"His Rest" Part 3

 

    When we work from a sense of adequacy for the task at hand, confidence, assurance, and competence characterize our labors.

 

    The Lord Jesus Christ knew such a life, albeit for different reasons than we might expect.  He lived from a super abundant adequacy - but not His own.

 

    "I live by the Father... the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do" (John 6:57; 5:19).

 

    Our Savior laid aside His innate Divine capacities during His earthly lifetime, remaining as God the Son in His Person and inner substance, but living as the son of man in complete dependence on His Father.  Our Lord felt the limitations of His humanity - He thirsted, hungered, tired, hurt, and was tempted - but even more, He believed in the abundance of His Father's enabling and providing presence.  Thus, He lived from strength, the strength of God dwelling with and within Him.

 

    We are called to the same dynamic experience of the Divine presence as known by faith. 

 

     "As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me" (John 6:57). 

 

     Just as the Lord Jesus lived by His Father during His earthly sojourn, so are we to live by our Savior.  We partake of Him by believing that Christ dwells in us by His Spirit, and that His is dynamically active in us to effect the glory and will of God in our endeavors.  We do not live our lives alone if we have believed.  Nor we do not live from our own resources.  We rather live in Christ, through Christ, by Christ, and for the glory of Christ.  He is the center of our existence - "Christ in you, the hope of glory" -  and He is the circumference of our existence - "of Him are ye in Christ Jesus" (Colossians 1:27; I Corinthians 1:30).

 

    This is rest.  We work, and work hard in our Lord's vineyards.  But we do so from His superenabling presence and dynamic acting on our behalf.  As the Apostle Paul declared, our Lord "is able to do exceeding abundant above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us" (Ephesians 3:20; emphasis added).  Do we believe this plainly declared Biblical truth?  To the degree we do, we will experience the glorious reality of the Spirit of Christ living in us, and our living by Him.  This is Christianity in its purest essence, that the Lord Jesus dwells among and within His people.  He is the life, the wisdom, the power, and most of all, the motivating effecter of the love of God in us.  We are the trusting, submissive branches who live with expectancy of "much fruit," not because of ourselves, but because of the glorious True Vine who infuses us with His dynamic life and energy (John 15:1-5).  Our hearts rest in such blessed assurance, and we work for God by working from Him.

 

"I also labor, striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily."

(Colossians 1:29)