Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did (1 John 2:6).
I love this verse. It boils the whole idea of being a Christian (i.e., a follower of Jesus Christ) down to one thing: following the example of Jesus, walking as he walked. All we have to do is find out how Jesus walked and emulate his example.
The days of the WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) bracelet are mostly past for now. They traced back to Charles Sheldon's book In His Stepsfrom 1896, a novel following a group of people who were challenged to ask themselves the "What would Jesus do?" question as they went about their days. The 1990s saw a resurgence of interest in the book and a plethora of products designed to once again remind people to ask the question.
I'm not sure, however, the WWJD fad translated well into people devoting themselves the actual record of how Jesus walked. Saying that one wants to do what Jesus would do and applying some notion of what that means doesn't necessarily equate to thorough exposure to the message of the Gospels.
There seems to be two approaches to the question of how Jesus walked. One approach produces a list of what Jesus would and would not do. For example, He would be courteous to others and a diligent worker. He wouldn't do drugs or have sex before marriage. It tells us how to be good, but it falls far short of exposing us to the radical ideas of the Gospels.
The other approach isn't nearly so neat and clean. It requires reading and studying the accounts of Jesus' life and letting His teaching both by words and example saturate our lives and change us. I read the Gospels through every year, taking the entire year to do so. And I am still regularly surprised by what I find in them. The how-to-be-good lists don't come close. I have no fear of exhausting in a lifetime the breadth and depth of the lessons to be learned.
What a worthy goal John presents here -- to walk as Jesus walked. Getting there takes a lifetime and is well worth the investment.
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I liked this "It tells us how to be good, but it falls far short of exposing us to the radical ideas of the Gospels."
In my many readings, I came across a book in which the author [who I can recall] suggested it is not in patterning our lives exactly like Jesus [if so then we'd all be single, childless, etc]as in mimicking all his actions which can become legalism. But rather to let the Spirit of Jesus so fill our lives that his character, goodness and love so permeate our personalities and actions that we become like Jesus...and be the Jesus that those around us need.
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