A HUMAN VEHICLE OF THE DIVINE LIFE

By: Major W. Ian Thomas

"Faithful is he that calls you, who also will do it." (I Thessalonians 5:24).

The One who calls you to a life of righteousness is the One who by our consent lives that life of righteousness through you! The One who calls you to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, is the One who by your consent, goes into all the world and preaches the Gospel to every creature through you!

This is the divine genius that saves a man from the futility of self-effort. It relieves the Christian of the burden of tying to pull himself up by his own bootstraps! If it were not for this divine provision, the call to Christ would be a source of utter frustration, presenting the sorry spectacle of a sincere idealist, constantly thwarted by his own inadequacy.

If you will but trust Christ, not only for the death He died in order to redeem you, but also for the life that He lives and waits to live through you, the very next step you take will be a step taken in the very energy and power of God Himself. You will have begun to live a life which is essentially supernatural, yet still clothed with the common humanity of your physical body, and still worked out both in the big and the little things that inevitable make up the lot of a man who, though his heart may be with Christ in heaven, still has his two feet firmly planted on the earth.

You will have become totally dependent upon the life of Christ within you, and never before will you have been so independent, so emancipated from the pressure of your circumstances, so released at last from that self-distrust which has made you at one moment an arrogant, loud-mouth braggart, and the next moment the victim of your own self-pity ­ and, either way, always in bondage to the fear of other men's opinions.

You will be free from the tyranny of a defeated enemy within. You will be more than conqueror, for even death itself is conquered by His life. Christ through death destroyed "him that had the power of death, that is, the devil" (Hebrews 2:14). This indeed is victory!

You will be restored to your true humanity ­ to be the human vehicle of the divine life.

From: The Saving Life of Christ. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House. ©1961.