The Source of His Life

A.B. Simpson: "Where did He [Jesus Christ] derive the strength for his supernatural and perfect example? Was it through His own inherent and essential deity? Or did He suspend during the days of His humiliation His own self-contained rights and powers, and live among us simply as a man, dependent for His support upon the same sources of strength we enjoy? It would seem so. Listen to His own confession:

I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing . . . By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear . . . Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me (John 5:19, 30; 6:57)

This seems to make it very plain that our Lord derived His daily strength from the same source as we may receive ours, by communion with God, by a life of dependence, faith and prayer, and by receiving and being ever filled with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Would we therefore walk even as He walked, let us receive the Holy Spirit as He did at His baptism. Let us constantly depend upon Him, be filled with His presence. Let us live a life of unceasing prayer.

Let us draw our strength each moment from Him as He did from the Father. Let our life for both soul and body be sustained by the inbreathing of His, so that it shall be true of us 'For in him we live and move and have our being' (Acts 17:28). This was the Master's life and this may be ours. What an inspiration it is for us to know that He humbled Himself to the same place of dependence to which we stand, and that He will exalt us through His grave to the same victories which He won."

Source: Albert B. Simpson, The Christ in the Bible Commentary, vol. 6, (Camp Hill: Christian Publications, 1994), 340-1.