When you read about the life of Jesus, it seems so common, so monotonous, banal even and it is easy to miss what he was showing us. This week I spent a few times in the book of John, the miracles Jesus did and how he spoke were so simple and plain yet commanded so much power that the results were always mind-blowing. One such incident is the time when Jesus fed the five thousand on the mountain with simply five loaves of bread and two fishes (John 6:1-12). This miracle is actually the only miracle aside from the resurrection that is recorded in all four gospels! This speaks volume to it. Exactly how did the five breads become enough for five thousand people knowing that Jesus simply took the bread, gave thanks and distributed the food to the people (John 6:11)? It is also hard to miss the communion aspect in what Jesus did, but I digress. Such acts are what make us realise that Jesus was not just a mere man. Indeed, he was fully man and fully God. At the very least, Jesus knew perfectly what needed to be done to fix a humanly impossible problem. If you are like me, you may find your own efforts frustrating when trying to imitate Jesus because you see that your results (if any) do not resemble his. If that is you, hang on, this post is for you.
The first thing to realise with Jesus is that he did not do anything of his own accord (John 5:19). This is a simple statement, but it does hold a lot of weight. Unlike us, Jesus submitted to authority and only did as he was told. His authority was the Father. Jesus only did what he saw the Father do. He only did what the Father approved of. Jesus’s relationship with the Father was one of unity, it was oneness. There was no separation of goal or personal vendetta, no, they were of one accord. The book of John expresses that very beautifully. Father-Son always working hand in hand with the Spirit bearing witness to son. This to me is one primordial reason why Jesus was able to say words that you and I would say but not get the same results. When we imitate Jesus, we often imitate him because we want to see something working in our lives, maybe we want to pay our taxes so we think catching a fish from the water will give us the money we need to pay them (this was far-fetched but Jesus did that for Peter in Matthew 17:27); or maybe we want to be healed and so we speak in the name of Jesus thinking that this will be the word that will heal us. Sadly, instead of submitting to the Father, we are imitating Jesus in order to receive something from him. The reality is that we are using Jesus as our vending machine and no wonder nothing ever works that way. When Jesus was submitting to the Father, he was not trying to come to the Father with his personal requests, in fact, the closest we have seen of a personal request from Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane where he said “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me…” and we know he relinquished his own will by continuing his prayer with the following “…Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39). We on the other hand are people of “quick fixes” who want everything now. Many of us do not realise that Jesus did not start like this. He spent years and years in his Father’s house as we see glimpses of it from the time his mother Mary and father Joseph were looking for him and found him in the temple days later and questioning Jesus, he answered: “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49). His relationship with the Father was simply one that was not just physical, it was spiritual as well. Jesus was known to the Father and vice-versa. The same way the Father tells Jeremiah that He knew Jeremiah before he was conceived in his mother’s womb is the same type of knowledge that we see here at work between God the Son and God the Father. When you have this type of alignment with the heart of God, it is impossible to come to God just for personal interests and it is impossible to do what He commands and not see results. My point is, our imitation of Jesus does not work because we are not submitting to the Father as Jesus was and we are not even submitting to Jesus, instead, we are coming to him to simply take and that is just not how it works.
The second reason I believe we fail in our imitation of Jesus is in our lack of submission to the Holy Spirit. Just as Jesus was aligned with his Father, so was he aligned with the Holy Spirit. This is the third of person of the trinity that Jesus promised to us and said it was better for him to leave this earth so that we could receive the Counsellor (John 16:7). What could be better than having Jesus in the flesh on this earth you ask, well, the Holy Spirit! While on earth and being human, Jesus was limited by space and time just like us, he could only be at one place in one time but the Counsellor, could be everywhere at the same time. I personally think this is one of the reasons Jesus said it would be better for him to leave so we could receive the Counsellor. What is the Counsellor’s job? John tells us that it is to convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgement; it is to guide us into all truth as the Spirit of Truth; it is to bring glory to Jesus (John 16:8-14). Just as Jesus, the Counsellor/Holy Spirit/Spirit of Truth will not speak on his own, he will speak only what he hears (John 16:13). Do you see the harmony and the alignment in these three persons? God is one. This, I believe is what it looks like for us to be in harmony with God. To imitate Jesus is not simply to do what Jesus did, but to ensure you are submitting to the Father and the Spirit as you do what Jesus did. That means, seeking the Father’s will in all your endeavors; it means asking first before jumping into conclusions; it means waiting on the LORD; it means asking for clarification, for wisdom, for understanding; it means recognizing that you cannot do anything on your own, that you need the Father, Son and Spirit to do anything.
This whole lecture of Jesus’s works was very humbling this week. It sorts of reminded me that it is not in the sacrifices I make to the body to kill it, it is not in the many prayers I lift up to heaven, it is not even in the acts of service or kindness to the most vulnerable I do that guarantees that my imitation of Jesus is potent. None of that play a role, what is important is the submission to the Father, going where the Spirit leads as John told Nicodemus, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So, it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8), in other words, the man born of the Spirit is controlled by the Spirit, he has relinquished that power to the Spirit. This is what we must arrive at because our lives are not our own anymore. Doing things for the LORD is great but they have to be done in His own terms. So, before you jump at imitating Christ, first submit yourself to him and his teaching and be constantly checking your heart against the word. This is not something you do once and off you go, it is a daily practice. I pray the LORD increase our understanding of humility only then shall we see potent results as we obey the Spirit. Amen.
A Word Aptly Spoken 