When we ask the question: Why the earthly life of the
Lord Jesus?—it is clear that that question implies
and contains within itself other questions. For instance:
Why was it necessary for Him to be here for something
over thirty-three years? Again: Why was it necessary for
by far the greater part of that time to be spent in
private, and, so far as we are concerned, in secret? We
shall try to answer these, and other, subsidiary
questions, to some extent at least, as we go on.
Much has been made of the earthly life of
Christ—usually for the purpose of showing that there
was such a Person as Jesus of Nazareth, and what a good
Person He was, and how much greater He was as a teacher
than other teachers; or at most to show that He was more
than just a man. There may be other purposes for writing
books on the life of Jesus, but these usually comprehend
the object. Of course, seeing that Jesus has become a
great historical world figure, it is interesting to know
where He was born, where and how He was brought up, where
He went about in the country, what He taught, the
miracles that He performed, and so on. All this has
provided material for a great deal of discussion and
controversy. The miracles have provided much food for the
psychologists, and His teaching for the theologians and
the doctrinaires. But when you have said all that you can
say and written all that you can write on those matters,
you may not have advanced much beyond the human story.
The human story, as such, appeals very much to the
emotion, to the imagination, but it does not change
character. However fascinating, impressive and moving it
may be, if you just leave it there you have stopped short
of the real meaning of the earthly life of the Lord
Jesus.
The earthly life of our Lord was not intended for those
purposes. The record of His life was not intended merely
to provide us with data and information and interesting
matter about a certain man—however great and
wonderful—who lived so long ago, in such-and-such a
part of the world, and said and did such-and-such. He did
not come for that. He was not here for thirty years and a
little more for that purpose at all. His life was
intended to show—not merely that He was in many
respects different from other men, but that He was of a
different order of mankind from all the rest,
the best included. Until you have clearly recognized
that, you have not found the key to the earthly life of
the Lord Jesus. He met some of the best types of men of
His day, but between Him and them there was a great gulf
fixed—there was no passing from the one side to the
other.A Different Order Of
Mankind
Jesus was a mystery. He was not just mysterious
—He was a mystery. He was not just misunderstood. So
many have said about Him, ‘He was an altogether
misunderstood Man.’ No, He was not just
misunderstood —He was un-understood, and
that is very different. Jesus did not conform to any of
the principles and methods upon which this world is run.
He did not do what He was expected to do, either by the
world or by His friends. Often He put that expectation
back: He did not instantly fulfil it because He was asked
to, or because it was expected of Him. He put a gap
between the expectation and whatever He did. And into
that gap you must place this uniqueness that there was
about Him, as an order of Man—His
‘otherness’ from other men. If you try to fit
Him in, try to make Him a part of the established human
order, try to show how He did this and did that, in a
kindly way, just because He was so kind, you have
altogether missed the point.
Why, for instance, when that embarrassing situation arose
at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, and it was presented
to Him as His opportunity, did He put it back
with something that sounded very much like a rebuff? So
far as the expectation of people was concerned, nothing
might ever have happened—but for something else that
belonged to another realm altogether. And we find the
same kind of thing repeated in other connections. He did
not do what people expected Him to do—He very often
did what they never expected Him to do. He did the
unexpected—took people, not only completely by
surprise, but right out of their depth. They just could
not follow Him in some of the things that He did. He did
not go where people expected Him to go, and when, and so
conform to their order and programme. And He certainly
did not say what He was expected to say—far from it.
On the contrary, He said many things that He was not
expected to say—difficult things, shocking things,
offending things.
Now, Jesus was not just being different, being awkward,
being singular. There are people who behave like that,
but on entirely different grounds. They are merely trying
to be singular, exceptional, unusual, to do the
unexpected, to be awkward. I knew a Christian man, some
years ago, who had gained a great name in this world, and
who, by reason of the tremendous amount that had been
made of him, had developed an ultra-self-consciousness.
On one occasion I was having a talk with him in the
garden, and after a little time I suggested that we
should come into the house. I took him by the arm to walk
up with him, and he instantly drew himself up stiff,
stuck his heels in and absolutely refused to budge!
‘Well!’ I thought, ‘What is this?’ I
had to wait a minute or two—evidently until he had
satisfied himself that it was right to move—and then
he relaxed and we walked up together—but not
arm-in-arm! I had learnt my lesson. I came to know that
he had adopted a manner on this: that he was never going
to allow himself to be influenced, or affected, or led,
or in any way moved, by another human being. He had come
to such an ‘ultra’ place that he would not even
walk arm-in-arm with a brother Christian unless the Lord
told him to! Ultimately, of course, it developed into
quite a serious complex. But you see what I mean. It is
possible to act like that on an altogether false basis.
Jesus was not like that. He may have seemed to behave
like that at times, but it was not on that basis. We need
to be very clear about this—this strange, this
unknown way with Him, which often perplexed and
mystified, sometimes disappointed, and sometimes even
annoyed and angered. But these are facts; these are very
clearly recognizable features of the earthly life of the
Lord Jesus. They were not of the order of which I have
spoken—an ultra-self-consciousness, a deliberate
standing apart, trying to be different from
others, wearing a strait jacket, unbending, unyielding.
There was nothing of that about Him. We have got to
explain it, for there is no mistaking it. There He
is—an unknown Man.
The Negative Side:
‘Circumcised In Heart’
Here then, was a Man—with a capital
‘M’—living a human life on a basis
different from that of every other man. There was a
negative and a positive aspect of that fact. The negative
aspect was this: He was, if I may bring in the expression
here, ‘circumcised in heart’. That is, He was
utterly separated from the self-principle in every way,
in His mind, heart and will. He would not use His mind,
or think His thoughts, or arrive at His judgments, on the
basis of any self-principle whatsoever. Nor had self any
place in His feelings or His will. Here is a Man Who has
a soul—a mind, a heart and a will— constituting
Him a true human being, but in whose soul the
self-principle has been put completely aside.
You cannot make Him do anything along the line of
ordinary human reasoning, however right or good it may
seem to be. ‘They have no
wine—therefore...’ An argument comes in, a
reasoning. ‘Therefore’ ...this and
that and some other thing, constituting a very good case
for His intervening and doing something. It could be
argued from almost every standpoint as being a thing that
He should do: from the standpoint of human kindness, from
the standpoint of the vindication of His mission, the
establishment of His Divine Person. Yes, you can argue it
from any and every standpoint, but He is not moving on a
mind that is influenced by any kind of argument. The only
consideration with Him is: Does My Father will
it? and does My Father will it now? and does My
Father will it in this way? Those are the things
that influence His mind and His heart and His
will—His soul. Until He is sure about that, nothing
on this earth or in this world, no argument or appeal or
case, will get Him to move. For He is doing something,
and we are going to see presently what it is that He is
doing.
I have said He was utterly ‘circumcised in
heart’. That is a biblical phrase (see Rom. 2:29).
We need to understand the meaning of it. It means that in
the heart there has taken place an absolute severance
between two things. If you like, you can substitute
‘soul’ for ‘heart’; it is the inner
man. Something had been done in Him inwardly, and He kept
steadfastly to that ground to the end. It was upon that
ground, in one form or another, that the fiercest battles
in His life were fought. Sometimes the assault came
through an innermost friend and disciple: “Be it far
from Thee, Lord: this shall never be unto Thee.”
“Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou mindest... the
things of men” (Matt. 16:22–23). ‘Your
outlook is that of men—merely on the level of men.
I do not belong to that realm of men in which you move.
Other men may listen to your argument, be influenced,
persuaded; but as for Myself—no!’ And so it is,
right to the end: He steadfastly held to that
ground—the ground of what we will content ourselves
by calling the ground of inward heart circumcision.
That, as I have said, was the focal point of Satan’s
persistent endeavour: reason, argument, as to why He
should, or should not, do certain things. It is a matter
of argument, sometimes the argument of absolute
necessity. ‘Your body demands bread or you will die.
Necessity requires that you turn these stones into
bread.’ So say men, but not the Divine Son of God,
not the Son of Man. Jesus repudiated that argument
absolutely.
Yes, Satan’s focal point of every attack was just
there—to try to get Him to do, to act, to move, to
decide, according to human standards, to be influenced by
the ordinary dictates of human life as we know it; and He
refused. That being the focal point of all satanic
attacks and efforts, that was the realm of His absolute
victory over Satan and the world. “The prince of
this world cometh: and he hath nothing in Me” (John
14:30). What was he looking for?—the self-principle.
If only he could get that moving, if only he could stir
that into action, through mind, heart or will, the same
thing would happen with the last Adam as happened with
the first, and the Kingdom would go again into the hands
of the Devil. But he has met a different kind of Man, Who
is not coming out to him on that ground at all. Jesus did
not just say, ‘The Devil is coming to Me...’ ,
‘Satan is coming to Me...’ ; He said: “The
prince of this world cometh”—implying
the whole principle of this world, as Satan’s
Kingdom; the self-principle of the prince of this world.
But—“he hath nothing in Me.”
The Positive Side: Committed To
The Will Of The Father
That, then, is the negative side of His life. The
positive aspect was that He was so utterly committed to
the will of His Father. He was not only
refusing, resisting, repressing, suppressing, putting
away. The motive of it all was His absolute committal to
the will of the Father. The will of the Father was the
dominant thing, the most positive reality in His life,
from beginning to end. And the will of the Father came
down to every detail in the most meticulous way. This was
established in His whole life on the earth.
It was established first in the thirty years of what we
call His private life. Those thirty years were also
divided into two. You notice that division in the Gospel
by Luke, chapter 2. First, from His dedication in the
Temple until He reached the age of twelve years: this is
what is said over this section: “And the child grew,
and waxed strong, becoming full of wisdom: and the grace
of God was upon Him” (v. 40). Then from the age of
twelve onwards: “And Jesus advanced in wisdom and
stature, and in grace with God and men” (v. 52). We
will not now stop to analyze that. It is subject to an
analysis which is very profitable, if you care to make
it. You see the realms in which this progress was
made—physical, mental and spiritual; and over all
the verdict is: the grace of God. The grace of God, the
Divine approval, Divine satisfaction, was over His life.
He was growing up before the Lord as one well-pleasing.
Why? Right at the very heart: “Wist ye not that I
must be about My Father’s business?”—or,
if you like the alternative translation, “that I
must be in My Father’s house?” (v. 49).
Whatever that meant, it certainly meant a
Father-consciousness above the ordinary, natural
relationship. Note that it is set right in the midst of
something that caused a good deal of heart-burning and
perplexity to his parents after the flesh.
Yes, there was an utter committal to the will of His
Father, and it was established for thirty years in the
ordinary, common way of life. I think that is a
tremendous thing. Why were there thirty years in silence
and in secret so far as we are concerned? We have so
little light upon it. Why? Just for that same reason. If
you want the explanation, go back to the Old Testament.
You remember that the Levites commenced their service at
the age of thirty years. Luke tells us about Jesus
beginning His ministry: “Jesus... when He began...
was about thirty years of age...” (Luke 3:23). The
Lord Jesus was in type a Levite, although He came of the
tribe of Judah. (Compare Heb. 7:13–14). But the
official entry of a Levite into his ministry at the age
of thirty was never willy-nilly. There was a history
lying behind this. The Levite history, the Levite life,
the Levite behaviour lay behind it. And, although we have
nothing that makes this quite clear to us, perhaps
because there was never any occasion for it, I venture to
say that, if any young man of the tribe of Levi in that
old dispensation had been living a profligate life, he
would never have become an officiating Levite upon
reaching the age of thirty years. No, the seal had to be
set upon those thirty years, that the man had walked
before God. And the same principle was brought to bear in
the life of Jesus: God tested Him, proved Him, in the
ordinary ways of life.
That ought to be taken by us very seriously, as a
principle of God’s approval. You may be longing to
get out into ministry: God may be longing for you to be fit
to be brought out into ministry! In all the ordinary ways
of life you are going through it, you are being tested;
the eye of God is upon you. Remember that when Jesus, at
thirty years of age, came to the Jordan, Heaven was
opened and a voice said: “In Thee I am well
pleased” (Mark 1:11). I think that covered the
thirty years: it spoke of the grace of God in thirty
years of ordinary life, and made it possible for Him to
take up His ministry. Perhaps we are not so right in
saying ‘ordinary life’, seeing how the Devil
tried to get Him right at the beginning (Matt.
2:13–18).
But, whatever the thirty years represented, there is no
question that the three-and-a-half years public ministry
ratified, through intense fires, the fact that He was
committed without any reservation to the will of His
Father. Those three-and-a-half years were a period of the
intensest fires, to make Him deviate a little bit, in
personal, self-consideration, from doing His
Father’s will. By every bribe of ‘the kingdoms
of this world and the glory thereof’, and by every
threat of the ignominy of the Cross, Satan sought to
bring about this deviation from the will of God. Jesus
fought it through to the end.
The Reality Of His Humanity
Why the earthly life? First of all, to establish the
reality of His humanity. You see, in the old dispensation
there had been many Divine appearances in human form. No
one dare be dogmatic on this matter, but it may well have
been that the very Son of God Himself was in some of
those so-called ‘theophanies’. God came in
human form, so that those visited first spoke of them as
men, or a man, and then woke up to the realization:
‘I have seen God—God was here!’ But this
earthly life of thirty-three years was no theophany: this
was real humanity. This was not a transient guise, a
passing form, just a visitation. This was a Man, true
humanity, on this earth for over thirty-three years. This
was not an angelic visitor. It was a Man. And I think
this is one reason or explanation, amongst others, why at
His entry into the world He was born as a babe and
started from the beginning. He did not arrive as a
visitant in full maturity; He began right at the
beginning, coming in—although with a
difference—yet by the same door as other men, and
living here, through infancy, childhood and youth, into
Manhood, accepting a life on the basis of absolute
dependence on God as other men.
If you think, you will see that there is so much that
bears this out. Why must He in infancy be hurried away by
Joseph and Mary, out of the country, because His life is
sought after? Why does not Heaven come in and assert
itself for His absolute protection in miraculous ways, in
order to preserve Him and to meet those forces that were
against Him? Whereas He had to be taken and run away
with, be got out of the way, like any other child! The
fact is that He is living our life, He is subject to our
experiences. There may be miraculous elements working
behind, but on the face of things He is hungry, He is
thirsty, He is tired, He is pursued and sought
after—He is ‘going through it’, in the
same way as you and I. He is living a human life. He has
voluntarily accepted the basis of absolute dependence
upon His Father. And the Father is not performing a
series of miracles—although in truth the whole thing
is a miracle.
A Life Of Faith
For this reason, like other men, He has got to
overcome by the principle of faith. He has no other life,
in principle, than you and I have: it is the life of
faith. Faith had to be exercised for Him before
He could exercise it for Himself. I have no doubt that
Joseph and Mary had considerable exercise about that
matter. They had to look it squarely in the face, and
either say, ‘Well, we can trust God to look after
Him: we will not do anything, we will just trust
God’; or else say, ‘We will go, and trust
God’. In either case, it was faith—faith for
Him. And then the time came for Him to exercise faith for
Himself, and everything for Him had to be on the
basis of faith, as much as it has for you and for me.
Are you thinking: ‘What about His deity? What about
His miraculous powers of knowledge and action? Surely He knew
in a supernatural way; He exercised powers quite
supernatural. That is not humanity!’ Let us get this
very definitely cleared up in our minds. It does not
contradict anything that I have said. Note: Jesus
never used His miraculous powers of Deity for Himself.
There is only one instance which it might be thought
could be set over against that statement: the occasion
when He had no money to pay His taxes, and sent Peter
down to the sea-shore, and there was a fish with a coin
in its mouth (Matt. 17:24–27). You might say,
‘It would be very nice to have that power to pay our
rates!’ Ah, but be careful—it is not quite as
clear as that. It does not really contradict what I have
said. He never used supernatural, Godhead powers
for Himself, and they never took Him off the ground of
dependence upon God and the basis of faith. Note that
even in that one instance there was no creative action.
It was superior intelligence. There was a fish, and that
fish had a coin, and somehow He knew it was there.
Unbelief Untouched By Miracles
But let us pursue that. Take the miracles. The
miracles related, on the one side, to His Deity: but,
even so, they did not have a character-changing effect
upon the people who saw them or participated in them.
They were but for a testimony to Who He was. Do you get
the significance of that? With all His miracles, in the
end the principle of unbelief has not been rooted out of
a single individual! That is the tragedy of it all. That
is a tremendous argument. Though they saw all that He
did, the deep-rooted unbelief was untouched. The amazing
thing—even with the disciples themselves—was
that they were still capable of deep-seated unbelief.
“O foolish men, and slow of heart to
believe...!” (Luke 24:25). “He upbraided them
with their unbelief...” (Mark 16:14). With all that
they saw, it did not touch character, it did not touch
their nature.
It was, therefore, given but for a testimony—a
testimony as to Who He was. That is one side. For, you
see, there are two sides to this matter. There is the
side of His Deity, as John sums up everything:
“These [things] are written, that ye may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that
believing ye may have life in His name” (John
20:31). It was for a testimony to Who He was essentially.
But withal, it did not have such an effect upon their
natures that because of these things they got rid of
unbelief. Yes—for a moment they may have believed on
Him; but that is something less than having unbelief
deeply and radically dealt with. The miracles did not do
that, and Jesus did not expect that they would. He made
it perfectly clear that He was not building upon His
miracles any hope in that direction. He was still
dependent upon the Father for the real effect.
And here let me say, in parenthesis—it is something
to think about—that it is not the things that He
does for us, but the life of the Son of Man,
in all its mighty potency, its power, its principle, in
us, that makes the difference. He might heal your
body of a chronic disease, of something that is most
certainly going to prove fatal in the ordinary way, but
that does not necessarily mean that the deep-seated
unbelief of your heart will be dealt with. After a few
years you might argue or explain that away
psychologically, or in some other way, and lose the real
impact of it. No, those things done for us, in
any realm, even though they might seem miracles, do not
touch our real nature. Make no mistake: signs and wonders
are not the ultimate argument—they are not. The
ultimate argument is the change of our very being,
deep-seated and deep-rooted, and anything that does not
do that has failed of the ultimate purpose of His coming.
It is not what He would do for us, miraculously,
by outward things: it is what He Himself is in
us, as another kind of Person. That is what matters. It
is “Christ in you, the hope of glory”;
not Christ working miracles for you.
The Superior Powers Of Man As
God Intended Him
But then, there is something yet more to be said. He
did have superior powers for doing and for knowing. While
I am not for a moment suggesting that that had nothing to
do with His Deity, His Divine Nature, it might very well
be that that superior—what we might call
supernatural—power and intelligence were, if I may
put it this way, the ‘normal’ of the kind of
being that Jesus is, as Man. If, without any
question of participation in Deity, a man or men can be
brought into such a relationship with God as that Which
He had, they, too, might have that superior intelligence,
and might know a great deal more than the ordinary person
knows of what is taking place in the world around. It
would not be just through psychic means, but by the very
intuition of a spirit link with God. I venture to suggest
that—putting aside all that is psychical—such
power is not absolutely unknown to Christian men and
women. Peter raised the dead; the Apostles healed the
sick, performed miracles. Were they God? No, but by the
Spirit of Jesus Christ they were brought into such a
relationship with Him as to have His powers delegated to
them. “Greater works than these shall he do; because
I go unto the Father” (John 14:12).
There is a deep significance in a word that He uttered,
as recorded for us in John 5:26–27. It is perhaps
far too deep for our understanding, and I do not venture
into those depths. “The Father... gave... to the
Son... authority to execute judgment, because He is the
Son of Man.” Not because He is the Son of
God—“because He is the Son of Man”. It
opens a very big field of enquiry, and we will not enter
it; but my point is this: that, Deity apart—I am not
arguing for a moment against the Deity of Christ in
knowledge or power, supernatural ability— may it not
be that a humanity so related to and so indwelt by God,
according to His original mind, should have these powers
which we now call ‘super-natural’? It only
means ‘of another order of intelligence’, of
knowledge, of ability to do. It means that man is lifted
on to another level of ability and understanding, above
the ordinary level of man as we know him. Is this not
true of the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to the Church?
Why, then, the earthly life? To set forth the kind of
humanity that God wants, to demonstrate through a human
life what man would be if God had him after His own
heart. I believe that is the answer. And if it was but
thirty-three-and-a-half years, what does that say? Coming
over the centuries I hear the prophet’s voice
saying: “He was cut off out of the land of the
living” (Isa. 53:8); “His life is taken from
the earth” (Acts 8:33). His life was cut off in
mid-manhood. Men did not let Him finish it. Men
took action that this should not go on. Men
brought it to—yes, from one standpoint—an
untimely end. Ah, Satan will not have this kind of man
here longer than he can help.
But this kind of man can only be completed on the other
side. We anticipate our ‘octave’ when we just
hint that He has not left His manhood, He has not left
His humanity; He abides there, on the other side, as Man.
But He has done here all that was needed. He has
demonstrated what man would be if God had Him according
to His mind. And He has taken action that the rest of the
prophecy shall be fulfilled: “He shall see His seed,
He shall prolong His days” (Isa. 53:10). He was cut
off, but He shall prolong His days: the days of His
humanity are prolonged in His Church. That is what we are
called to. By painfully slow processes, owing to the
infirmity of our flesh, He is working to make us men and
women after His own kind. And the heart of it all is: the
complete severance from the principle of the self-life.