The Saving Life of Christ
by Ian Thomas
(Zondervan: 1961, 143pp)
4 stars—highly recommended!
I happened upon this unassuming looking little book recently, yellowed with age but packed with timeless spiritual wisdom for any generation—at least as pertinent now as when it was written.
Mr. Thomas is passionate that Christians discover the empowerment for life and ministry that God intended in sending Jesus not only to die for them but to live in them. He is concerned with evangelistic efforts that produce converts oblivious to the source of their new life. His words are challenging:
“Ignoring what they say, and what they sing, and what they pray, countless Christians live as though God were dead—and the Church of Jesus Christ needs above everything else to re-discover the fact God is alive, and to act as though He were!The author’s own experience as a young believer was one of fiery zeal to do things for God but lacking in any real ‘fruit’. Only when he had burned out did he come to understand that Christ intends to live His life through the believer in a very literal sense—“Christ [who is] your life…”(Col.3:4). His ministry was transformed. Jesus Himself said, “Without me you can do nothing.” (Jn.15:5) and with his wry sense of humor Thomas amplifies: “How much can you do without Him? Nothing! So what is everything you do without Him? Nothing! It is amazing how busy you can be doing nothing!” (142)
“Suppose that God were to die tonight! Would it really make any difference to the way you live your Christian life tomorrow? For all you really count upon Him as you go about your daily business…”(124)
What I found most fascinating about this book is Thomas’ ability to illustrate New Testament truths with Old Testament types and stories. For instance, using the Bible as its own commentary he traces the use of salt to heal a barren land (a type of the carnal Christian) (II Kings 2), to make meat offerings acceptable to God (Ezek.43:24), to be provided without limit for the service of the temple (Ezra 7) and to represent the believer’s impact on the world as he is filled with the true Salt— “the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus imparted to the true believer by the presence of the Holy Spirit.”(29)
The stories of the Israelites’ wilderness wanderings and conquests in Canaan are replete with lessons for the believer. Thomas sees the ‘carnal Christian’ as one who has been saved from ‘Egypt’ but has failed to be filled with the Holy Spirit and enjoy the fruits of life in Canaan. He suggests that the MANNA represents the work of the Holy Spirit. It has the ‘taste of fresh oil’ (Num.11:8) typifying the Spirit’s witness to the believer that he is God’s child, and the taste of honey (Ex.16:31), a picture of the Spirit whetting the believer’s appetite for what’s to come— ‘the land flowing with milk and honey’, as typifying the fullness of the Spirit every believer is called to enjoy.
Three excellent chapters discuss the enemy nation, Amalek, as a type of the sin nature in the believer and why it’s important to “Remember Amalek”. A practical discussion is included of what it means to “walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh” (Gal.5:16) It is NOT a matter of trying not to ‘fulfill the lusts of the flesh’ so that I am rewarded by a walk in the Spirit. For this will keep me quite preoccupied with myself instead of with Christ. “There is nothing quite so nauseating or pathetic as the flesh trying to be holy!” This is self-righteousness and full of self-praise or self-pity, but either way preoccupied with the energy of the flesh, not the Spirit. Thomas suggests instead that to ‘walk in the Spirit’ is to maintain ‘an attitude of total dependence on God, exposing everything to Him’, and that as a consequence you will not fulfill the ‘lusts of the flesh—for you will be enjoying through Him the victory that Christ has already won.’ To walk in the Spirit is the means to enjoy the Saving Life of Christ! (82)
This is not a long or difficult book to read but it is a book that you will want to read in increments (with a pencil in hand if you’re like me!) to fully appreciate and apply what is taught about the saving life of Christ. “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” –(Romans 5:10)
[I’m happy to see it’s been reprinted with a more eye-catching cover and is available from Amazon.com where you will also find some inspiring testimonies of those who have read it.]
Major Ian Thomas is the founder of Capernwray Missionary Fellowship of Torchbearers (CMFT), more recently known as Torchbearers International, an evangelical Christian educational organization with Bible schools throughout the world.
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Quotes not to be missed:
“Relate everything, moment by moment as it arises, to the adequacy of what He is in you, and assume that His adequacy will be operative.” (16)
“Pray without ceasing”(I Thess. 5:17)… here the word to pray does not mean to beg or to plead as if God were unwilling to give—but simply to expose by faith every situation as it arises, to the all-sufficiency of the One who indwells you by His life.” (16)
“…if you do not walk in the power of God the Holy Spirit, if your life is not abandoned to the indwelling sovereignty of Jesus Christ, then all the promises of victory in the Bible, all the promises of power by the Holy Spirit and of divine vocation will simply be texts, printed on so much paper, impersonal and irrelevant! Your mind will be filled only with memories of that which has been true to your experience in the bitterness of defeat.” (51)
“The challenge we hear so often today in the name of consecration is ‘Do more! Give more! Be more! Go! Go! Go!’ But God says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God’! In other words, quit the panic! Just let God be God!”(59)
“It is comparatively easy to be sorry for what you have done and to recognize the sinfulness of sins committed, but we are by nature loathe to concede the natural depravity of what we are and the total spiritual bankruptcy of man without God. We fall again and again into the error of estimating ourselves without due regard to the ultimate origin of righteousness and the ultimate origin of sinfulness.” (99)
“…we have become accustomed to the elaborate machinery of the church, as an organizational enterprise in which carnal activity on the part of Christians is not only tolerated, but solicited—often in sublime sincerity…”(101)
“When you come to know Jesus Christ in the power of His resurrection, you receive absolutely nothing new from God; you simply discover and begin to enjoy experientially what you received from God the day that you were redeemed; the tragedy is that you can live for ten, twenty, or fifty years or more, having all that God can give you in Jesus Christ, and yet living in self-imposed poverty…”(116)
“…every spiritual awakening and every mighty movement of God has been the consequence of a return to the basic teachings of the Bible, and inevitably, in reverse, such a genuine spiritual awakening has always produced Bible-believing Christians.” (120)
“Spirituality in man is his availability to God for his divine action, and the form of this activity is irrelevant. if it pleases you, always and only, to do what pleases God—you can do as you please!” (134)
“That is the why and the how of all spiritual activity, and this is all you need to know.
Why? God told me to.
How? The God who told me to is with me.” (120)
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