What's Jesus Like?

What Does it Really Mean to Be Like Jesus?

I enjoy the idea that Jesus is just like me.

I believe this because my Bible tells me that he was born in the likeness of men and found in human form. So, like me, Jesus ate regular food and he mixed it up with people and he appreciated a good night’s sleep.

I realize of course that any decent exploration of the human Jesus demands deeper considerations than his social habits and physical needs. But still—I have questions.

If Jesus was here today, would he enjoy the occasional Krispy Kreme donut or In-n-Out burger? Would he drink Coke or Pepsi? Or Dr. Pepper? Would he wear sunglasses or use sunscreen? Would he pay to have his hair styled? Like me, would his favorite movies include The Godfather and Raiders of the Lost Ark? Would he binge episodes of The Chosen?

Did Jesus get heartburn or headaches or pinkeye? Did he scream when he stubbed his toe?

Like me, Jesus laughed with his friends and maybe there were times when he cried more than he laughed. I know that he loved being with people but also relished his privacy. I love that he could be sarcastic—at times offensively so. He got angry and frustrated, even annoyed. Just like me.

I’m comforted to know that Jesus faced the lure of sin in every way that I do. Yet I’m quickly reminded that—very unlike me—he never entertained or surrendered to the seduction. Not one time. Ever.

Am I Anything Like Jesus?

I have long understood that the primary objective of my Christian life is that I grow to be like Jesus. I’m told that those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. Aside from the murky issues of foreknowledge and predestination, St. Paul’s meaning is pretty clear because later on in the same letter he warns me to avoid being conformed to this world. There’s that word again. Even in non-religious terms, when I am conformed to anything I am pressed into something like a Jello mold and reconfigured into a different shape.

So, at its heart, the Christian life is a matter of molding, shaping me into an image that looks something like Jesus.

Sounds great, but this is where my understanding gets a bit fuzzy. It’s easy to see how Jesus is like me, because I know what I’m like. I can look at myself then at Jesus and recognize the similarities. But if I’m also supposed to be morphing into a reflection of Jesus, I should have some idea of what that looks like so I can know if it’s actually happening.

I’m No Willie Mays

On Sunday mornings, we sometimes sing about our desire to be like Jesus and our pastors rightly teach it as our ultimate goal, often citing as our role models Christian all-stars like Mother Theresa and Saint Francis and C.S. Lewis.

But I think I aspire to become like Jesus in the same way a high school baseball player hopes to one day become another Aaron Judge or Shohei Otahni. He can fantasize and dream and work very hard at emulating every mannerism—he may even be Aaron Judge’s good friend—but not so deep down he knows that actually developing into another version of Aaron Judge is, more than likely, never going to happen.

I do the same with my notion of Christ-likeness. I look at Theresa and Francis and C.S. Lewis and I lift them up as shining examples, which they certainly are. But in doing so, I set a very high bar—albeit a lower bar than Jesus—but one that I will realistically never be able to approach.

Who would you say is the most ‘Christ-like’ person you know? What is it about him that resembles Jesus? Is it a behavior? An aura or a vibe? A quality of character? An attitude? A way of speaking? When you squint, does he (or she) look sort of like Jim Caviezel?

The Bible is clear that the objective for each Christian is conformity to the image of Jesus. This is a biblical guarantee of where you and I are headed. So rather than live in a depressing confidence that I’ll never arrive there, I need to revisit my understanding of Jesus himself, and ask myself, What is Jesus actually like? What image is Paul talking about?

Morals and Virtues?

Gandhi once famously said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” An interesting observation from a man whose life was committed to truth, non-violence, integrity, humility, simple living, and a strong sense of justice and empathy. While Gandhi would never allow anyone to mistake him for a Christian, his character and priorities actually align with many of Jesus’ own qualities. Yet, given his rejection of Christianity, we could never seriously say that Gandhi was being conformed to the image of Jesus.

Tibetan monks gazing at their navels on the top of a mountain are masters of self-denial. Again, I think we’d agree that these holy men don’t align with Paul’s understanding of what it means to be molded into a likeness of Jesus.

I have to conclude then that my own sincere efforts to be compassionate and kind and my attempts at self-denial—all undeniably virtuous and honorable—can’t possibly be all that Paul was getting at when he says I am being conformed to the image of Jesus.

The Whole Tree Down

The truth is, I too easily wander from the New Testament picture of the Christian experience. I read there that I am a new creation, that I must be born again, that I am putting off my old self. While this language of transformation is a consistent theme throughout the New Testament, I still cling to my inherent need to perform—to work hard at being a good Christian.

I once heard Tim Keller say—and I’m paraphrasing here—that Jesus doesn’t offer himself to us as a good example to follow. He comes to us to cause violence in our lives, to upend everything. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis expresses the same notion… I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down.

If I define my Christian life by my struggle to emulate Jesus, I’ll be forever hopeful for the better version of myself. Such an idea tragically fails to recognize the joyful, supernatural transformation Jesus has in mind for me. To borrow from Lewis’ metaphor, God imagines for me not a remodel, but a complete demolition so he can build a new house in its place.

So what is Jesus like? The answer to that question will also answer the question of what I will look like when I am fully grown into the new creation God imagines for me.

Like Me Yet Unlike Me

I think the most mystifying doctrine of the Christian story is that Jesus is one hundred percent human and one hundred percent God. The math doesn’t seem to work does it? It makes more sense when we consider historical Christian thinking which teaches that Jesus isn’t ‘part God and part human’. Somehow, his nature is both at once, uniquely synthesized in one person. For this discussion, it means that the man Jesus uniquely exists without the burden of sin that has rippled through history into every fiber of every other human.

Jesus’ absolute goodness is the core of his virtues, of his teaching, of his motives and actions and attitudes. Unspoiled by sin’s pervasive, suffocating grip, he is inextricably united with his Father. It never occurred to Jesus to stray from his Father’s guiding hand; not once did he entertain a self-seeking thought; he was never motivated by self-promotion; nor did he ever view people as pawns to be manipulated or maneuvered or exploited for his own benefit. Jesus’ singular concern was to carry out his Father’s vision and mission for broken and wayward humanity.

This is the Shape into which we are being molded. As with Jesus, the morality, the virtues, the eyes through which I views God, myself and the world around me, all follow as a result of my growing unity with the Father.

Playing Dress-Up

This—right here—is where obedience is so essential to the Christian experience. Jesus and the New Testament writers instruct me to behave in ways I would never consider on my own. Love your enemies. Pray for those who wrong you. Forgive each other. Consider others as more significant than yourself. It’s no coincidence that these and many other prescribed actions and attitudes are the characteristics of Jesus himself. As I obey him, the image forms and grows within me. Here C.S. Lewis helps us yet again…

To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ. If you like, you are pretending … You are not a Being like the Son of God, whose will and interests are not at one with those of the Father: you are a bundle of self-centered fears, hopes, greeds, jealousies, and self-conceit, all doomed to death. So that, in a way, this dressing up as Christ is a piece of outrageous cheek. But the odd things is that He has ordered us to do it.

The idea isn’t as foreign as it might initially seem. As soon as they’re able, our kids practice at being adults by dressing in their parents’ clothes, playing with dolls and trucks and toy kitchens and doctor kits. And they do this because they see us adults doing adult things and they want to get there as quickly as they can.

When Jesus tells me that to enter his kingdom I must become as a little child, I think this is at least part of what he means. He understands that the day will come when my frustrations with all this ‘pretending’ will one day transfigure with the arrival of adulthood—I will be found without a trace of sin, fully united with my Father.

Just like Jesus.

The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to ‘inject’ His kind of life and thought, His Zoe, into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man.

C.S. Lewis | Mere Christianity