For quite a number of years, the idea behind the famous phrase "What Would Jesus Do?" has bothered me. I know it can seem quarrelsome to raise doubts about a beloved religious slogan that has gained such wide acceptance among Christians of all denominations, but allow me to explain...
The essence of the Christian life is not about living for Jesus. That's right. You read that correctly. The essence of the Christian life is about experiencing an exchanged life with Jesus. Because of the cross and resurrection, Jesus finished His mission to both fulfill the Law on your behalf AND provide the only payment worthy to absolve you from all the guilt of your sin. When we trust Christ as the Savior of our lives, our sin nature is exchanged for His new, righteous nature.
The Apostle Paul wrote emphatically, "I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). This reality is a world apart from the common models for "Christian growth" that we find in many churches today.
Growing as a follower of Jesus (also called Discipleship) is often centered upon that popular question: "What Would Jesus Do?" We are told - in one way or another - that in any given situation we have choices to make. While this is not entirely false, the emphasis is upon asking ourselves what we envision Jesus would do in a similar situation and then attempting to "mimic" that behavior or "measure up" to that standard. Once we've concocted a visualization of what we think Jesus would do in the situation, we are then told to try our best to copy Him. "Die to yourself", we are often told. "Take up your cross", we are frequently reminded. But is this really how we are supposed to become "more like Jesus"? The New Testament proposes another way.
Every explicit or implicit Biblical statement about the need to "die to yourself" came prior to Jesus' finished work on the cross. As Jesus made these kinds of statements, He was pointing out the high cost involved in being the kind of person God's holiness demands - pure, righteous and perfect. Ministering under the Old Covenant, Jesus was routinely seeking to point His audience toward the New. He would often elevate God's standards to a level even higher than they were commonly understood. For example, in his famous Sermon on the Mount He pointed out that to be lustful was to be guilty of adultery and to be angry is to be guilty of murder. These statements (and dozens of others) were designed to drive His audience in desperation to faith in the cross He was about to endure, for He said clearly that "Unless you righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, you cannot enter the Kingdom..."
Knowing that we could never perfectly attain to these standards, Jesus wanted us to understand that there was only ONE Person in the universe who could actually live the Christian life - and that Person was Him. He fulfilled every requirement of God's Law by living on our behalf the perfect life we couldn't live because of our sin nature. Often in our admirable efforts to emphasize that Christ died in our place, we forget to place equal emphasis on the fact that unless He had first LIVED in our place - His dying would have been meaningless. When we place our faith in Christ and His finished work, He exchanges His perfection for our sin nature. We are counted as being crucified with Him AND resurrected into new life with Him.
When we ask ourselves "What Would Jesus Do?" as a motivation for successfully navigating the moral dilemmas of our daily lives, we completely miss the point. The REAL question is "What WILL Jesus Do" through me in any given situation? This subtle but significant shift in thinking makes all the difference in the world. My old life has been exchanged with Christ's new life in me. Accepting that I have been crucified with Him is an ongoing act of faith. I still have a "flesh" - a part of me that has been conditioned to handle life's challenges independently from God. But my spirit has been made completely new and is fully surrendered to the things of God.
The battle lies in the realm of the soul (mind, will and emotions). When, for example, I am tempted to sin - my spirit desires obedience to God while my flesh desires to satisfy that sinful craving. The solution, then is not to ask "What would Jesus do?" and then try to white-knuckle my way through the battle. The solution is to allow my mind to be transformed by the reality that when I "walk by the Spirit, I will not gratify the desires of the flesh." Paul never told us to "die to sin." That was a pre-cross message. New Covenant believers are told to "reckon yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6).
To "reckon" means to "consider" or to "accept as fact" (by faith) that something is true. I hear many pastors and leaders lamenting the fact that so many within the church continue to live their lives no differently than the world. They say that the problem is that people are not "submitted enough" to Christ's Lordship - or that people are not being taught to "die to self." Yet, those realities - in my opinion - are merely symptomatic (not causal) of the real problem. The real problem is that we've been operating from the wrong perspective.
Maturity is a fruit of security - not vice-versa. Most discipleship models contend that if you live obediently to God, He will bless your life, you'll feel closer to Him, etc. This is totally antithetical to the core of the New Testament Epistles. It is only as we become increasingly secure in the unconditional grace and blessing of God toward us in Christ (Ephesians 1-3) that real maturity can gradually emerge (Ephesians 4-6). People will rip passages like James 2:14-26 completely out of context in order to manipulate Christians into becoming so morbidly concerned with how much "fruit" they are producing that they begin to question the legitimacy of their faith and their security in Christ. Whenever the focus is placed upon our conditional performance rather than on the unconditional promises of Christ and the Gospel - we are in for a neurotic journey of legalism and frustration.
Jesus said, "Come to me, all you who are wary and heavy-burdened - and I will give you rest for your souls." This does not seem to be the experience of many Christians I know. Like the Pharisees of old, many teachers are putting burdens on people's backs that Jesus has already born for us as He lived and died in our place. The pressure to perform is now OFF.
We should not be asking "What Would Jesus Do?" Instead, we can wake up every morning with a much more exciting question: "What WILL Jesus do through me today?" Christianity is not about YOU trying your best to live for Jesus. It's about Jesus living His supernatural life through you! When this becomes the restful obsession of one's life - obedience becomes a by-product of resting in His irreversibly finished work on our behalf! That's what it means, essentially, to live the Christian life: Christ in you, the hope of glory! I challenge you to stop trying to live for Him and begin resting in Him instead. Only then can you allow Him to live the Christian life through you!
