Stylos

“…so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar (stylos) and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).

An occasional commentary by Pastor Jeff Riddle, Jefferson Park Baptist Church

Being Like Jesus?

April 2001

“Doctrine does not matter. We just need to be like Jesus.” On the surface, this slogan has an appealing ring to it. Jesus taught us the way to live. He left us an example to follow. There is certainly a stream in the scripture that calls us to live our lives in conformity to the example of the life of Christ:

“Then he [Jesus] said to them all: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’” (Luke 9:23).

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).
“But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:15b).

“To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21).

These scriptures certainly seem to support the concept of shaping one’s ethical life (how we think and behave) to follow the example of the earthly Jesus of Nazareth. This has been a popular idea down through the years. In the late Middle Ages Thomas a Kempis wrote a devotional classic called “Of The Imitation of Christ” which reflects this theology. In 1896, Charles M. Sheldon, a Kansas pastor, wrote the popular devotional novel In His Steps, which chronicled the fictional account of what would happen if a whole community committed itself to act as Jesus would act. In more recent days, we have seen the ubiquitous Christian marketing of the “WWJD?” (“What Would Jesus Do?”) phrase on t-shirts, bracelets, and ball caps. It seems a widely agreed upon concept that Christians should try to be like Jesus.

Despite the common interpretation of the Biblical texts cited above and the wide popularity of “WWJD?” theology, a few cautions must be raised about a spirituality that stresses “being like Christ.”

First, in order to know how to be like Christ, we must hold a confessional (doctrinal) perspective on who Jesus Christ is. Doctrine, therefore, far from being unimportant in living out the Christian life, is at the very center. Before we can attempt to be “like Christ,” we must ask, “Who is Christ and what does he demand of me?” In theological terms this is called Christology (the study of Christ). The Mormon or the Jehovah’s Witness or the White Supremacist will have a very different Christology than the orthodox Christian. We find our source for developing our understanding of who Jesus is in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. Some Christologies are defective or deformed in that they ignore the Biblical witness of who Jesus is. When Paul wrote to Timothy he exhorted him: “Watch your life and doctrine closely” (1 Timothy 4:16a). Ethics is important (watch your life), but so is theology (doctrine). It is not enough, therefore, to say only, “Be like Christ.” There is always some presupposition in that statement as to who Jesus is.

Second, the “WWJD?” theology tends to falsely oversimplify the significance of the Incarnation (God becoming a human being) by making Jesus merely an exemplary human life. Often, the unspoken presupposition behind the “Just try to be like Christ” mentality is a profile of a “good” person who is kind, compassionate, patient, gentle, generous, considerate, etc. The earthly Jesus we read about in the Scriptures was certainly all these things, but he is also much more complex than this.

Let’s take a look at Jesus as presented in the Gospel of Matthew, for example. Being like Jesus might include, among other things:

Teaching that anyone who divorces his wife, except for unfaithfulness has made her an adulterer, and anyone who marries a divorced woman is an adulterer (5:31-32).
Calling his hearers a “brood of vipers” and warning them that they will “have to give an account on the day of judgement for every careless word they have spoken” (12:34, 36).
Teaching in the parable of the weeds that at the end of the age the Son of Man will cast evil doers “into the fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (13:42).
Telling a foreign woman who pleaded to have her daughter healed, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel … It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs” (15:24, 26).
Telling a parable of the Wedding Banquet about a king (God) who finds an uninvited guest and announces: “Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are invited, but few are chosen” (22:13-14).
Pronouncing seven woes on his opponents in chapter 23 including these harsh words of condemnation: “Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean” (v. 27); “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” (v. 35).

It seems quite obvious that if the actions and words of Jesus were given for us personally to emulate that we would soon find ourselves in a world of trouble. In fact, if we literally were “like Christ,” we would have a brief but turbulent public ministry that would end with our being deserted by our closest friends and supporters and facing public execution. Jesus, in the gospels, is much more complex than the “WWJD?” theology can recognize or allow.

More troubling than this, however, is the fact that a “be like Jesus” spirituality downplays the uniqueness of what God is doing in Jesus. Jesus in the Scriptures is much more than an ethical example; he is the eschatological in-breaking of the presence of God into human existence. We can never be like Jesus in this regard. Again, let us trace this in Matthew. Only Jesus was born of a Virgin (1:18, 22-23); came to fulfill the Old Testament scriptures (5:17); could calm a storm with his rebuke and walk on water (8:23-27; 14:22-33); could claim that the one who acknowledged him would be acknowledged by God, and the one who disowned him would be disowned by God (10:32-33); could be confessed as the Christ, the Son of the living God (16:16); was transfigured (17:1-13); has his death on the cross demonstrate that he is the Son of God (27:45-54); is raised from the dead and commissions the church to make disciples (28:1-20). Only Jesus could be like Jesus. The life of Jesus is presented in the Gospels less as a pattern for believers to follow and more as a unique presentation of how God has chosen to reveal himself in Jesus.

This is not to say that there are no ethical implications in the presentation of the life of Jesus, as the above cited verses bear witness. Christians are called on to grow in maturity in Christ, and this directly affects how one behaves, thinks and speaks.

It is interesting to note that the passages which call believers to follow the pattern of Jesus usually refer to the attitude one should take in times of conflict or, more particularly, in times of suffering, persecution, and hardship. So, from prison in Rome Paul urges the Philippians to take on the attitude of Christ who “made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (Phil 2:7). In fact, “he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (2:8). The famous “in his steps” passage of 1 Peter 2:21 comes in the context of Peter’s instructions to Christian slaves. The immediate context calls on slaves to submit to both kind and harsh masters and to see suffering as redemptive: “For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God” (1 Peter 2:19). Jesus’s demand that his followers take up their cross and follow in Luke 9:23 hints that many who follow will embrace death even as Jesus did.

The early Christian call to identify with the earthly Jesus is not a call to be a good person, to be kind or considerate, to care for the poor or to be non-judgmental. It is a call to die to oneself. The most clear “identify with Jesus” language in the New Testament comes in the passages about baptism: “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:3-4); “having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:12).

A naïve call to be “like Christ” does not take seriously the fallen state of humanity and the sheer power of God’s grace needed for us to live anything remotely resembling a holy life before him. Traditional theology speaks of the “depravity” of the human condition. We cannot be “like Christ.” Rather, Christ comes into us and his righteousness is imputed to us as our own. God “has saved us and called us to a holy life not because of anything that we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time” (2 Timothy 1:9). “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

In Survival Kit, Neighbor and Latham put it this way: “Trying to be like Jesus is simply an impossibility. Rather you must let Jesus Christ become reigning king of your life. You must give him the right to guide your thoughts and control your actions. When you do that, you settle once for all the fact that He came into your life to be your Lord, the One to whom you belong. Being a Christian is not just doing something. It is primarily containing Someone.”[1] Of course, once this process happens one’s ethical life does begin to radically change. We develop the fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). This is the process of sanctification, of being made holy by God, to serve his purposes (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

To conclude, a call to avoid doctrine and just “be like Jesus” may sound appealing, but it is a flawed concept. Right understanding of who Jesus is will necessarily shape how one understands what it means to be like Jesus. We must begin with orthodoxy (right belief) before moving to orthopraxy (right behavior). Once we have fixed on a Biblical Christology, we can then understand the teaching of Jesus, the demands he places on us, and the uniqueness of the Incarnation. Imitation of the attitudes of Jesus, having the “mind of Christ,” is then appropriate and necessary. I have wept at reading “Of The Imitation of Christ,” upon realizing how I have failed in Christ-likeness. I allow my daughter to keep a “WWJD?” key chain proudly attached to her book bag. “WWJD?” is not a bad spirituality, if it is preceded by “WDBS?” (“What Does the Bible Say?”) about who this Jesus is.

[1] Ralph W. Neighbor, Jr. and Bill Latham, Survival Kit: Five Keys to Effective Spiritual Growth (Nashville: Lifeway Press, Revised 1996) 53. Emphasis orginal.

Jeffrey T. Riddle
Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church

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Stylos

Being Like Jesus?

April 2001

Jeffrey T. Riddle Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church

Jeffrey T. Riddle
Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church