We Should Not Always Do What Jesus Would Do

WWJD?

What Would Jesus Do?  This phrase, often abbreviated as WWJD, was extremely popular in Christian circles back in the 90s, when WWJD bracelets could be seen on the wrists of many young Christians.  Though the use of WWJD has declined greatly since then, it is still quite recognizable as a popular Christian phrase today.

WWJD is intended to be a motto to guide the Christian’s decisions in their everyday life.  Whenever a Christian is faced with a decision, they can ask, “What would Jesus do?”  Then, they can do whatever Jesus would do, and be confident that they are doing the good, moral and righteous thing.

This idea of the “imitation of Christ” has a long history in the Christian Church.  The fifteenth century book The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis has been one of the most popular and widely read devotional books in the Western Church down to the present day.  There is much truth in this idea that Christians should seek to imitate Jesus and to do what Jesus would do.  The apostle Paul tells us that Christians are predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s Son, Jesus Christ (Rom 8:29).  In their ethical teachings, both Paul and the apostle Peter urge Christians to have the same mindset and attitude as Jesus Christ: humbly serving others rather than ourselves (Rom 15:1-6, Phil 2:3-11) and being willing to suffer (1 Pet 4:1).  

Jesus is the only sinless human being who has ever lived.  He is the only morally perfect human being who has ever lived.  Therefore, if we want to know how to live a morally good life, it makes sense that we should begin by looking to Jesus as our example.  All other human beings have had their humanity corrupted and distorted by sin and godlessness.  Only Jesus Christ has lived His human life in a fully genuinely human way.  Therefore, if we want to know what it means to be genuinely human, it makes sense that we should begin by looking to Jesus as our example.  

However, it is problematic to simplistically assume that we should always be imitators of Jesus in everything He does or that we should always do what Jesus would do.  This is because Jesus, though fully human, is also fully God.  Jesus is God Incarnate.  Because of this, Jesus sometimes does things which other human beings should not do.

First, Jesus claims to be God.  He tells His disciples, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), and that “anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).  For any other human being to make such claims about themselves would be blasphemous.  It is not something we should do.  

Second, Jesus willingly accepts worship.  Multiple times in the Gospels, Jesus’s followers worship Him, and Jesus offers absolutely no objection (Matt 14:33, 28:9, 17; John 9:38).  In contrast, Paul and Barnabas strongly object when a crowd tries to worship and offer sacrifices to them (Acts 14:8-18), and, twice, an angel in the book of Revelation strongly objects when John bows down to worship him (Rev 19:10, 22:8-9).  No one should worship anything other than God.  Jesus is God, and so it is right for Him to accept people’s worship.  But we should not accept people’s worship.

Third, Jesus claims Divine Authority.  When Jesus taught, “the people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law” (Mark 1:22).  They were quite right to be amazed, because if any other human being were to claim the kind of authority Jesus claims, it would be the height of hubris.  For example, Jesus gives a series of moral teachings in which He contrasts “you have heard it was said” (in the Law), and “but I say to you” (Matt 5:21-48), thus claiming that His own teachings are equal to and even supersede the teachings of God’s Torah.  Though many liberal and “progressive” Christians today are quite happy to “imitate” Jesus in this way by asserting their own personal feelings and opinions as being of greater authority than God’s word, this is deeply sinful.  We should not imitate Jesus in this respect, since, unlike Jesus, we do not have Divine Authority; as mere humans, we must stand in submission to the Authority of God’s word.  

We should not always do what Jesus would do, nor should we imitate Jesus in every respect.  Though Jesus is the perfect human being and is our perfect moral example in many respects, the fact that He is also Divine means that we cannot always simplistically imitate Him.  We need to have a more complex, nuanced understanding of what it means for us to be conformed to the image of Christ than that.  

God’s Nature and Human Morality

In some respects, Christians are supposed to become like Jesus, but they are not supposed to be like God.  The enormous gap between God’s Divine Existence and our existence as finite creatures means that human morality cannot consist in imitating God.  Rather, it consists in living in right relationship with God, each other, and the rest of God’s creation, in accordance with what God has commanded us.  

I own a book entitled Our God is Nonviolent.^[1]Our God is Nonviolent: Witnesses in the Struggle for Peace and Justice by John Dear (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1990).  While there are many valuable theological reflections in this book regarding Christian nonviolence, the claim of the title of the book is simply wrong.  Throughout Scripture (both Old and New Testaments), we see God use violence many times.  As I argue here, attempts to dismiss or explain away these parts of Scripture are unconvincing.  God does want Christians to be nonviolent.  But this does not mean that God Himself is nonviolent.  

Many Christians speak of Christian morality as becoming like God.  This is an important aspect of the Eastern Orthodox idea of theosis (“deification” or “divinization”), which is based on Peter’s cryptic reference to “sharing” in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). There is a sense in which Christians become like God.  However, this should be understood as becoming like God by analogy, not in any direct sense.  The gap between Divine Being and action, and human being and action, is simply too great for any direct or simple imitation to take place.  

The rules of human morality do not apply to God.  God simply is the Supremely Perfect Being, and it is His prerogative to do many things which it would not be morally appropriate for finite, creaturely human beings to do.  This is why God had to become human in order to show us how we should truly live.  And even then, Jesus’s Divine Identity means that we should not imitate God Incarnate in every respect.  Rather, we must obey Jesus, follow Jesus, and imitate Jesus only insofar as it is appropriate for us mere human beings to do.  

In certain respects, we may become “like God” in a metaphorical sense.  But we cannot literally become deified or divinized.  Such an idea is foreign to Scripture.  In God’s New Creation, God will be completely intimate with us and with all of creation.  But at the same time, God will remain transcendent and other than His creation.  God’s grace will transform us and will draw us into a close relationship with God.  But it will not cause us to become Divine.  We will become morally perfect.  But we will not become part of God. There will be close fellowship with God.  But there will not be theosis.