No study on defining moments would be complete without contemplating the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. It could be said of Him that His was a life of such consistent perfection that there were no outstanding defining moments. He never ceased to be for one moment what He had ever been. On the other hand, it could be argued that every moment of time in which He dwelt completely defined Him in all of His fullness. His Father gave this verdict from heaven, that every delight of His heart was centered in His only Son.
Christ lived a life which was uncompromised by any loss of focus. When the time came for Him to be tempted of Satan, you will note that Satan never bothered to put immorality and wickedness before Him. Satan sought to use those things which could arguably be directly connected to furthering Christ’s ultimate purpose here on earth. Satan understood that there was no distraction which would turn the Savior from His path. Satan only attempted to flaw the way in which He would accomplish His purpose, and Christ displayed that any attempts to flaw the perfect service of the infallible Servant were utterly in vain.
His birth, as miraculous and significant as it was in light of prophecy, only defined that He had always been the Coming One. His miracles, in all of their magnificence and all of their implication, were but glimmers of what power and holiness resided essentially in Him. They were concentrated forms of what is all around His entire creation. His death on the cross, in all of its contrast, was only a definitive outshining of the perfect, eternal dedication of His heart. His resurrection, in all of its glory, was a sterling endorsement not only of His sacrificial death, but also of all of the pleasure God found in everything He ever did and ever was.
Every servant of God, except the Lord Jesus, has had his service diluted by moments and experiences where he failed in what he should have been. These failures have shaped and molded God’s people, and hopefully have improved the quality of our service for Him. The Savior needed no such process of purification, and knew no such compromise. In all of His ways He brought perfect pleasure to the Father.
We sometimes sing, “And is it so, we shall be like Thy Son?” We cannot understand with sin-dimmed perception what this implies. We do have an opportunity, while here, to lift Him before the Father, and to be occupied with Him; to make His commission our occupation, and to be defined by what we are in Him. May God help us in our lives to do these things, and to learn much greater likeness to Him, the perfect Servant.
