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Live Like Jesus, Love Like Jesus – Image of crown of thorns

How do you live like Jesus in the modern world?

You can start to live like Jesus in the modern world by first accepting the free gift of Salvation from God. This starts you on the journey of santification. After the transformation of your heart by God, you must go and learn what it means to die to yourself. As you kill the selfishness in your life and humble yourself toward God, you will increase in loving Him more each day. As you love God, that love pours out towards other people, leading to more of the Gospel and good news of Jesus Christ spreading to others. As you live by faith and live in this new way of life, you accomplish what it means to live like Jesus.

The ways of God are not complicated, but instead simple. To the one(s) who are being called out from the darkness and into the light, they desire to know and understand more deeply. The Bible tells us that we (the ones being saved) are a sweet aroma to the ones being saved and stench to the ones who are perishing (2 Corinthians 2:15-16).

This stench and sweet aroma were at the forefront of Jesus Christ and His ministry here on earth. In order to live like Jesus in the modern world, we must embrace this reality.

For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.

2 Corinthians 2:15

The first leg of this journey starts with a gift, the free gift of salvation from a God who loves us dearly.

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1. Get Saved | Steps Of Getting Saved by Jesus Christ

First, we have to acknowledge that we are sinners. In order to be saved, we have to first recognize we are lost.

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Romans 3:23

Then we must acknowledge that the wages of our sin are death, but God is offering us a free gift of salvation (unable to be earned).

 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:23

Coming face-to-face with our punishment for sin (death), we then acknowledge the sacrifice of love God did through the work on the Cross through Jesus Christ.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

With this reality firmly in our mind, we then confess and believe in our hearts that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and we will be saved.

that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Romans 10:9-10

With God’s Holy Spirit living in our hearts through His transformation of our hearts, we then possess the basic foundation in which everything else is able to happen.

It’s important to remember it’s only through the work of God through the Holy Spirit that we are able to live like Jesus in the world. It’s nothing we can do in and of ourselves.

2. Crucify Your Flesh | The meaning of Dying To Self

What is the meaning of dying to self? It means we are no longer living for ourselves, but for Jesus Christ. It means every thought, every action, every deed is done for God instead of ourselves. His rightful place in our hearts and lives is a place of authority. Ruling over and through every aspect of our lives.

 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Galatians 2:20

He gave His life up in our place in order to redeem us. Now with redeemed lives, we live to serve God and serve others instead of serving our selfish flesh.

This isn’t because we must, but it’s because His love compels us to think differently about everything. This all is only possible through the increasing knowledge of God through His Word and in prayer.

In order to make the Bible and prayer a priority in our life, we have to love God in a deeper way, putting Him first in everything we do.


Great Audiobook I personally recommend about killing the flesh

In The Mortification of Sin, John Owen insisted on the importance of the Christian dealing effectively with their sinful tendencies and attitudes. He believed that God, through his Word and Spirit, had provided the guidelines and the power for this to be achieved. Owen effectively dismisses various excuses for not engaging in self scrutiny and yet avoids the current trend of self absorption. In so doing he provides principles to help believers live lives of holiness. Learn more..

3. Love God | Put God First In Everything

In His time here on earth, Jesus Christ showed us an example of how to put God first in everything. Often He would retreat to pray and spend time with God in prayer. His conversations were always full of grace and pointing people to the goodness of God. By Jesus’ example, we see what it means not only to truly love God but to put Him first in everything (read about the 5 components of God’s Love).

Let’s take a look at a few Scriptures that will help us see how Jesus Christ lived here on earth with God as a priority.

First Things First

Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He went out and departed to a solitary place; and there He prayed.

Mark 1:35

This passage is perfectly coupled with Matthew 6:33, in which, Jesus says to first seek the Kingdom of God. He lived the truth He preached to His followers.

What’s your morning look like? Do you wake up and spend time talking to God through prayer and reading His Word? Or are you darting out the front door to start your day?

Making God a priority starts with making God a priority first thing in the morning. What we do in the morning often shapes the rest of the day.

Jesus Prayed Often

And when He had sent them away, He departed to the mountain to pray.

Mark 6:46

Other instances of Jesus praying are found throughout the Gospels. Luke 6:12, Luke 9:18, Luke 9:28, Luke 11:1, Matthew 26:36-45. As you study these verses, you’ll see Jesus not only retreating to pray at various times but also before big events (the before picking the apostles, the transfiguration, and before teaching the Disciples how to pray).

Trusting in God and relying on Him for everything is the way we were created to be in the beginning.

Mission Focused Thinking

And He said to them, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”

Luke 2:49

This passage is lifted from the story about Jesus being lost and his parents Mary and Joseph finding him in a synagogue. Even at this young age, Jesus was mindful of His mission from His Heavenly Father and was focused on it.

Far too often we go through life without so much as a thought. It’s not all too surprising with how busy our lives can be from day to day. But we can’t let busyness distract us from our own mission in life–to spread the good news of the Gospel.

When we keep our focus on God and His desires for us, it radically changes our thinking and therefore our lives. We stop living for ourselves and start living for God and others.

Love-Others-be-like-Jesus-and-wash-feet-image-of-dirty-feet

4. Love Others | Be like Jesus to Others

Being like Jesus to others is always keeping a mindset of, ‘how can I serve this person while at the same time bestowing honor and glory unto God?’

Jesus showed compassion to others, always putting their interest before His own.

For now, I want to zero in on the night before Jesus was crucified.

Ask yourself if you knew you were going to die tomorrow, how would you spend your last hours here on earth?

It’s humbling to look at what Jesus did.

Let’s start.

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.

John 13:1

I love the way John captures the essence of Jesus in these final hours of life here on earth. He says, ‘He loved them to the end.’

When things were about to get really difficult, Jesus kept loving them to the end.

And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.

John 13:2–5

Can you imagine how it must’ve been for Jesus? Judas Iscariot was already on the path to betray Him, he had just had his last meal, and now He was laying aside his garments to do the job of a slave.

To have this humble and lowly heart is incredibly hard to imagine doing without ulterior motives.

Then what the disciples must have been thinking?

Wow.

It’d be hard to let Jesus wash my own feet, knowing that it’s God, the Savior of the world on His hands and knees serving me instead of me serving Him!

Jesus Goes on to share further on why He was doing it.

14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. 16 Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. 17 If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

John 13:14–17

This was an example to us. Not only in deed, not only in the way our Savior and Master bent a knee to serve, but also in the fact in how He spent the last evening before His death.

If we want to be like Jesus to others in our lives, we must make the decision to wake up every day and live the way He lived.

He lived to glorify God and serve others.

As we live by faith and trust in God every single day we wake up, our lives will reflect more and more what it means to live like Jesus in the modern world.

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