Because of Existence

What causes you to live? I don't mean your purpose as in "what do you live for?" I mean what is your source of life? There is "because of" existence and then there is existence. One is contingent and the other is necessary. Man is a contingent being. God is necessary. God has no source of life. He is the source of life. A creek exists because of a river. You could dam up the creek, and it would not dry up the river. But this gets really deep when it comes to Jesus and the Father. Jesus says, "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me." (John 6:57) Maybe I am looking a little too hard into this, but this strikes me as extremely profound and thought-provoking. Jesus is God, right? (John 1:1ff) As God, He has always existed and His existence does not depend on anyone or anything, right? He is a necessary being, eternal God, without beginning or end, right? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternal "individually" and corporately, right? (Do we even know what this begins to mean?) So how could Son-God live because of Father-God if they are both God?

Did Jesus divest Himself of Deity when He became man? Phil.2:5ff says, "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who although He existed (huparcho) in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross." Jesus most certainly did give up something to come here. But, to what extent did he give up aspects of His divine nature? Omnipresence? He did walk or ride or sail wherever He went. Omnipotence? He does attribute His power to heal and exorcise and create to the Father and the Holy Spirit. Omniscience? He didn't know the day nor hour of His own return. This is too grand for man to understand. But, did He divest Himself of "life" too? Did He step out of heaven, arrive here on earth as a totally dependent infant with no means of sustaining His own life other than "because of" His Father? Did He willingly walk down into the valley of death and the grave totally divesting Himself of life, and totally dependent on His Father for resurrection life? "Moreover my flesh also will abide in hope; because Thou wilt not abandon my soul (psuche) to Hades, nor allow Thou Holy One to undergo decay. Thou has made known to Him the ways of life (Zoe); Thou wilt make me full of gladness with Thy presence." (Acts 2:26-28)

When Jesus was in that grave for three days and nights His existence was absolutely and totally in the hands of His Father. In some sense the existence of the Godhead was at stake. The two parts of man, flesh (soma) and soul (psuche) that Jesus took on Himself as a man were raised with His spirit to show that all of man, body, soul and spirit can and will be raised intact, as a unit, as an integrated being, and transformed into an eternal being "because of" the source of all life, the Father. So what of us? In the same way, with the same attitude as Christ, we too when we eat Jesus, live "because of" and only "because of" his sustaining power providing us with eternal existence and life. Praise God that our lives do not hang by a thread, but by the will of a loving, heavenly Father who want us to be with Him!