Jesus Our Example

03 Jan

Jesus Our Example

The New Year is a good time to reflect on what God has accomplished in our lives in the past year. My focus has been on the people God has sent into my life in 2019 to not only encourage and pray for me, but also to challenge me to become more like Him. During our move in January we enjoyed the help and answers to prayer of many people, both family members and friends from church, without whom we would not have had such a seamless transition. From March through July many people prayed for us and helped us with a variety of needs, including medical staff who effectively came alongside as we negotiated Dan’s neck surgery and recovery. Throughout the year we have been blessed by the presence and help of others, but God has also given us opportunity to pass the blessing on to others in prayer and encouragement as well.

God chooses to work through people to do His will and to draw others to Himself. Scripture is full of people whom God involved in His work. Hebrews 11 is replete with the names of Old Testament men and women who, by faith, were enabled by God’s Holy Spirit and acted on God’s direction, including: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Joseph, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephtha, David, Samuel, the prophets, and many more who served God and suffered for their faith.

Immediately following this list, we are exhorted to take their example with us in our own walk with God: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily besets us. And let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith who, for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

We are not left without instruction or example to carry out what God desires of and in us. In his book, Experiencing God (Nashville: Broadman and Holman. 1994, 68-69), Henry Blackaby points out that Jesus is the model for us in knowing and doing the will of God. His example is described in the following sequence:

“The Father has been working right up until now. Now the Father has Me working, too. I do nothing on My initiative. I watch to see what the Father is doing. I do what I see the Father already is doing. You see the Father loves Me. He shows Me everything that He, Himself, is doing” (Blackaby, 68).

What I find surprising whenever I read about Jesus’ ministry on earth, is His total submission to the Father. The doctrine He taught and all that He did and said came from God the Father, as He declared in numerous passages, including John 7:16, John 8:28, John 10:37-38, John 12:49, John 14:10, and John 17:8. It makes sense, then, that just as Jesus demonstrated His love for the Father by His obedience (“that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do,” John 14:31), so too, our love for God is also demonstrated by our obedience: “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15). Since the commandments came from God the Father, we honor Him and show our love for Him by obedience to the Word given us by Jesus Christ because it is one and the same as the Word from the Father.