Let's Start Asking, "What DID Jesus Do?"

…we have concluded this: that one died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
2Corinthians 5.14-15

“What would Jesus do?” it is a good, but enticingly subjective question. “Enticingly subjective” what does that mean? It is always tempting to subject things to our perspective, even our understanding of Jesus. Because of this many today know, and in their own way seek to follow, a Jesus of their experience and perception. It is the kind of thing that leads to statements like, “I am not sure of what the Bible says, but the Jesus I know would __________.” And the blank is filled in with a totally subjective, and usually self-serving, action that fits Jesus into our life in a way that suits us.

But Christian faith is not subjective at all. It is, to the contrary, totally objective because it is built on the objective truth of the Word of God revealed in the Bible. We have no business speculating “What would Jesus do if he were here living my life?” Jesus lived a perfectly good life of his own, truly the only perfectly good life, and he was not raised so that he could live our lives but rather that we, dying in Christ to self, might live for him. If we have died to self, we ourselves don’t live our own lives anymore, why then should we ask how Jesus would live a life that no longer exists? Friends, it is the life of Jesus that matters and not ours, end of story. To live is Christ! (Philippians 1.21)

The question that must be asked, then, is not “What would Jesus do?” but “What did Jesus do?” The answers to this most essential of all questions are not to be found in our experience, but in the Bible. And, when we have discovered what Jesus did, our only course is to do likewise.

Here is an example. What did Jesus do? Jesus shared. I don’t mean that the Lord gave his spare cloak to John when he was cold; I don’t recall ever reading that in the Bible. But I have read in Philippians 2.4-11 how Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not consider his divinity as something to be grasped, but made himself nothing. Now, Jesus did not become nothing, did he, he became one of us. You see, the first great Christian mission, the one that set the pattern for all Christian mission that has followed, was Christ’s mission that led him to come down from heaven and share our humanity with us. Jesus became one of us, alike in every way with you and me, save for the fact that he was sinless while we are all sinners. His sharing the life of sinners was the one way that sinners like you and me could be redeemed,

For our sake he (God) made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Mission isn’t mission, and it certainly cannot achieve its objective, if the missionary does not share the life of those he or she has come to serve. Take the family from North Carolina that answered God’s call to go to Senegal. They learned the language of the Senegalese. They adopted the dress of the Senegalese. They live in a home like that of their Senegalese neighbors. They participate in the life of the Senegalese community in which they live. The only thing Senegalese they do not embrace is the Muslim faith. But this is also quite consistent with what Jesus did.

For Christ did not come and live according to the faith of the Pharisees and priests. Rather the Lord shared his faith in the Father with everyone he met, faith based in his intimate personal relationship with, and love of, God. And the thing that drew people to embrace the faith of Jesus was that fact that he first shared in their lives. So it was that the Lord could regularly be found dining in the company of sinners.

Do you want to be obedient to Christ, then stop speculating on what he would do if he were you, and start doing what he did. A great place to begin is by sharing in the lives of others, entering in to their situation and circumstances, not condescendingly, but genuinely. That’s what Jesus did.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
Psalm 37.4