We Can Learn From Jesus

Have you ever really examined who Jesus was? How he acted. His moods? His way of carrying himself? The type of person He was? I believe there is a lot of value in it and this section of John Stott’s Basic Christianity offers a thought-provoking perspective:

In assessing the character of Jesus Christ, we do not need to rely only on the testimony of others; we can make our own estimate. The moral perfection which was quietly claimed by him, confidently asserted by his friends and reluctantly acknowledged by his enemies, is clearly shown in the Gospels.

We are given plenty of opportunity to form our own judgment. The picture of Jesus painted by the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, is a comprehensive one. It’s true that it depicts largely his public ministry of barely three years. But we are given a glimpse of his boyhood, and Luke twice repeats that during his hidden years at Nazareth he was developing naturally in body, mind and spirit, and was growing in favour with God and people.

We see him spending time in private with his disciples, and we watch him in the noisy bustle of the crowd. He is brought before us in the work he did in Galilee, facing the pressures of being hero-worshipped by the mob who wanted to take him by force and make him a king. And we’re able to follow him into the cloisters of the Jerusalem temple where Pharisees and Sadducees were united against him in their subtle inquisition. But whether scaling the dizzy heights of success or plunged into the lonely depths of bitter rejection, he is the same Jesus. He is consistent. He has no moods. He does not change.

Again, the portrait is balanced. There is no trace of the crank in him. He believes ardently in what he teaches, but he is not a fanatic. Some of what he has to say is unpopular, but he is not eccentric. There is as much evidence for his humanity as for his divinity. He gets tired. He needs to sleep and eat and drink like other people. He experiences the human emotions of love and anger, joy and sorrow. He is fully human. Yet he is no mere man.

Above all, he is unselfish. Perhaps nothing strikes us more than this. Although he clearly believed himself to be divine, he did not put on airs or stand on his dignity. He was never pompous. There was no touch of self-importance about Jesus. He was humble.

It is this paradox which is so amazing, this combination of the self-centredness of his teaching and the unself-centredness of his behaviour. In thought he put himself first; in deed last. He exhibited both the greatest self-esteem and the greatest self-sacrifice. He knew himself to be the Lord of all, but he became their servant. He said that he would one day come to judge the world, but he washed the feet of his friends.

Never has anyone given up so much. It is claimed (by him as well as by those who tell us about him) that he renounced the joys of heaven for the sorrows of earth, exchanging an eternal immunity to the approach of sin for painful contact with evil in this world. He was born of a lowly Hebrew mother in a dirty stable in the insignificant village of Bethlehem. He became a refugee baby in Egypt. He was brought up in the obscure hamlet of Nazareth, and toiled at a carpenter’s bench to support his mother and the other children in their home. Eventually he became a travelling preacher, with few possessions, small comforts and no home. He made friends with ordinary people. He touched those with leprosy and allowed prostitutes to touch him. He gave himself away in a ministry of healing, helping, teaching and preaching.

He was misunderstood and misrepresented, and became the victim of people’s prejudices and vested interests. He was despised and rejected by his own people, and deserted by his friends. He gave his back to be flogged, his face to be spat upon, his head to be crowned with thorns, his hands and feet to be nailed to a common Roman gallows. And, as the cruel spikes were driven home, he kept praying for his tormentors, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’

Such a man is altogether beyond our reach. He succeeded where we always fail. He had complete self-mastery. He never retaliated. He never grew resentful or irritable. He had such control of himself that, whatever others might think or say or do, he would deny himself and abandon himself to the will of God and the welfare of his fellow human beings. ‘I seek not to please myself,’ he said, and ‘I am not seeking glory for myself.’ As Paul wrote, ‘For Christ did not please himself.’

This utter disregard of self in the service of God and man is what the Bible calls love. There is no self-interest in love. The essence of love is self-sacrifice. Even the worst of us is adorned by an occasional flash of such nobility, but the life of Jesus radiated it with a never-fading incandescent glow.

Jesus was sinless because he was selfless. Such selflessness is love. And God is love.