me. How I talk with others and what I say. What does it mean about my relationship to the Holy Spirit? What did Jesus mean when He said...
"I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me - and I in him - bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing." -John 15:5
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