John 14:
7 If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.”
8 Philip *said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 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 can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. 11 Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves. 12 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.
15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
Just wanted to register a quick thought. Being a Christian isn’t a philosophy of life. It isn’t a personal, or individualist lived life as if the human agent can somehow live however they like. As a Christian we live the Christian life, by definition, as those in submission to our Lord; as those who desire to obediently follow the Father; as those who are about doing the will of our Father. We are not simply imitators or exemplars or mimics of what we perceive to be the Way, Truth, and Life. We are as Christians those who find life in obedience; we live life as Christians wherein keeping the commandments of God are not burdensome. This is not to say that we are legalists, that is, that we are justified by God based upon what we do; God forbid it! But it is to say that we are in such a status of unity and union with God in Christ that it becomes very difficult to not want to do the will of the Father. This is so, because as Christians the very ground of our lives, ontologically and ontically, is the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ Himself. As John says: “as He is so also are we in this world” and “apart from Him we can do nothing.”
In light of the above facts, Christians aren’t in fact free to make up their own version of what the Christian existence entails. It necessarily entails obedience to the Father; just because the very ground of our lives in Christ is based upon Christ’s life indeed, such that who He is for us, we by the Spirit become and are becoming. We are being transformed from glory to glory in Christ, but only as we are constantly denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following Christ; and only as we are reposing in the fact that Christ has already done that and does that for us each and every moment of each and every day. This is what the Apostle Paul is so often opining about: that is, that we, as Christians, those indwelt by the Holy Spirit, have resurrection power, resurrection life as the very ground of our lives.
If we fail to live out of the One we claim to be our life (and whether we claim that or not, at an objective level, He is), then we deny our very existence as human beings. Since, Jesus Christ alone is in fact God’s humanity, God’s human, God’s image for us, it is impossible to live as human beings without bowing the knee, moment by moment, in obedience to the Father; just as that knee was first bowed for us in the obedience of the Son to the Father to be for us and not against us.
Again, I wanted to register this because I witness way too many so-called Christians who live at odds with the very ground of their self-proclaimed life in Jesus Christ. The Gospel is not a philosophy of life. The Gospel is God’s reality and Yes and No for us, confronting us afresh anew every day, telling us that we are not Lord, but that God in Christ alone is. We are, as Christians, by definition, those who have come to understand that the Word of God gets to determine for us what in fact genuine human life entails; that we acknowledge that our way is not the best way, but that God’s Way alone is the only way to genuinely live life from God’s life for us in Christ.
We all struggle, indeed. But we must be engaged in the battle. We are not allowed to make up excuses for why we perdure in our favorite sins. We are not allowed to construct a philosophy of life based on Christianity, as if Christianity is an idea. Christianity, and its Gospel, is not an idea, it is a person, God’s triune life and person in Jesus Christ. It is His unilateral movement towards us, with us, and ostensibly in us that contradicts our plans and ways, with His plan and Way in Jesus Christ. We are to submit to this, God’s Way, and no longer submit to our base desires and ways based on submission to the word of the serpent. It is Christ’s love that constrains us, as such, our lives ought to reflect this type of constraint; even, and especially when we sin. David was a man after God’s heart, not because he didn’t sin and fail miserably, but because he always, even after a season, came back in repentance to the Way and the will of God. The Christian’s life is the repentant life; it is God’s life lived for us in Jesus Christ.