What would Jesus do?

Everyone seems to know what Jesus would do… but what would Jesus actually do?

… We can find out for sure what Jesus would do… based on what Jesus did!

And it might be surprising for you if all you know about Jesus is based on heresay and imagination rather than reading the Bible for yourself.

As Christians, (hopefully you are one!), our attitude should line up with Jesus Christ. Because that’s what “Christian” means after all… “Christ like”! Yes, none of us are “perfect”… but the Holy Spirit should be growing “Christ likeness” in our life if we are saved!

There are many people who are never going to open a Bible to meet Jesus, and so your life as a Christian may be the only representation of Jesus that they ever get… particularly in the increasing Bible illiteracy of our generation… and as such, we should want to be a faithful witness as possible as to who he is “as he is, so are we in this world”.

One way that our lives should line up with Christ is in a way that not many seem to care for any more… and that is in our attitude to scripture… Jesus loved the Bible! Yeah… Jesus was a bit of a “Bible basher”.

Jesus’ entry into this world in human form was all about the Bible … “Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.” Thank goodness Jesus loved the Bible, otherwise we’d never have a Saviour.

Jesus’ life was all about the Bible. It’s what he preached from, it’s what he pointed people to, it’s what he fulfilled! … and it’s what he left us as our link to him, our scarlet thread hanging hopefully in the window of your soul!

… you can’t start too early in the Bible! As a child we know that Jesus spent much time in God’s word… one day his parents accidentally left him behind in Jerusalem, returning three days later to find him in the temple explaining things to doctors of the law!

He would be called “Master” because he had mastery in God’s word… a mastery we also need in this world. An unsaved person should not know the Bible better than a claiming Christian!

Then after Jesus was baptized as an adult, he went into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, and he defeated Satan three times through perfectly quoting and applying “it is written”. And he taught us the key to victory over Satan is… what does the Bible say Tells you how important the Bible is!

Satan had the audacity to quote Bible to Jesus in order to make Jesus jump off a building! So we don’t just need to know the Bible, that’s a given, furthermore we need a good handle on it also! Because it’s a sword, the sword of the Spirit… but a sword is useless in the hand of someone who doesn’t know how to use it!

Like your muscles, you have to exercise the scripture in your life to be any value to you personally or to anyone else.

Perhaps you do doubt that Jesus’ whole life was about the Bible… even when the apostle John calls him the “Word of God”. Just read the Bible though, and you’ll find Jesus had an attitude to God’s word that not many people, Christians even, seem to have today!

Seven times in the gospels Jesus said “have ye not read?” when answering various questions on big issues like marriage, law keeping, resurrection and so on. And the answers are still all there today! but “have ye not read?”

Seventeen times the Bible says in the gospels that an action of Jesus Christ or occurrence in his life was so that the scripture “might be fulfilled”. If Jesus Christ’s life fulfilled scripture… shouldn’t ours fulfill what the Bible says too?

One time Jesus was preaching and a lawyer popped up with a curly question about eternal life… and Jesus answered him by saying to him “What is written in the law? How readest thou?”

There’s so many instances through the gospels of Jesus referencing, fulfilling, teaching and explaining the Bible. He told the Jews to “search the scriptures” and “go ye and learn what that meaneth”. He would rebuke them for not knowing nor understanding the scriptures.

… If Jesus thought so highly of the Bible… we ought to as well. Yes, it can be tough to get into, but that’s because it’s a spiritual book and not assimilated like any other book in this world. You need the Holy Spirit and help that God has surely put in your life if you ever want it.

… And so what would Jesus do when it comes to the Bible itself? Well he saturated his life in it and interwove it so closely with his own life they were not only indistinguishable, but one and the same… may our lives cleave to God’s word as much as his did and does… and will yet do!

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