We were talking about our personal participation in the obedience of Christ as our own life of obedience. It is one thing to study the life that Jesus lived and quite another to embrace being woven into the fabric of His existence. A life of obedience that never costs you anything is a faithless life without adventure, but we are told about Jesus that “In the days His flesh.… although He was a Son, He learned obedience through the things which He suffered.” Hebrews 5:7 – 8.
Jesus clothed himself in our sinful flesh, and though He was tempted in every respect as we are, yet he did so without sinning. Experiencing the barrage of every temptation of fallen humanity, Jesus, in union with His Father through the Holy Spirit, broke through by touching the leper, and dining with prostitutes and publicans. He publicly loved the woman caught in adultery and went out of his way to sit with and set free the woman who had been married five times and was living with a 6th man. He raised the dead and waited four days after death before he did. He washed the feet of a betrayer, put mud in a blind man’s eyes, and he healed a man who was deaf and spoke with difficulty by putting his fingers in his ears and spitting in his hand, and putting saliva on the man’s tongue. On several occasions, he spent all night in prayer wet with dew and once fasted for 40 days. He committed everything precious to him to men who denied him openly and abandoned him at his darkest hour. Without the fear of rejection controlling him, he broke the rules, by healing on the Sabbath. He walked on water, and rebuked violent storms. He calmly walked through a crowd who wanted to cast him off a cliff. He confronted and released people from countless demons and, again and again, patiently took the time to heal all those who were sick who were brought to him. He turned water into wine, saving the best for last, and was accused of being a winebibber. He owned nothing, yet he possessed all things. He cleansed the temple. He allowed himself to be mocked, to be spat on, scourged, beaten, and crowned with thorns. Though he could have destroyed them, he took their blows that they might be healed. In the end, that all might be made whole, captivated with lovesickness, he stretched out his arms for the joy that was set before him. Though no man had seen God at any time, Jesus revealed him.
This is what the obedience of Christ looks like. This is a glimpse of normal Christianity, of our being baptized into the life that Jesus lives.