“Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did.” 1 John 2:6

My 8 year old son recently began attending a cell group (Bible study). Each week they are given a verse of scripture to memorize. I am absolutely amazed at how quickly he is able to memorize the scripture verses. He looks at it only once or twice and it becomes engraved in his memory.

As we drove home after his study this past Saturday, I asked him what verse he had to memorize for next week and he told me 1 John 2:6. He opened up his Bible and by the time we got home (less than ten minutes), he had it memorized. Once we got home I said to him, “let’s look at your Bible and see what that means.” He quickly became frustrated and said “I’ve already memorized it. That’s enough!”

I thought about my son’s reaction and realized how we Christians tend to react the same way he did when we are asked to look a little more deeply to what the Word of God tells us about how we are to live our lives or when we are confronted with, perhaps, conduct unbecoming of what our character should be. A knee-jerk reaction for some is “I go to church on Sunday. I read my Bible. That’s enough!” Like my 8 year old, we sometimes receive the Word in our minds, but not in our hearts.

The last couple of Sundays in church we have been studying the Beatitudes, you know, “blessed are the poor in spirit . . . blessed are those who mourn . . . blessed are the meek . . .,” etc. I’ve read these verses many times over the years and even had to memorize the entire “Beatitudes” for a class last year, but it seems that until last week I had received the words in my mind and had never taken them to heart. But that first Sunday these verses brought me great conviction. While a lady sitting behind me was agreeing aloud with all the pastor said, saying “Amen,” “glory to God,” clapping at all the right times and laughing at his jokes, I sank down in my seat quietly fighting back the knot that had developed in my throat and the tears I couldn’t seem to keep from streaming down my face. (I think I am going to start minimizing my use of mascara on Sunday mornings.)

The Beatitudes took on a new meaning for me that Sunday. The Beatitudes are, as far as I can understand, the essence of what every Christian must look like. They are as a whole the embodiment of Christian character. I was so convicted because while I can claim that one or two traits are a part of my own character, I am very much lacking in others. In a prior blog I stated that if I could ask Jesus for one thing it would be to be able to love as He did. And I realized that  Sunday that the reason I have not been able to “walk as Jesus did,” to have the compassion he had, to simply live my life fully, is because I lack the character traits set out in the Beatitudes. See, it’s not a matter of being able to manifest one or two characteristics. Rather, it’s about Christians manifesting all of the characteristics.

While these traits do not come naturally (at least not to me), if Jesus gives them to us it is because we can apply them to our lives, so that we may live them out and so that we may practice them daily. If we claim that we “live in him” then we “must walk as Jesus did.” And it is through grace that we will, if we allow the Word to enter our hearts, develop the characteristics of Christ-likeness and live as the blessed of God.

P.s. I’m learning some things about how God sees my behavior (as His “child”) when I pay some attention to the childish behavior of my 8 year old. Yikes!