John 10:31-32 ESV
The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. [32] Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?”
Notice what Jesus said in verse 32, “I have shown you many good works FROM the Father…” Jesus didn’t say He did many good works for the Father; He said He did them “from” the Father. There is a big difference! Jesus came to reveal the Father, but He did that as a Spirit-filled man, not as God. Jesus came to tell the truth about God and the truth about Man, for the truth about Man is that we were created to tell the truth about God. In John 14:9 – 10, Jesus said in response to them Phillip’s request that Jesus show them the Father,” Jesus said to him, Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how do you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words and I say to you I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.” Jesus did not say that he was the Father. He simply said that when they saw Him, they saw the Father because it was the Father who was living through Him. Jesus was the author and the perfecter of faith. Though God, in the incarnation He, laid down his right to act as God and lived in absolute dependence on the Father to live through Him. Therefore, Jesus did not do the works He did “for” the Father out of sincere effort for God. Instead, everything He did, He did from God. As the second Adam, Jesus said the Father was in Him, and He was in the Father, and therefore, from that union, Jesus lived as a man from God and not as a man living for God. In doing so, he showed us, sons and daughters of Adam how we were intended to live in union with Christ. As new creations, we live from Christ, not for Christ. I understand that we do everything for Christ in the sense of doing all things for His glory, but Jesus must be the origin of all our activity, and not the object of our activity. To live for Jesus is exhausting, and you will eventually burn out, learning how to fake it on the outside while falling apart in defeat on the inside. To live from Christ is to constantly live, overshadowed by the power of His indwelling presence. “My Savior thou hast offered rest, Oh, give it then to me; the rest of ceasing from myself to find my all Thee.”