Christ our Life - Session 3

This is the third of four messages Pastor Doug Riggs gave in his interviews with GeorgeAnn Hughes in her podcast, The ByteShow.
Here are my notes:
o Doug once again presents the foundational truths on how we are to live this impossible Christian life. only Christ can live that life in and through us.
o Jesus Christ as God is the law-giver; Jesus Christ as the Son Man is the law-fulfiller.
o “Our biggest problem is not that we are weak – our biggest problem is that we’re too strong.”
o “The measure in which we’ve been broken, the measure in which we’ve experienced conformity with Christ in His death, where that flesh (which is the old Adamic nature) has been practically and experientially crucified, to that measure and that degree the life of Christ can be released and there can be effective ministry.”
o Doug takes on the challenge to explain and help understand the trinity – the one God expressed in three Persons – with helpful illustrations.
o “If we’re to know Christ as our life, we have to know Christ as the living Word.”
o If what we are doing is not coming out from Jesus Christ as our source, it’s dead works. As Jesus Christ was entirely dependent on the Father, so too must we be dependent on Christ as the source of the life that will please God and produce fruit.
o “We are nothing! And the sooner we settle this, then God is free to use us, because we’re not occupied with ourself anymore. And that’s what the cross will do. If we allow the Holy Spirit long enough to bring us through various circumstances into conformity with Christ in His death, that liberates us from the slavery and the limitations of that old humanity, and brings us into Christ our life.”
o Doug clearly spells out the correlation between the absolute dependence of Jesus Christ on His Father and our absolute dependence on Him as our life.
o “Jesus in His humanity is the only man who has ever pleased God.”
o Doug’s take on Romans 11:36: “From Him – the ultimate source, God the Father; through Him – Jesus Christ, the only means and the divine agent; and to Him – that is in and by the Holy Spirit; glory to God.”
o Doug’s take on Ephesians 4:4: “One God and Father who is over all, through all - in the Person of His Son; and in all - in the Person of the Holy Spirit.”
o …on 1 Corinthians 12:4 ff: “One Minister, the Holy Spirit; we have one Person, the Father who actuates all this (gifts of the spirit); and the Holy Spirit, the one who is distributing these various actions in the body of Christ as He wills.”
o “If God is working, it’s always present tense Three in One acting One in Three.”
o “Jesus must be discovered daily as The Way in your life and mine.”
o “We come to know The Truth by knowing Christ as The Way, because He as The Way leads us to The Truth as it is in Jesus. And as we come to know The Truth as it is in Jesus, we know Jesus as the Life; Way – Truth – and Life. The goal is Life.”
o (John 14:10) “Jesus, in His sinless humanity, is in the Father, and the Father is in Me (Jesus) – there’s the key to the Christian life right there.”
o “The Christian life is just more and more the Word becoming flesh in your life and mine.” This is why we endure and learn from the trials, tribulations, suffering, and child discipline we go through.
o “As we become one with Him in His sufferings, then the life of God is released.”
o There’s a whole lot of washing of water with the Word in this message (and series).
o At Pentecost, Jesus “in the Person of His other Self (the Holy Spirit) comes to be the Life of our life; the Action of our action; the Source of our activity; the Cause of His own effect; the Power of everything that God demands; the Secret behind all obedience.”
o “It takes Jesus to live to God; it takes Christ to be our life, to life a life to the interest and to the pleasure of God.”
o “The Christian life is Jesus right now in resurrection life, in the Person of His other Self, the Holy Spirit, living out the power of God in us in the midst of our weakness… We know that power when we are in our weakest moments, because when we’re weak, then we have to depend on the grace of God. We have to know that apart from Him, we are nothing.”
o This life of God is not a life of imitation – it’s a life of derivation. “Our life is out from God as a source, out from Christ as the source through the Person of the Holy Spirit.”
Resources recommended: Thomas B. Smail’s The Forgotten Father: https://amzn.to/3NiWcrp
T. Austin-Sparks: The School of Christ: https://www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/school_of_christ_the.html
Link to Doug’s message on an excerpt from this book: https://dougriggs.s3.amazonaws.com/Assemblies/The+Forgotten+Father+by+Thomas+Smail.mp3
The Giving Gift by Thomas B. Smail: https://amzn.to/44hJGiB