Follow Jesus Christ

What are the basic principles, the fundamentals of Jesus’s personality? Although we certainly cannot copy His qualities or His unique life path that ended with the cross, we can partially apply His sublime principles of life to our own lives. The concept of gradual spiritual growth cuts off the very possibility of acquiring perfection during a short life on earth. However, by considering the personality of Jesus, we can estimate what the ultimate goal of our spiritual growth is.

Perhaps the most important quality of Jesus’ personality that immediately catches the eye is fidelity, loyalty to the Heavenly Father. Loyalty that brought Jesus to Golgotha. It is obvious that for many years Jesus remained faithful to the course chosen by the Heavenly Father as the best of all possible.

The second quality: love for people. With all the determination, motivation and courage, the lack of love for people, for whom Jesus did everything, erases the motivation. If I do not love, then as a rule, I go away, distance myself and distance myself from people to whom I am indifferent. Jesus did not do this. On the contrary, he loved everyone, including his enemies, and remained close to the very end. The cross is essentially a proof of love, when a person who has done no evil, who loves his people, is killed without any resistance. Love is a quality of God’s character. And this is a fundamental concept.

Jesus was an active evangelist, teacher and organizer. In other words, He was a very hard-working man. In a short three years, to gather and train a group of followers, pushing them out of the field of one of the strongest religions (Judaism) – this is worth a lot. Note that He did this in the center of Judaism – Jerusalem, which no man had ever managed to do before. Work, work and work – this is the motto of Jesus in the ministry of preaching and education.

The next quality of Jesus may seem controversial. Jesus was a sincere believer. His faith was sublime and selfless. Many believe that Jesus did not need to believe, since He knew everything. Obviously, this is not true. The human nature of Jesus implies both ignorance, both struggle and the possibility of choice. If Jesus did not have to believe, as each of us, then He would not have gone the human way. Yes, at certain moments in the sunset of His stormy and fleeting life He used the promptings of higher powers. However, this is only one of the episodes of His life in which He reached the absolute maximum of human possibilities. Jesus’ faith obviously developed from childhood and reached the purity characteristic of a child’s trust. His faith was so absolute and devoid of doubt that it sincerely rejoiced in the Universe. His sense of trust in the divine was so complete and solid that it brought peace and confidence in absolute personal security. His religious experience was alien to uncertainty and pretense.

The next characteristic of Jesus that should be singled out separately is selflessness. It is impossible to follow Jesus, to be imbued with the spirit of His life without this. We do not see any personal demands, orders or strange requests from Jesus on the pages of the Gospels. He carried out His service, forgetting about Himself. He replenished His spiritual strength in solitary prayer at night or early in the morning. Then He was found and again drawn into the whirlpool of human affairs. We do not see even a hint that Jesus could take from the people of that time in return.

Another feature of Jesus’ personality that everyone can develop in themselves is simplicity, humility. He was simple, one of a kind for all strata and classes. He did not exalt Himself, since this contradicts love and selflessness in communication with people. He humiliated Himself. Of course, during significant public sermons or debates with opponents, He had to point out the fact of his divine origin. However, in personal communication there was no arrogance. That is why Jesus was popular and loved among the common people, who acutely feel any inequality.

Jesus must have had a great many other high personal qualities that we must look for and identify. Worshiping and following Jesus will surely make all Christians better. It is time to witness the symbolic resurrection of Jesus from the burial vault filled with the theological traditions and religious dogmas of twenty centuries. Jesus does not really even need the grand concept of a “glorified” Christ: Jesus has been and will always be glorified. One joyful day will come when Yeshua, the Son of Man, will rise from the vault of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the very church that bears His name.