Jesus: His Walk vs. Ours

The following are my comments on this week's lesson, Lesson 8: The Intensity of His Walk.

In my mind, this week's lesson tries to make two somewhat contradictory points. The first is that we, Jesus' disciples, ought to imitate His walk as described in the gospel accounts. The other point is that the gospel accounts are only the very end of His life: there is very little we know about how He lived between His birth and about thirty years of age.

The questions raised by this week's lesson are similar to last week's: how much of Jesus' life is something that we are to take and imitate as examples applicable directly to how we live life in the 21st century? And for me, as I write this, I also have to add the qualifier, "In the United States."

The big question for me regarding this lesson is: Does God expect and demand at all times the same level of "intensity" in my devotion to Him? Luke includes an interesting sentence (Luke 9:51) that seems to tell me that Jesus himself entered into a new level of intensity as he began his journey towards Jerusalem:

"When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem." (ESV, emphasis mine)

Is it even possible to retain the same level of intensity in one's life? A rubber band eventually becomes useless if it's kept at high tension for a long time. In fact it can eventually break. Could a Christian's efforts to imitate Jesus, to have an "intense walk" with God like Jesus did, lead to a breakdown? Could it turn into such a legalistic (defined as "trying to achieve something through one's own strength") effort that it leads a person away from God? For that matter, what does it mean to have "an intense walk" with God? In fact, what does it mean to "walk with God?"

The lesson text can give the impression that an "intense walk with God" somehow has to eliminate the enjoyable things -- fun, joy, friendships, joking, playing, hobbies, recreation -- from life (see Thursday's text). Now there may be times when there are certain summits to be reached that do call some of us to set aside some things in order to achieve the goals we believe God has called us to reach. But is that supposed to characterize the entire Christian walk, all the time, for every Christian? Again, I go back to the fact that the gospel records are primarily about the last 3-1/2 years of Jesus' life, and the majority of the accounts are the very last part of even those 3-1/2 years.

I also take issue with some of the text in Monday's lesson where it reads,

"He had to live completely above the sinful sphere... He had to remain immaculate. We might compare it to going through 33 years... and never making a single mistake."

I don't know about you, but on the surface the above could be inferred to mean that Jesus never made any mistake. And even further, it could be inferred that all mistakes are sin. I don't buy that and I don't go there. I don't believe that the effects of sin (some mistakes) are necessarily sin (c.f., Jesus' take on this in John 9 in the story of the man blind from birth).

I believe that Jesus could make mistakes and yet be without sin. If Jesus was unable to make mistakes while learning carpentry, in school, while learning about the physical world, how could He relate to how we learn? (How did Adam and Eve learn about the world? Did God teach them every specific detail and they carried it out precisely? Or did God provide general guidelines and then allowed them to learn through trial and error within the boundaries? Hmm...) Does this idea make Jesus any less divine, or does it allow us to identify better with Him?

For me, the main point of this week's study is that it is vitally important to balance Jesus' divinity with His humanity. If I overemphasize His divinity and try to use that portrait as my pattern, I could become disillusioned and discouraged. On the other hand, if I overemphasize His humanity, I might become self-sufficient and self-reliant. I believe there is a critical balance that must be maintained in how I see Jesus.