A summary/paraphrase of chapter 12, The Saving Life of Christ
Jesus is all we need to know about God and man. We look to Him to understand what it means to live in the Promised Land as God intended. For though Christ was fully God in the beginning of the creation of the world, He came to earth as a man in the fullest sense of the word [John 1:1,14].
That is the marvel of the life of Christ, the life He now calls us to live. Jesus Christ lived in complete dependence on the Father. All God’s inexhaustible resources were available to Him because He was unreservedly available to God. Jesus knew His origin was from God and that He was going back to God, so He could do everything, literally everything, through divine resources. Not just wonderful works of healing, but the humble act of washing the disciples’ feet [John 13:1]. He demonstrated that it is not the nature of the activity, but the origin that makes it spiritual. “Spirituality in man is his availability to God for his divine action…”
Jesus Christ was perfect in His person.
[“Who committed no sin,
Nor was deceit found in His mouth”;]
But the Scriptures also tell us:
[“when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously.” 1 Peter 2:22,23].
“He learned obedience by the things which He suffered; and being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all that obey Him” (Hebrews 5:8-9). Thus,
Jesus Christ was perfect in His vocation.
This vocation could only be realized by total dependence on the Father. He was completely submissive to that which the Father had purposed. “… As He hung upon the cross In that moment of time He was ‘made perfect’ in His vocation as He had always been perfect in His person.”
The victorious life of Jesus Christ was more than just not committing sin. He could have continued in righteousness in heaven. But the nature of His victory was that He carried out everything for which He became a man.
“…He positively accomplished all that was right; that His absolute availability to the Father for every moment of 33 years enabled the Father in His deity to do in and through the Son in His humanity all that had been agreed on between the Father and the Son before ever the world was.”
Jesus Christ made Himself available in offering his body and his total being to the Father. Every step, every thought, every word was an expression of the activity of the Father. The Lord Jesus was clear that the basis of our relation-ship with the Father now is the same as His relationship to the Father was then (John 6:57).
We have and enjoy eternal life right now because we have Jesus Christ Himself within us. And the time between when we first come into eternal life, the life we live by His power on this earth, and the time we go into His presence, we fulfill God’s purposes as our vocation.
Fulfilling this vocation is the object of our redemption and is only possible in the energy and power of Christ’s indwelling through the Holy Spirit.
[“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing … By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.” John 15:4,5,8]
You can do nothing without Jesus Christ. But God’s purpose is that everything you do is done as an expression of Christ’s life within you.
Adapted from Christian Book Summaries, vol. 2, # 28
Bracketed content added
Based on The Saving Life of Christ, by Major Ian Thomas (Zondervan, 1961). Summary/paraphrase of chapter 12. Quotations by the author.
The author’s testimony: “As a young evangelist, my love and enthusiasm for Christ as my Saviour kept me very, very busy until out of sheer frustration, I finally came to the point of quitting. That was the turning point which transformed my Christian life. In my despair I discovered that the Lord Jesus gave Himself FOR me, so that risen from the dead He might give Himself TO me, He who IS the Christian Life. Instead of pleading for help I began to thank Him for all that He wanted to be, sharing His Life with me every moment of every day. I learned to say “Lord Jesus, I can’t, You never said I could; but You can, and always said You would. That is all I need to know”. From that moment life became the adventure that God always intended it to be.” -Major Ian Thomas
https://torchbearers.org/who-we-are/history/
A biographical sketch: deeperchristian.com/major-ian-thomas/
See also the excerpt on The Mystery of Godliness.