“You have given Him
authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You
have given Him.” (John 17:2) Here we see that the Father gave us to His Son,
that He might share His eternal life with us. This revealing of His life within
our inner being is the fundamental blessing of the kingdom of God
I do not pray for these {the
apostles} alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;
that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You…that they may
be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me…” (John 17:20-23)
It takes a heart of great
faith to have this glorious possibility opened to the mind. Only think of all
the ways and degrees in which Christ is one with the Father: one in nature, one
in purpose, one in motive and intention; one in character, one in taste and
affinity; one in government, one in life and action. And yet, the Son’s
infallible prayer is that we, as poor and shortsighted as we have been, are to
be so melted into Divine love that we begin to live in the same kind of harmony
that He shares with the Father.
We need to recognize the
impossibility of living as an expression of Christ’s heavenly life while we are
sill attempting to be an expression of our own life. Jesus could only be an
expression of His Father’s life by emptying Himself of His own glory. He chose
to become nothing in Himself so that His Father could be all in all. Similarly,
by choosing to die to our self-originated form of life so we may live by His
Spirit and express His life and glory, He will reveal Himself through our
mortal body. He assures us that everyone who loses their self-life will find
His life. (Matt. 16:25) The promise is sure!
The Son is now looking for
vessels He can use to express His life. He has given every believer access to
the glory He received from the Father. (John 17:22) But we must choose to
follow Him in His way of life before He will fill the temple with His glory.
God has placed us in weak
mortal bodies to keep us aware of our dependence upon Him. The vessels was not
to have anything coming “out from” itself. We were created in a way that
permitted God to be the source of all goodness as we yielded the vessel to Him
for His use.
Many insist they do not have
the power to walk as Jesus did and reveal His light of life. And they are quite
correct. But this fact is not a factor in God’s plan for revealing His life. He
never intended for His human children to be the source of His eternal life. In
fact, He insists that we die to everything that is self-originated—the form of
life that Satan fostered on the world through Adam. We find the Pearl of Great
Price—our Lord’s heavenly Kingdom-life—by selling all from the self-life.
(Matt. 13:45-46)
It is as we die a deeper
death to our own sufficiency and learn to wait on the Lord that we find life
and strength from above. God planned from the beginning that we would live
through the Son and reveal His image. (Eph. 1:4)
For whom He foreknew, He
also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the
firstborn among many brethren. (Rom. 8:29 )
