… whoever says he abides in [Jesus] ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. – 1 John 2:6 ESV
There are passages like this all over Scripture. Sometimes they seem to grow a bit dull with the friction of repeated reads, or maybe a better way to express it is we’ve become dull to their wonder, fear and sharpness.
We should walk in the same way in which he walked? I’m thinking through the implications.
He walked in courage. Courage is often the first thing I think of when i think of Jesus in his incarnation. Boy was he brave. He had physical courage, social courage, intellectual courage, spiritual courage. He was fearless. Perfect love does that.
He walked in wisdom. Jesus was brilliant in his dealings with friends and especially with those at enmity with him. He astonished people. He drove those who wanted to take him down mad with his answers to their loaded questions. Their ordnance blew up in their faces.
He walked in passion. Jesus doesn’t come across in the gospels as needlessly emotional. But he wept over Jerusalem and grieved over his followers’ lack of faith and cried at the tomb of a good friend and sweat blood in the garden. He felt the extremes of human emotion: joy
, gladness, anger, sorrow, peace, agitation. All while being in full control.
He walked in gentleness, especially toward those who the rest of the world walked over. Both Rome and the Jewish religious leaders were a hobnailed sandal smashing a human face, forever. Jesus touched and healed and blessed the ones that were underneath this crushing weight of earthly power. He placed himself under all that weight and took the worst they could give him.
He walked in authenticity. Look at the commands of Jesus. Try to find one that he himself didn’t follow and fulfill. Jesus is the definition of walking the talk. That is incredibly rare.
He walked in faith. The faith of Jesus was in full operation at all times. He relied on the Father for everything and trusted the Father for everything and courageously did the works the Father put before him
, in faith.
He walked in hope. He went through more brutal temptation and more brutal physical and spiritual suffering than we could ever face or withstand, for hope in the joy that was set before him.
We walked in love. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” He was the expression of the Father’s love, of the one who is love itself. He loved us to and through the whips and the humiliation and the nails. He loved the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, and he loved his neighbor (us) as he loved himself. He chose the greatest path, the path of self-giving and self-emptying, of redeeming the irredeemable out of the muck of our homemade pit. Love.
He raised us from the dead and gave us new hearts and a new Spirit and made his home with us.
So that we might walk as he walked.