"WWJD" - What Would Jesus Do?

“WWJD” has widely become the automobile bumper sticker slogan of Christians in the USA. Many sincere and well-meaning Christians have taken up the slogan as their faith motto. Youth groups have been formed around these four words. But with all their good intentions, are they missing something in this message? Is this message, however good it seems, in actuality holding them back from the full realization of the full Christian plan of God?
The church I attend is now in the midst of the 40 days of purpose study in the book, “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren. The third of the five purposes outlined in the book is that “you were created to become like Christ.” I am glad that Rick Warren did not say to imitate Christ, that is, WWJD. But I suspect that many Christians do look on “becoming like Christ” as the same as “imitating Christ” which bases the “doing” on the things Jesus of Nazareth did in the Gospels. This frankly is a worldly, outer understanding of Jesus Christ, who now is resurrected as the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17) who is living in every born-again believer (Col. 1:26-27; 3:3).
Consider one of the obvious problems for the imitators of Jesus. As the living expression and personality of God Himself (John 14:9), Jesus of Nazareth dealt with similar situations differently at different times. First, see the question of the rich young ruler who came to Jesus asking what he should do to have eternal life. Jesus told him to keep the commandments and then proceeded to list several of the commandments. Then Jesus said, “If you will be perfect, go and sell what you have, and give it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven, and then come and follow Me.” (Matt. 19:21). On the other hand, Jesus also instructed that you need only believe to gain eternal life: “…that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16). So which of Jesus’ statements is the one to follow? In other words, WWJD?
As another example, remember when Jesus became angry and violent as He threw the money-changers out of the temple (Matt. 21:12-13). This was His drastic timely solution to the sin of others at a specific time and place. But then, in the sermon on the mount, He taught that we should love our enemies. Turn the other cheek in a non-violent response to violence (Matt. 5:38-39). I’m sure that the money-changers resisted violently to Jesus’ actions. So which of Jesus’ actions is the one to follow? In other words, WWJD?
When Rick Warren states that we are to grow in Christ-likeness, many Christians look at themselves and say, “Who, me? I’m just a weak slug of a human being who can’t even chew gum and walk at the same time! I’m supposed to be able to imitate Jesus Christ, the all-powerful Son of God? Who are you kidding? It sounds good on paper, but impossible in practice!”
Anyone who says this doesn’t understand the salvation process. Let’s begin at the beginning.
1 Thessalonians 5:23 describes the basic composition of a human being – three parts: spirit, soul and body. I like to say that I AM a spirit, I HAVE a soul, and I LIVE IN a body. My human spirit and whatever spiritual nature it contains is who I AM. My soul (mind, emotions and will) is how God has uniquely wired me to make choices – my individual personality characteristics. And my body is my material contact to the world so that I can ultimately be used by God for others.
The “soul” has often been misinterpreted as who we are. We have so often heard the term “immortal soul” but those words nowhere appear in the Bible. In the first chapter of Genesis, the Hebrew word nephesh which is translated “soul” throughout the Old Testament is used four times for lower life forms in the creation before it is ever used in conjunction with man. Animals have soul (brains, emotions and will – completely under the purpose of God through instinct), and body but not spirit. Human beings have the additional human spirit from the spirit realm of God.
What does this have to do with the ability to become like Christ? It has everything to do with it!
We come into this world from our mother with a human spirit nature of Satan. We inherit it from our first parents, Adam and Eve. Am I too harsh? Was Jesus too harsh when He told unbelievers “You are OF your father, the devil, and his lusts you WILL do!” (John 8:44)? Look at that cute little baby freshly born into the world. What is the first thing he thinks about himself after he discovers he no longer receives his food and air through an umbilical cord? “Man, I’m independent, and I better get some air and food!” He mimics Satan’s original attempt at independence. When the baby recognizes that he can’t get his own food, he becomes frustrated and cries. As he grows and discovers that crying usually gets him what he wants, he applies this method toward his frustrated independence. With the power of speech, he discovers that lying aids his independence and he uses it to get what he wants or in attempting to save his independent ways. On and on it goes, this independence thing, because that is the inborn nature of the human spirit.
So where are we? We have an unbeliever separated from God with an independent human nature and that is WHAT HE IS. He has a personality soul which is being internally influenced in his uniquely wired way toward independence – most of the time. But he is being influenced externally by God to see God’s way of dependence on Him. And he occasionally does, at times, succumb to this upward temptation and start giving instead of getting. But with that basic nature of independence so strongly in control, he reverts back to his true nature of self-centeredness.
How does this condition ever change? God deals with this unbeliever through trials and circumstances to bring him to the understanding that he’s not as independent as he thinks he is, and needs a Savior. He discovers Jesus Christ and, without much knowledge of the process at all, makes Him the Lord of his life.
There is an instant event which occurs whereby the new believer is “born again” – that is, the independent nature of Satan in the human spirit is instantly removed and replaced by the nature of God through Christ coming to join His Spirit to that human spirit of the new believer. Do you get it? When YOU were born again, WHO YOU ARE CHANGED! You now have the nature of God through the indwelling Jesus Christ.
But do you know what DIDN’T happen at this new birth? Your soul and your body were not changed at all except for a slight softening in attitude of your soul. All the aberrations of leftover independent thinking remain in your mind and personality.
Ah ha! Now we’re getting to “becoming like Christ.” Our daily Christian life is a daily transformation into the understanding and awareness of WHO WE ARE in the nature of our human spirit (which is eternally joined with the Spirit of Christ in a living union).
God’s purpose of growth in His children is the gradual transformation of the soul by the gradual elimination of the remnants, the skeletons in the closets of the soul. This is all done by definite choices made by the soul personality. The soul is the chooser which is now internally influenced and motivated to “act like” and to be acted upon by the Christ within.
It is almost like there are three salvations. What? Think about it. There is an often overlooked verse which describes three deliverances or salvations. 2 Cor. 1:10 states: “God DELIVERED us from so great a death, and DOES DELIVER, in whom we trust that he will YET DELIVER us” (King James version). In the confines of one verse, we see actions by God on the human spirit, the soul and the body.
We have been saved (past tense) in who we are, our spirit. This is once and forever and does not change.
We are being saved (present tense) in what we have, our soul. This is ongoing through our lifetime as awareness of Christ within increases and trials and circumstances work in our soul to teach us the lifestyle of God.
We will be saved (future tense) in what we live in, our body. 1 Corinthians 15 talks about some kind of a new spiritual body we receive after our death and resurrection.
The bottom line is that, as a Christian, you are not separated from Christ. He has promised you will never be separated from Him. There is no need to mimic Jesus of Nazareth. There is no need to study the life of Jesus so that we may know what to do. Certainly reading the human life of Jesus has merit spiritually, but not to find out WWJD. Christ speaks in you by His indwelling life, by a voice deeper than your studious mind.
The resurrected Christ, who is now intimate with believers by His being birthed in them, is thereby much different than Jesus of Nazareth. The apostle Paul knew only a Christ who is risen and Lord in union with Paul. So Paul never did encourage anyone to do or mimic any activity that Jesus of Nazareth did during His sojourn on this earth. Paul in fact said that we should not know Christ after the flesh. “Hence forth we know no man after the flesh; yes, though we have known Jesus after the flesh, yet from now on we know Him no more” (1 Cor. 5:16).
This can be a difficult verse of scripture for believers to understand. From my viewpoint, the difficulty is the effect resulting from Christians hearing and focusing on too much of the life of Jesus of Nazareth in the gospels, and too little teaching from the apostle Paul.
An immediate question raised by my statement might justifiably be: “What could be wrong with teaching and sermons on the life of Jesus of Nazareth?” My answer is: That time is an entirely different dispensation from the one in which we now live! What is a “dispensation”? It is a God-allotted period of time in which God is accomplishing something in His eternal plan. Jesus of Nazareth did not walk upon the earth during the dispensation of time that we do.
The current dispensation we live in is the dispensation of grace, or the Church age. Does this make a difference? I should say so! Jesus of Nazareth came to minister to His own, the house of Israel (Matt. 15:24; John 1:11). The gospel did not specifically go to the Gentiles until Acts 10 in the house of Cornelius which was well after the ascension (Acts 1:9-11) of Jesus of Nazareth.
But then why is there so much teaching and so many sermons on this era? Why are so many Christians so caught up in miracles and trying to be like Jesus of Nazareth? The answer lies in the lack of understanding that the day of Pentecost changed the status of Jesus of Nazareth forever. He is no longer Jesus of Nazareth, but Christ in us, our hope of glory (Col. 1:27).
In this present dispensation, unlike the previous, BELIEVER ARE INDWELT BY CHRIST AND THE NATURE OF GOD (Gal. 2:20 and 2 Peter 1:4). With this in mind, the Christian must rethink how to relate to Jesus of Nazareth and the Gospels which are inspired by God and profitable. However, when reading this portion of scripture, we must rightly divide the Word of God and not take on the implication of statements that promote law and Jesus of Nazareth dealing with His people, the Israelites. Israel is not the Church of this age, and the Church of this age is never Israel.
If you read the apostle Paul’s writings, you will find that Paul confines his comments about Jesus of Nazareth primarily to His death, burial, and resurrection. These are necessary as they are our “identification points” between the human Jesus and the risen “Firstborn of many sons.”
But most of Paul’s writings concern what happens when Christ comes to live in us. He directs our lives through a living relationship with Him as we grow to become aware of His presence to empower our weakness. Paul in only one way recommends Jesus to us as a model for our living: it doesn’t concern “doing” but rather a way of living. Paul says, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5). Here “mind” means “mental disposition or mindset”. Jesus’ mindset was submitted to and utterly dependent upon the indwelling life of the Father. We should only mimic Jesus of Nazareth in His utter dependence upon the Father-life in Him – because God’s whole purpose in our ongoing soul salvation is that we trust in our indwelling Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Think about it. If Jesus lived in such a manner of utter dependence, then why do we believe that we can decide, of ourselves, with the previous examples given of apparently conflicting actions called for by Jesus, that we should mimic the life of Jesus of Nazareth – WWJD? I believe that this is because most Christians have yet to see that they are dead along with the human Jesus of Nazareth, but have been made alive again in union with the risen Christ, the Son of God.
The person of Jesus of Nazareth is not a methodology or biblical principle to be learned, but rather His is a Life to be lived out.
In John 15:5, Jesus says that we, as believers likened to branches in a vine, can do nothing of ourselves. We are as dependent on Christ within us as the branch of a tree is dependent on the tree trunk. Just think for a moment. Does the branch of a tree grow bark, twiggy new branches or fruit because it is trying to imitate “what the trunk of the tree is doing”? No – the branch lives the “right” life only because it contains the power of the sap from the trunk.
We are to be the passive branch recipients of another’s life flowing through us. But, at the same time, this passive dependent soul choice creates in our soul an ACTIVITY of, yes, becoming like Christ!
Yes, Rick Warren has it right. We ARE to grow in our soul and become like Christ. But those Christians who question how they can ever do it with all of their human weaknesses must come to a real awareness that they ARE FOREVER SAVED in their spirit WHO THEY ARE. And the only way that their soul personality can become the Personality of the indwelling Jesus Christ is by accepting this concept:
So – what WOULD Jesus of Nazareth do???
He would (and did) tell you this:

Follow the personal guidance
of His Spirit within you,
just as He followed the personal
guidance of His Father within Him.

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