Christlike: the bare essentials

The last few posts on being Christlike have been quite long and wordy. I want to take this forward a little, but to do so I think I need to summarise. I shall allow myself only six bullet points.

If being Christlike is all about embodying the overarching story of Jesus – His incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection, then that means the following:

Being Incarnate

• HUMILITY. Not clinging to any power or authority we may have, but rather being willing to lay it aside in service of God and others, pointing away from ourselves and towards God.
• ENTERING. Not staying separate from the people we seek to serve, but coming alongside, entering in and taking part in their situations for ourselves, not in condescension but in solidarity.

Being Crucified

• HOLINESS. Being ruthless in shunning sin, rejecting anything which is unworthy of God, and rooting out all sources of impurity in our lives.
• FOOLISHNESS. Dying to all the ways the world thinks and refusing to adopt purposes, methods and attitudes that are not God's, even though that is foolishness in the world's eyes.

Being Resurrected

• EMBRACE. Choosing to embrace and adopt God's worldview, seeking to see things in new ways through His lens not our own, and so living in new, exciting and counter-cultural ways.
• POWER. Seeing things change and happen instead of embracing the status quo, because the power of the empty tomb is alive in us and great power lies within.

In the next few weeks, I'm going to try to apply those characteristics to various activities and areas of Jesus' life, to see if I might be onto something, and then apply them to some areas of life now to see how we might be able to embody Jesus more fully ourselves.

The whole 'Christlike' series can be found here.

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