Living Like Jesus

Introduction

Illustration: Templates are an invaluable tool for creating a consistent output in something like a factory. If you want every car you’re producing to be the same, you use templates. That way each piece is exactly how you intend it to be, and you don’t have to count on the consistency of a person doing the task by hand. People make mistakes and even the best experts get tired and produce irregular products, right?

The question is, does God use a template when it comes to making us into Christians? Because the Bible doesn’t tell us that we just get saved and then wait until heaven. No, the Bible expects us to change. We talked this morning about dying to our old life and living a new one. So what is the template that God uses to turn us into the people He wants us to be? That template is Jesus Himself. Consider Romans 8:28-30:

Romans 8:28–30 CSB

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified.

Whatever debates Christians have about predestination, Paul's emphasis here is wonderfully clear: God's purpose for His people is that they become like His Son. That’s the template, we are going to be like Jesus. The question is, how do we do that? Tonight I want to share the three ingrediants to becoming more like Jesus, okay? The first is to keep in step with the Holy Spirit. God Himself is living in us and helping us to live the lives He’s called us to live, so we should seek to follow Him. This means two things. We first need to love God by following His teaching and setting our heart on Him, then we need to love the people He loves, which means every single human being on the planet. So let’s break down those three things, shall we?

The Holy Spirit

Illustration: In our house we burn wood for heat in the winter. We have other ways of heating the house, but it saves us money and there’s nothing quite like wood heat, am I right? In any case, when you’re starting a fire you open up the wood stove wide. If you close the door and the draft too quickly the fire dies. Why is that? Because fire cannot burn without oxygen.

When we decide to follow Jesus, often we begin the journey with a kind of fire inside us. A passion for doing what Jesus has called us to do. We read our Bibles frantically, we look for every opportunity we can in order to do what is right and to be loving to others. Yet many times that fire dies out. Why is that? I think just like a fire starved of oxygen, often times we try our best to live like Christians without the help of the Holy Spirit. When we find this to be impossible, that fire in us dies.

If the Holy Spirit is essential to our living life the way of Jesus, than we need to understand who He is and what His role is in our lives as Christians. So let’s start by taking a look at what Jesus says about Him in John 16.

John 16:6–15 CSB

Yet, because I have spoken these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I am telling you the truth. It is for your benefit that I go away, because if I don’t go away the Counselor will not come to you. If I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment: About sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; and about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. “I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. He will also declare to you what is to come. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything the Father has is mine. This is why I told you that he takes from what is mine and will declare it to you.

There’s a lot here to unpack, but we’re focused on the Holy Spirit’s role as “another counselor” today. After the resurrection Jesus ascended to the right hand of God the Father. So without God the Son walking on the earth and teaching, are we left like Orphans? No! Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to be our guide and our teacher. He is not just any spirit, not just a force from God that Gives us power, but the third member of the Trinity. God the Holy Spirit is now living in us. In fact when Paul is writing to the Corinthian church and telling them to obstain from sexual sin he calls our bodies temples of the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

1 Corinthians 6:19–20 CSB

Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.

The implications of this phrase are huge. The Temple in Judaism was the place where God’s presence met with the people of Israel. In the temple there was a place called the Holy of Holies, and in this place was a special box called the Ark of the Covenant, above which was a place called the mercy seat. Only here was the presence of God made manifest among the people, and only the High Priest could enter this place once a year after atoning for sins. Now, on the other side of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are ALL temples, and the presence of God dwells inside our bodies. We don’t need to go to a special place and make a special sacrifice to meet God. He’s living in each and every one of us.

And it is this Spirit of God who enables us to do Good Works that are actually Good. When Paul writes in Galatians about avoiding sin and instead seeking good, he refers to these virtuous qualities as “fruit of the Spirit.” In other words, these are the things which the Spirit of God produces in us. Galatians 5:22-23

Galatians 5:22–23 CSB

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.

So if we want to be people who are loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled, we can’t do that on our own. If we want the fruit of the Spirit, we need the Spirit Himself.

Now thankfully there isn’t some trick or extra ritual we need to do in order to receive the Holy Spirit. Peter said in our passage from this morning in Acts 2:38

Acts 2:38 CSB

Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So if you’ve made a decision to follow Jesus, congratulations! You have the Holy Spirit living in you. So what makes the difference between a Christian who’s producing the fruit of the Spirit? Why should Paul feel the need to encourage us to produce the fruit of the Spirit? Because it’s not automatic. If we continue with Paul a few verses we read this in Galatians 5:24-25

Galatians 5:24–25 CSB

Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

So our job is to keep in step with the Spirit of God. How do we accomplish this? By making sure that we are continually seeking God’s Spirit and His guidance for our lives. The two most important ways to do that are to read the book that the Holy Spirit inspired, the Bible, and to talk to Him, prayer. So my friends if we want to be those loving, joyful, etc, people than we need to read our Bibles and pray out of a sincere desire to know Him better and to live in Step with Him.

When we attend the Holy Spirit and read His word we find two big categories of ways we need to live in order to be faithful to God. Jesus gives us these two “laws,” the first of which is to love God.

Loving God

Illustration: I want you to imagine for a moment that after marrying my wife, I spent the rest of my life studying her. Interviewing everyone she knows for old stories, reading everything she’s written, memorizing her biography and all that sort of thing. Imagine I could tell you every single fact about her, but… I didn’t actually do anything for her or show her love in any other way. Would you call me a good husband?

You see that’s the thing, loving someone doesn’t mean just knowing a lot about them. So what does loving someone mean? Love is not just a feeling, it’s a verb. It’s showing love through your actions and putting them first. So if I wanted to be a loving husband than that means I need to show love to my wife through my actions.

The very same principle is true for loving God, which is our primary call as followers of Jesus. Don’t believe me, believe Jesus when someone asked Him what is the greatest law in the Bible.

Matthew 22:35–38 CSB

And one of them, an expert in the law, asked a question to test him: “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command.

So there you have it, straight from the mouth of Jesus, the one greatest commandment of all. Of course He also gives a second commandment, but we’ll talk about that next. For now I want to focus on the number one, which is to Love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. In other words, to love God with everything that we have.

I’ve always maintained that Christianity is simple in concept but difficult in practice. It’s pretty easy to say that we love God, but what does it actually look like to love God? What are the things which we need to do? Well Jesus actually does say what it means to love Him in John 14:15

John 14:15 CSB

“If you love me, you will keep my commands.

Simple, right? We just have to keep all of Jesus’ commands. Now that means two really important things. First, we need to actually know what Jesus commanded us to do. This means we need to know the Bible really well, because that’s where all of Jesus’ commands are recorded. Second, we can’t pretend we’re able to do this on our own. I won’t repeat myself too much since we already talked about the Holy Spirit this sermon, but there’s a reason this verse is followed immediately by John 14:16-17

John 14:16–17 CSB

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. He is the Spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive him because it doesn’t see him or know him. But you do know him, because he remains with you and will be in you.

So we know that living as Jesus taught us to live is how we show love to God. Yet I don’t want to give the mixed up impression that love is only obedience to God. As much as I am vocal often about love not consisting in just strong feelings, surely it isn’t completely devoid of feelings. What kind of husband would I be if I gave everything for her and constantly did practical acts of love but never showed her any affection? Jesus promises a oneness, an intimacy with God that comes through the Holy Spirit. Continuing in John 14:18-21

John 14:18–21 CSB

“I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live too. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, you are in me, and I am in you. The one who has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. And the one who loves me will be loved by my Father. I also will love him and will reveal myself to him.”

So we should seek both to love God with our actions and also to love Him with a tenderness and desire for closeness expressed so well by the Psalmist in Psalm 42:1-2

Psalm 42:1–2 CSB

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so I long for you, God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God?

Yet as much as loving God is the first commandment, Jesus is very quick to give the man who asked Him a second commandment.

Loving Our Neighbors

Illustration: As a parent I love my kids. I mean, you guys have met them. They’re pretty great. So it is a pet peeve of mine when I invite someone over to my house and they treat my children like they aren’t even there. They want to chat and visit with me, which is great, but I love my kids and I want people to treat them like people, you know?

It’s not lost on me that God the Father is called “the Father” for a reason, right? Everyone is created in the image of God and is at least in some sense a child of God. So it stands to reason then that if it bothers me when people ignore my children, it also bothers God when we ignore His children. So if we press my analogy a bit, how do you think God feels when we say we love Him and want to serve Him, but we ignore His children?

Perhaps this is why when asked Jesus didn’t give just one greatest commandment, but two:

Matthew 22:37–40 CSB

He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

The entire Law and the Prophets, in other words all of the Bible, can be summarized in two commands. Love God, and Love your neighbor. You’ll have to trust me on this because I want to spend my time on other things, but everyone is considered your neighbor for the sake of this command. So the second greatest command is to love people.

Why is this so important to God? It’s because HE loves people, and it hurts Him when we hurt others. Consider the strong words God has for the people who tried to love God without loving their neighbor in Amos 5:21-24

Amos 5:21–24 CSB

I hate, I despise, your feasts! I can’t stand the stench of your solemn assemblies. Even if you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; I will have no regard for your fellowship offerings of fattened cattle. Take away from me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice flow like water, and righteousness, like an unfailing stream.

Jesus similarly had strong words for the Pharisees, who were guilty of the same. He says in Matthew 23:23-24

Matthew 23:23–24 CSB

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You pay a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, and yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These things should have been done without neglecting the others. Blind guides! You strain out a gnat, but gulp down a camel!

A gnat and a camel are both “unclean” according to the Old Testament law, btw. So He was saying that they spend a lot of effort avoiding small sins and ignore the glaring sin of neglecting other people.

When Jesus talks of the judgment of all mankind He says this in Matthew 25:31-40

Matthew 25:31–40 CSB

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. “ ‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me.’ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and take you in, or without clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and visit you?’ “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Jesus then goes on to say the opposite to the goats, that they will given eternal punishment because they didn’t do these things for others, which means they didn’t do them for Him. In other words Jesus takes the way that we treat others personally, whether good or bad. So if you treat someone unkindly, you are in effect treating Jesus unkindly. When you hate someone, you’re hating Jesus. When you hurt someone, you’re hurting Jesus.

This is why Jesus wouldn’t just stop at the first commandment. That’s because it’s impossible to keep the first commandment without keeping the second. You cannot love God apart from loving others. The two are inseperable. This should not be surprising given the immeasurable love that God showed for all of us through sending His son. So my friends this is our challenge. Love your neighbor, and not just in words but in actually taking care of them. Though he’s making a bigger point about the need for faith to be demonstrated in works, James mentions in James 2:15-16 the importance of providing for someone, not just saying kind things to them.

James 2:15–16 CSB

If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it?

The “how exactly” of this point is immense. There’s a lot of people in the world out there and how exactly you are called to show love to them is more than I personally know. So it’s up to each of us to show love to everyone we meet to the best of our ability, relying on the guidance of the Holy Spirit and asking Him to show us who we need to provide for and care for in love.

Conclusion

So then my friends we have the three ingredients necessary for living the kind of life that God wants us to live. The first and the most important being the Holy Spirit, whom God gifts to us but we are called to keep in step with. We can’t please God apart from Him, and attempting the other two without the Holy Spirit is pointless. Then we must both love God and other people, in our hearts as well as in our actions, putting God and other people before ourselves in our priorities and serving others as if they were Jesus Himself.

Prayer is really the key here. Without a vibrant connection with God our efforts are going to be fruitless. Now remember, we aren’t talking about what we need to do to earn our salvation. Jesus already did that work for us. We’re talking about how we should live as grateful Christians who are keeping in step with the Spirit. So seek God every day to know how to live like Jesus. Don’t try to please God without speaking to God. He is there and wanting to help you. In the words of the Hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”

Oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear

All because we do not carry, everything to God in prayer.

So in that Spirit let us pray now together my friends.