Our Living Blueprint

Jesus said that we are to love one another as He has loved us, and that this would be proof that we are His disciples (John 13:34,35), In so saying, He made Himself the norm for the love He spoke about. If we are going to understand what love really is, we shall find it first defined and demon­strated in the person and life of the Lord Jesus.

Jesus Christ is God with us, the God Who took to Himself our humanity and became a true member of His own creation. We are looking at the person Who was 100 percent God, but Who lived among us an authentic human life as 100 percent man. Christians often forget that Jesus demonstrated the kind of life that mankind was originally created to live; He is the living blueprint of what normal man should be like.

Life With Abba

At the heart of this normal man's life is His rela­tionship to God, His Father. Man was created a spirit being, which means that he relates primarily to God and not to the physical world. As human beings, our mental, emotional, and, more times than we realise, our physical health spring out of our spirit centre where we know and are known by God. At that centre, Jesus lived in the fullest consciousness of His Father's love.

The words Jesus spoke at age twelve, recorded in Luke 2:49, indicate to us that He already had a highly developed sense of God's love for Him. In His native Hebrew language, He called God His Abba, which is baby talk, the first word Hebrew parents expected their baby to say. The nearest English equivalent would be Daddy.

The first thirty years of His life are summed up in the affirmation from His Abba at the River Jordan when Jesus was baptised:

This Is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased (Matthew 3:17). Never once, in all the information we have concerning Jesus, did He try to earn His Father's love or even wonder whether He was loved; that was forever settled, an absolute He never questioned. He only chose to live in the consciousness of that love every hour of the day.

We can never understand His joy, peace, command of every situation, teachings, or miracles apart from this one fact. This is the canvas upon which everything Jesus said and did is painted. Jesus lived in the knowledge that He was loved; He rose in the morning to it, went through the day in the confidence of it, and lay down to sleep knowing that He and all His tomorrows were in His Abba's hands.

Life With People

Jesus loved His fellow man as humans were orig­inally intended to love, out of an inner fullness.. not out of a need to evoke love from another person. God's love is not driven or compulsive, and love which is driven, a love born of need, does not have its origin in God. God freely chose to love us; He did not need us to complete something lacking in Himself. Grace, by definition, is that free choice on God's part to love the undeserving.

Jesus responded to His Father's love by listening to His inner voice and giving instant obedience to His every direction. He taught the people and healed the sick because of the pressing urgency of His Father's love; when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion. But in implementing that love, He followed His Father's lead rather than the multitude of people who mobbed Him, each demanding that He meet their needs first. He was first committed to obeying the Father, and the people who clamoured for His attention took second place.

The Jesus we meet in the Gospels is not fretfully trying to meet everyone's needs so they will love Him and affirm Him as Messiah. He knows He is infinitely loved by His Father, and so, He does not come to the multitudes who press Him on every side with their needs with a compulsion to be loved. Rather, He comes to them having listened to the Father, knowing what His Father wants for the people, knowing what is required of Him to do, and doing it-no more and no less. His love service to His fellow man originates in His love service of listening to His Father. Doing the Father's work, He always drew on the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish it.

It may be shocking to you, but Jesus did not go through life compulsively needing the love and acceptance of every human being. He could never have told them the truth if that had been the case, for He would have needed them too much! We must face the fact that, most of the time, when people were offended by Him, it was because He didn't fit in with their agenda!

Jesus, the perfect man, only had a few people we would put into the category of human friends. John was probably the best friend Jesus had, along with Peter and James. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were a family of close friends with whom He could relax away from the crowds. When God visited earth and became a true human, He only had about six close friends! The rest either did not understand what He said or did, and were upset with Him, or they hated Him and tried to kill Him!

Emotional Reality

Humility, which is the key to peace of mind in the world, is simply living in reality, coming to terms with the way things really are. It is fully knowing our humanness and living comfortably in it. This means knowing our limitations, as well as our areas of ability, and offering all to God for His use as He lives unlimited in us. It also means recognising that others have abilities which we do not have and letting them serve us with them.

Jesus lived in the reality of His humanness and knew what the Father wanted to accomplish through Him. He never sinfully fretted that He could not do more. He was fully aware that He couldn't be what the people of Israel wanted Him to be. In fact, He was the greatest of disappointments to the Jewish people, and He knew it. They had an image of their Messiah that didn't fit reality, so they wanted Jesus to be more than He was and to give more than He could give. If He had listened to them and, out of need for their approval, tried to be all that they wanted, He would have been less than Messiah! He would have sinned and certainly not been the Saviour of God's specifications. He knew the people to whom He was sent were disappointed in Him, yet He lived in perfect peace, knowing He was completely fulfilling the Father's job description for His life.

The people of Nazareth could not handle His claims to fulfil old Testament prophecies and would have killed Him if they could have (Luke 4:28-30). As a true human, Jesus would have deep emotional hurt knowing that the boys He went to school with now wanted Him dead. But He chose to live in the reality of their inability to see God's Messiah in the familiar face of their next-door neigh­bour. He moved the centre of His operations to Capernaum and strengthened Himself with the words, A prophet Is not without honour except in his home town... (Matthew 13:57).

He was surely a disappointment to the sick in Jerusalem when He was in Galilee. Living in the reality of His humanness, He knew that he could not be everywhere and heal everyone at the same time. You can be sure someone felt that the real Messiah ought to be omnipresent to heal them now! But He was limited, a true man, and could not be in all places at once. He never felt condemned that He had to leave people with their great needs and go on to the next place; He was directed by the Father, not by the needs of the people (Mark 1:35-38).

Jesus certainly upset Salome when He did not enthusiastically embrace her agenda for her two sons, James and John, to be seated next to Him in His kingdom (Matthew 20:20-28)! She wanted more from Him than He could give her. If Jesus had had a compulsive need for her to love and affirm Him, He would either have yielded to her or been thrown into a state of depression because He had offended an important supporter.

His close friends, Martha and Mary, were disap­pointed in Him because He didn't heal Lazarus the way they expected Him to (John 11:21, John 11:32), And the mourners injairus' house wanted Him to be the consular instead of the resurrector! They could not understand why He upset the funeral by raising Jairus' daughter from the dead (Matthew 9:23-25).

Even the disciples, who were with Him so much of the time, did not understand Him. He was never what they thought He should be, because He was working from another agenda. The disciples wanted Him to be there for them more than the Father allowed, and so, in a real sense, He was never enough for them; they wanted Him to understand their needs and fulfil their agenda.

When their boat was sinking on the Sea of Galilee, they awakened Jesus and tried to lay guilt on Him, that He had not been caring for them enough: Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing? (Mark 4:38). They meant, "You should not be sleeping! You should be here for us!" He was not enough for them. Jesus refused to take the guilt they tried to heap on Him, and quietly told them that they should grow up and use their own faith! They did not want to be responsible for their own lives, but desired to be looked after

(Mark 4:37-41).

The disciples wanted Him to be a more militant Messiah, as did the people who tried to make Him king by force. They wanted Him to destroy the enemies of the Jewish people and tried to pressure Him into acting according to their racist thinking of what Messiah should be like, But Jesus would not be pressured and simply responded, You do not know what kind of spirit you are of... (Luke 9:53-55).

It is important for us not to overlook the fact that Jesus knew He was a great disappointment to the twelve. But He also knew that He had expressed the Father's love to them, and He slept at night without anxiety for having hurt and confused His closest lieutenants.

Peter, along with the others, was disappointed that He spoke of suffering and death on a cross. Obviously, a suffering Messiah was not going to be the One of power and earthly glory of Whom they had always dreamed. They were further offended when He responded to Peter's words of concern and worldly-wise advice with the rebuke, Get behind Me Satan.. .(Matthew 16:21-23).

Emotional Freedom

Because He was directed by His Father and not the demands of the people, Jesus had balance in His life and was able to take time to be alone with a few close friends without any sense of guilt. He could sleep during the daytime because He was tired, and be awakened to an emergency to calmly do what the Father wanted in the situation.

Living in the consciousness of being loved directed the way Jesus conducted Himself with other human beings. He was never anxious or fretful as to whether He had met the expectations of the people. Success in life for Him was in responding to the Father's love and doing what He wanted Him to do. To Him that was enough, and He rested with joy and peace that He had done all that was required.

His love for people must he understood as primar­ily responding in obedience to the Father's love, not in trying to meet all of the people's needs. He was totally dependent on the Father, listening only to Him and doing what He was told, however insignificant it seemed. In this relationship, He was the totally-fulfilled human being, therefore bringing glory to His Father.

Talking to an insignificant moral outcast in Samaria because His Father wanted Him to brought Him great joy (John 4:4-34), and there are many other examples of Jesus' sensitive response to God's direction in His ministry. However, the last twenty-four hours Jesus spent on earth in the company of His disciples show what the God kind of love expressed in ministry is really like.

After three years of public and private teaching, the disciples were going to the Upper Room to eat the Last Supper. They were angrily comparing themselves to each other, arguing as to who was the greatest, their eyes fixed on positions in the physical kingdom they still believed Jesus was going to set up in Jerusalem. The division was present even in Peter, James, and John, who prepared the dinner. Lest they should be perceived as less than the others, all three refused to accept the lowliest posi­tion in a Jewish household, that of the the one whose duty was to wash the feet of the other guests as they arrived.

How does Jesus react? If He had operated from the toxic, counterfeit form of love, He would have had thoughts like, "They are very upset tonight; it must be My fault! If I had been all they needed Me to be, they would be smiling and happy. I will have to take responsibility and do the job Myself." Or, "After three years of teaching them true greatness, they are arguing like this. I am a total failure." Or, "I can't stand arguing tonight-not tonight! Everything has to be just right and perfect on a night like this. I will wash their feet, and maybe that will make them happy." Instead, the Scripture takes time to tell us exactly what Jesus' attitude was:

..Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end...knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God, and was going back to God, rose from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself about. John 13:1-4

Jesus loved and served out of the fullness of knowing the love the Father had for Him. Knowing His eternal worth, He did not do what He did in order to give Himself a sense of well-being or sig­nificance, or to make Himself loveable to the disci­ples. He acted out of Who He knew Himself to be.

True Love Brings Divine Wisdom

Observe how Jesus dealt with the problem person in the group. Peter was known for his mind­less prattle and the ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Now he is boasting of how he will never forsake Jesus, and at the same time, he is cruelly accusing everyone else of leaving Him in His time of need.

The Spirit revealed to Jesus that Satan would sift Peter like wheat on the threshing floor, and in that spiritual nightmare, Peter would deny he ever knew Jesus. Knowing that Jesus loves Peter, at this crisis moment, how does real Love express Himself?

Jesus saw the others as being infinitely loved by His Father and having to make their own choices about that love, choices He could not and would not make for them. When the real Messiah turns up among us, He does not interfere with anyone's life by protecting them from their own decisions! Only false, toxic messiahs do that. Jesus supported them with counsel He received from His Abba and also with prayer-but not by trying to make their deci­sions for them or by protecting them from the results of their choices.

If His love had been a toxic counterfeit, He might have said, "Peter, it's been a long day; I want you to stay home tonight. There might be some trouble later on, and I think you would be better off getting a good night's sleep!" He would have fixed Peter's problem by taking the responsibility to shield Peter from himself.

Or, He might have prayed: "Father, don't let this happen to Peter. We have kept his big mouth out of the press, and you know he doesn't mean half of what he says. His problem is our family secret. He means well, and we don't want to embarrass him and all of us with him, do we?" Toxic lovers forever make excuses and seek to cover for the person from whom they seek approval.

Nor does He tell Peter that He will make it all right, and that after the denial, he can just go home to bed and Jesus will make a few phone calls and cover for him, paying John off to keep him from telling the rest of the disciples. Furthermore, Jesus did not tell Peter that he was not responsible because his fearfulness was an inherited weakness in his genes! Foolish! But false, toxic love will go to any lengths to shield the person it seeks to help from the pain of facing their responsibility as a person made in God's image. This counterfeit love has one goal, and that is to make the other person feel happy, for it is in their smile that it finds its own happiness.

For Jesus, however, loving the one who was about to deny Him meant a number of things. First, He assured Peter that He would pray for him, giving him the support he really needed. Jesus gave him encouragement that there was hope after the sin was over and dealt with. Then He left Peter to grow up by being forced to see himself and make his own decisions, as a responsible adult in the light of the Father's love (Luke 22:31-34).

When Peter fell, Jesus did not reject him or heap condemnation or say, "I told you so." Rather, He was there to move him into a new life of responsi­ble loving (John 21:15-17).