ACTING LIKE JESUS

The following is excerpted from an essay by Tom Letchworth, entitled "If All The World's a Stage." Early in his essay, Letchworth writes:

Jesus himself gave us direction in our role play: "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Matthew 16: 24). We are to step into his role. Paul says, "Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:1). More to the point, he says, "Be imitators of God as dear children" (Ephesians 5:1).

He later writes this:

If we study the life of Jesus, if we think and act like Jesus, if we contextualize that life in our own lives, we will begin to become the ‘Little Christs’ of which Luther spoke. Just one catch. I defy anyone to do this, under their own power.

I've tried. I've seen others try. Trying to live the life of Christ under your own power leads to futility, frustration and failure. Either we become involuted narcissists, constantly asking ourselves "how'm I doing, how'm I doing?" and growing less and less interested in others; or, we become legalistic Pharisees about the very acts and thoughts that should liberate us. Or, worse, we become both of the above-Narcissistic Pharisees.

No, the only way to live Christ's life is to allow Christ, through the Holy Spirit, to dwell in us. We begin, no matter where we are on the spiritual journey, with a repeated act of surrender that imitates Christ in Gethsemane: "Not my will, but Thine be done."

God doesn't wish to obliterate our personality. I've met too many diverse characters and eccentrics who joyfully follow Christ to believe that. What I believe he does want to do is to live his life through us and in us in such a way that the gifts and strengths of our own personality are transformed "by the renewing of our minds."

And, when we have immersed ourselves in the story of Jesus, learned to think and to act like Jesus, forgotten about ourselves; and when Jesus lives his life in and through us, then we will play the greatest role of our lives, and in the lives of others.

(This essay was originally recovered from

http://www.francisasburysociety.com/hcworldstage.htm,
but that link no longer seems to work.)

MIMICS MOVING IN THE SPIRIT

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly beloved children

and live a life of love,

Just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us …

Ephesians 5:1-2

You need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word …

… the mature … by constant use

have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Hebrews 5:12-14

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just

and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

… My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.

But

if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense

– Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

1 John 1:9-2:1

Life is made up of making one choice after another, “What will I do now?” Willing to do something comes before doing something. Humans have “free will” and can act according to what they freely choose to do. Since humans are created by God, in God’s image, we would be wise to act according to the will of our Creator. This is what it means to be imitators of God – continually choosing to act like people created in God’s image, always willing to do God’s will.

As we grow and mature, the choices we make form who we become. “Mimics” and “imitators” come from the same Greek word in the Bible. They both mean “to act just like someone else.” The important thing to remember is that human beings are created by God with free choice – they choose how to act. This means that acting like someone else requires making choices like that other person makes. God acted first in creating us to be good, then recreating us through the cross of Christ. All that God does is good. Acting like God means to do good by grace.

How then do we know God’s will? How do we know what is good? God shows us His will by giving us Himself in His Word, written in Scripture and revealed in Jesus Christ. We read in scripture that if we choose to follow Jesus, we are doing God’s will. Jesus showed us that being good means obeying God. Jesus is the Son of God who always obeyed God the Father. He did this by the power of the Holy Spirit. This same power is ours so that we too can become imitators of God.

SYMIMMESIS AS A WAY TO CLARIFY ENIGMATIC REFLECTIONS

1Co 13:12; 2Co 3; Ex 34:29-35; Nu 12:8

Living life is an irresolvable enigma without the love of God in Christ;
it is like trying to solve the riddle of what one may look like while finding only a poor reflection seen hazily through a darkened mirror. Consider the people of Israel, who feared to come near or gaze at Moses when he came down from the mountain to present to them the Word written by God on tablets of stone. Moses was not, at first, aware that his face radiated God’s glory whenever he entered the presence of the LORD and spoke with him face to face. For the sake of the people, Moses put a veil over his face until he went back into the Lord’s presence. Then, as fear dulled their faith, their hearts and minds became veiled as well. Likewise do people without the Spirit see God’s world dully and hear God’s word read with veiled hearts.

In life, without the Spirit, we can only look enigmatically through a mirror, as though faced with a riddle; however, the good news is that by the Spirit we can live life able to see clearly and be seen face to face. Only in Christ is the riddle resolved and the veil taken away; whenever we turn to the Lord we are unveiled so that our faces all reflect the Lord’s glory.

Thus is the ministry of the Spirit full of glory. Filled with the Spirit of Christ, we become living letters, clearly known and read by everybody, written with the Spirit of the living God, not with ink; written not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. God has made us competent in Christ as ministers of a new covenant – not of the letter but of the Spirit: for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. With ever-increasing glory we are being transformed into his likeness. The glory that shines through us comes from the Lord, who is Spirit.

As in water face answers to face,
so the heart of man to man.
Pr 27:19