13.2 How Did Jesus Walk?
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
We walk as Jesus walked; we cannot walk any other way. When we know that we are, we are. When we “know” that we are not, we are not. We cannot walk as Jesus walked unless we think as Jesus thought. I refer you to the article “Thinking Like Jesus.”
Did Jesus walk in faith in the Promise, as Abraham did, and as boldness inside the Holiest, the tree of LIFE, as David did? – Or did Jesus walk by the works of the law as most Christians imagine that He did? Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? … Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh (Galatians 3:2-3)?
The Promised Seed
Jesus was not made perfect by His “ability” to obey God.
He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? —just as Abraham “believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness” (Galatians 3:5-6). – Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham (Galatians 3:7).
IF Jesus was the promised Seed of Abraham, then He must have walked by grace through faith and not by “doing what God says.” That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (Galatians 3:14b). Walking in the Spirit is something entirely different.
What Is Death?
Who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear (Hebrews 5:7).
What is death? What was it that Jesus expected God to save Him from? Most will say that Jesus wanted God to help Him not to disobey, either the law or any voice coming to Jesus from God. But disobedience is not death, it is the fruit of death. Disobedience comes out from death itself. What was Adam’s death?
Self-Identity
Adam’s death was turning his back on himself as the image of God, on Christ as His only life, another Person inside of Him, and choosing, rather, to use the law of God, the knowledge of sin and righteousness, to craft his own self-identity.
The temptation of Satan against Jesus began with these words, “If You are the Son of God.” Notice how similar they are to “Did God indeed say?” Jesus’ death would have come IF He had turned His back on living in the tree of life, that is, the Father IN Me and I IN the Father, in order to regard the law in constructing a self-identity separate from His full symmorphy with the Father. Oh Me, oh My, I MUST Do.
Faith Is Symmorphy
To turn away from “I am” in order to face “I must do” is death, the death Jesus cried out to God to be saved from. The law is not of faith, but “the man who does what God or the Bible says (outwardly) shall live by doing what God says” (Galatians 3:12 - modified).
Faith is symmorphy: I IN you and you IN Me. Faith knows that there is a very personal Person, Jesus, on the inside of ALL that is me, living me by all that He is, all that God speaks as Spirit and as Life arising from my own heart. This is exactly how Jesus walked: I am IN the Father and the Father IN Me. We walk as He walked only by acknowledging Christ as our only life.
A Statement of Fact
The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do… For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does (John 5:19-20 condensed).
The statement “I can do nothing of myself” is a statement of faith, not a statement of works. For years I was presented with this line as a condition of work; that is, in order to fulfill this word, I had to stop doing things “of myself.” But every effort to stop doing things “of myself” is a defiant accusation of self that God is lying to us.
“The Son can do nothing of Himself” is a statement of simple fact, of self-evident reality, something Jesus KNEW.
In Love
But “I can do nothing of Myself” cannot exist by itself, for by itself it is empty. “I can do nothing of Myself” is always the lesser of two absolute realities inside of which Jesus thought every thought and walked every step. Far greater is “the Father loves the Son.”
Every moment of His life, from the time His own consciousness began to arise somewhere between 3 and 5 years of age, Jesus KNEW beyond all absoluteness that the Father loved Him. And Jesus KNEW where His Father lived, inside His own heart in all fullness and arising every moment in LOVE.
I Failed the Test
There is no other way to live.
I was taught for many years that God was testing me to see if I would walk in His ways and not in my own ways. Central to that teaching was the injunction “you can of yourself do nothing,” except not as a statement of fact, but as an ideal to attain by performance.
I can assure you, God did test me to see if I would walk in His ways or not; it’s called the law. I failed that test, utterly. You see, you only have to miss one point to fail. I certainly missed many points. And having failed, I was put to death upon the cross of Christ.
The Proof of God
Jesus never once placed Himself into that frame of thinking, that He, separate from the Father, all on His own, must prove to the Father that He would obey. In fact, that is the very DEATH from which Jesus cried out to be saved.
God is out to prove something most certainly. God intends to prove His Word, that His Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, fulfills all that God speaks. And that Jesus does so through faith.
Jesus walked by faith, by believing absolutely that He lived and breathed and thought and walked utterly inside the present and very conscious and caring LOVE of His Father.
Jesus Knew
God looked out for Jesus. Never once did Jesus think, “Well, should I do this or should I do that? Oh God, please tell me which one You want me to do.” This mentality is not “learning obedience.”
In complete contrast, Jesus KNEW that God would never allow Him to miss-step. Jesus put every foot forward in the absolute confidence that God was showing Him exactly what God Himself was seeing, and that God was directing His foot exactly where God wanted it to go. Person inside of Person inside of Person. Symmorphy.
Did Not Consider
Those who are convinced that God is “testing” them walk in doubt and confusion, in fear and unbelief. Jesus walked only in full confidence that God IS. “Learning obedience” was seeing the absolute reality of God directing His steps regardless of His body of the likeness of sinful flesh.
If Abraham (if Jesus) was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God (Romans 4:2). – Abraham … believed God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things that do not exist as though they did. – And not being weak in faith, he DID NOT consider his own body, already dead (Romans 4:17 & 19).
Temptation
We have always understood temptation wrongly; we have always understood temptation by the law and not by Christ. Temptation, by Christian definition, has been choosing between right and wrong, good and evil.
The temptations of Satan to Jesus were always centered on His identity. The actions suggested by Satan were for Jesus to prove to Himself that He was, in fact, Somebody. Temptation for us is the same. All temptation is between whether we KNOW that Christ IS the only life we are, filled with all the fullness of the love of God – OR – that we, separate from Christ, must “prove” ourselves.
Are You God’s Image?
The statement “God is testing you, to see if you will walk in His ways or not” is the temptation of the evil one. It was a temptation Jesus never embraced, no matter how much He struggled with His outward appearance (a starving body of the likeness of sinful flesh.)
It was not a question of whether Jesus would turn the stones into bread or not. It was a question of whether Jesus would prove to Himself that He was God’s Son rather than rest in the absolute certainty that God was revealing Himself through Jesus exactly as the Father wished to do so at that moment.
Is God revealing Himself through your weakness as He wishes?
We Walk as Jesus Walked
He did not consider his own body, already dead.
How Jesus walked is not a mystery; neither is it something far away from us. Paul’s instruction to us on how to walk in the Spirit by faith, by utter confidence in the Love of God for us, that God IS always directing our every step is simply a description of how Jesus also walked.
Every thought of “Obey, do not disobey,” takes us out of that confidence that alone makes us partakers of Christ, turning our eyes from Christ and onto ourselves. Jesus never walked that way once, and neither do we. We walk only as Jesus walked.