Scripture tells us to imitate Christ—or to imitate those who imitate Christ (1 Cor 11:1). But it goes deeper than that. Jesus’s life stands as the exemplar for our moral behaviour (1 Peter 2:21–25). Even the word godly can mean, for example, to be holy as God is holy (1 Pet 1:16). In other words, following Christ’s footsteps and living according to God’s standard amount to a similar thing.
But here all of us intuit a basic problem. God calls us to be holy as he is holy—godly, but we are not God nor can we be. He is infinite; we are finite. So we imitate God analogically—we imitate God in ways appropriate to being a human being. God reigns over the universe, and I reign over my table at work. I imitate God in this scenario analogically.
When it comes to Jesus, do we have to apply the same kind of analogical reasoning? Should we, in every case, do what Jesus would? Can we?
Here, I want to argue for a particular way of saying yes to this question that prevents us from making unintentional Christological and ethical errors concerning Jesus’s genuine divinity and his ability to perfectly order his emotions like anger in ways that do not correspond to our fallen, disordered emotional life.
How Jesus unites humanity and divinity in his person
The Word became flesh (John 1:14), and so we should follow Jesus since he is a genuine human. He is. He is also genuinely divine. God and man unite personally in Jesus. By his incorruptible or unfallen life, then, Jesus overcame death. Without the Spirit and Jesus’s redemption of humanity, we simply could not live righteously or rise from the dead.
Both of Christ’s natures communicate in and through and by the person of Christ. For this reason, the one Christ accomplishes acts according to his divinity and according to his humanity.
Some works, however, seem proper to each nature. According to his humanity, Jesus can die (Heb 2:14). According to his divinity, Christ is divine who “alone has immortality” (1 Tim 6:16). As an old saying goes, remaining what he was (divine), he became what he was not (mortal, human). That is the basic syntax of the Incarnation—of Christ’s taking flesh.
Given that this is so, it stands to reason that certain acts of Christ occur according to his divinity in and through and by the person of Christ. And that might mean what Jesus did applies to us in ways appropriate to our fallen nature (that is, before the resurrection of our body).
How Jesus accomplished his work as Mediator
By the power of an indestructible life (Heb 7:16), Jesus perfected humanity as an unfallen human. Yet he also accomplished works particular to the role of the Mediator between God and man as the union of God and man in his Person.
For example, he turned over tables in the temple because he came to clear his Father’s house in order to reform the temple in his own body (John 2:13–22). He also knows what is in the hearts of others (John 2:25) as God does (1 Sam 16:7). We do not—we cannot even reliably follow our own hearts much less understand them (Jer 17:9; 1 Cor 4:4–5). Further, since the Son of the Father cleaned out his familial dwelling (the temple), we certainly do not repeat that event.
And even if we did, there is no certainty our righteous anger would be just since “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).
We should not then imitate Jesus’s historically-redemptive specific mission as the divine Son to renovate the temple exactly as he does nor should we be quick to anger as he could be since he was (and is) unfallen whereas we are fallen creatures and “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).
Jesus can also name the exact sin and condemn certain pharisees because he knows the hearts of men. His strong words can reliably pinpoint the sin of others since “he himself knew what was in man” (John 2:25). We cannot know what is in others’ hearts. We cannot judge the heart as God can: “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam 16:7).
How do we imitate Jesus then?
For us then, we should remain wise as serpents and innocent as doves (Matt 10:16) while following a pattern of life that accounts for our genuine and fallen humanity. Hence, we love such that “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:7).
We need to take account of our fallen humanity and limits. Jesus performed particular acts proper to his mission as Mediator in whom all of God’s promises are yes and amen (2 Cor 1:20). While we have the Holy Spirit of Jesus, we remain fallen humans and not the union of divinity and humanity as Christ is in his singular, incarnation.
When we imitate Jesus, we do not know the hearts of all men nor does our anger match his perfectly righteous anger. That provides certain limits on the manner of our imitation. Jesus can say to the woman at the well “you have had five husbands” (John 4:18) while we (apart from a special gift of knowledge) cannot know how many husbands a woman has had without asking her. Jesus can righteously use anger 100% of the time, whereas we rarely can. We must be “slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:19–20).
How do we live the Christian life today?
A lot more could be said, and I have already used much theological jargon and many distinctions. But here I would like to make a simple plea. The Bible calls us to a quiet, kind, and gentle life. These are normative patterns of behaviour while the harsh words of Jesus and Paul provide exceptions to this general rule (and so permissible at times).
Here is what characterizes a Christian clearly in Scripture. We are:
to be submissive to rulers and authorities,
to be obedient,
to be ready for every good work,
to speak evil of no one,
to avoid quarreling,
to be gentle, and
to show perfect courtesy toward all people. (Titus 3:1–2)
The contrast is our past life when we were “slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). Note the word passion, which Scripture constantly tells us to repudiate.
Passions work with our flesh to make us angry and hateful. They should be mortified.
And we are called (again):
to be submissive to rulers and authorities,
to be obedient,
to be ready for every good work,
to speak evil of no one,
to avoid quarreling,
to be gentle, and
to show perfect courtesy toward all people. (Titus 3:1–2)
That is the normative life of a Christian. So let us imitate Christ the gentle and lowly one (Matt 11:29). Let’s imitate him while taking into account our fallen nature. And let’s not confuse the theology of glory (power, strength, passion) with the theology of the cross (weakness, meekness, and suffering).
That may very well be our primary confusion today—we have once again confused the theology of glory with the glory of the cross. May we reverse our course for the sake of the Gospel.
