Times of Faith Blog

Christians believe in and follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. We want to be just like him. But how? We can't all move to Israel, give no thought to food or shelter, and spend our days walking among others healing and blessing them. I think that in order for us to truly understand how we should be like Jesus Christ, we need to understand some key words including (a) exemplar, (b) follow, and (c) emulate. EXEMPLAR As the literal son of God, Jesus Christ has many names. One of those names is exemplar. An exemplar is defined as someone who serves as an excellent model to follow. Jesus explained why he is an exemplar when he said "I am the way, the truth, the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6). As I study the life Jesus Christ, my testimony grows that he truly is an exemplar and someone to follow. FOLLOW Christ said, "Come, follow me." (Luke 18:22). The word follow can have several meanings. One...

Jesus Never Asked You to Obey the Commandments

Pop Quiz! How times does the phrase “obey the commandments” appear in the New Testament? If you read the email subject line, you probably already guessed the answer, which is zero. Okay, how about “obey my commandments”? Still zero. Are you surprised? Doesn’t it seem like at some point Jesus said, “If ye love me, obey my commandments?” He didn’t. What he said was... “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” (see John 14:15, emphasis added) Note: I think there is a difference between obeying commandments and keeping commandments. After a year of pondering and studying what it means to “keep the commandments,” I wrote a blog article about my thoughts. I’ll include it at the end of this newsletter. If Jesus never asked us to obey the commandments, was Jesus obedient? I would say most definitely. When I brought this concept up in class recently, one of my students made this comment. “When my father was raising us, he would tell us, ‘We don’t obey commandments, we obey the Comman...

Come, Follow Me - A Simple Phrase

This morning I did a search for two words on my LDS gospel library app. "Follower" and "Leader" The results shocked me. The word "follower" appears more than 4 times as often in scriptures than the word "leader." In the New Testament the difference is more profound. Forms of the word "follow" appears 139 times, "leader", 17 times. "Follow" appears more than 8 times as often! Realizing this has caused me to want to study the concept of being a follower more deeply. I want to learn more about what Christ meant when he said, "Come, follow me." First, we need to remember that Jesus was an itinerant rabbi*. The life of a itinerant rabbi in Jesus' day was different than the rabbis we know today. These rabbis taught in the village square, under a tree, or in someone's home, taught small classes, as few as 4 to 5 people, depended on the hospitality of the community for fo...

Powered by Blogger