In His Steps
Scott R. Bayles, preacher
First Christian Church, Rosiclare, Illinois
In 1896, a man by the name of Charles M. Sheldon penned the words of what has become a classic, inspirational and best-selling novel—In His Steps. In this book, Sheldon retells one of the serial sermon stories he used to read at Sunday evening gatherings. It is the story of a local church whose members pledged, for an entire year, not to do anything without first asking the question, “What would Jesus do if He were in my place?” Following our Lord’s example brought great joy to this small-town congregation, but it also brought misunderstanding, conflict and difficulty. It meant entire dedication of money, talent, career and influence to the cause of Christ.
A hundred years later, In His Steps swept the world like wildfire and became responsible for the most widely recognized acronym in Christian history: WWJD (What would Jesus do?). You remember the jewelry, bumper-stickers and t-shirts emblazoned with those four letters, don’t you? Well all of that stuff came about because of this book. The central concept behind the wildly popular WWJD fad and Sheldon’s original work is found in 1 Peter 2:21, where Peter says that Jesus “is your example, and you must follow in his steps” (NLT).
This particular phrase, however, is just a brief excerpt from an entire paragraph that Peter dedicates to what Jesus has done for the entire world and is continuing to do for those who love him. Let me read passage for you in its entirety:
God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps. He never sinned, nor ever deceived anyone. He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered. He left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly. He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed. Once you were like sheep who wandered away. But now you have turned to your Shepherd, the Guardian of your souls. (1 Peter 2:21-25 NLT)
This passage about Jesus—what he did and how he lived—provides us with three overlapping portraits of Christ. It’s as if Peter used three different brushes to paint this passage. With the first brush, Peter paints Jesus as our standard in life.
• OUR STANDARD
Just as Charles Sheldon pointed out, Peter explains “Christ himself... left you an example, so that you would follow in his steps” (vs. 21 TEV). In other words, Jesus is the standard by which every man and woman will be measured. All that Jesus did on earth, as recorded in the four Gospels, is a perfect example for us to follow. Peter reminds us that, “He never sinned, nor ever deceived anyone. He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered” (vs. 22 NLT).
Jesus was and is the supreme, spotless human being—the God-Man. Even while he was being abused, insulted, humiliated and nailed to a cross he never retaliated in kind, never reacted out of anger or even “righteous indignation.” Instead, he loved the ones who hated him. He prayed for the ones who pierced him.
How do you react when someone insults you?
How do you respond when you feel like someone you love has betrayed you?
Do you leave your case in the hands of God, like Jesus did?
Do you look anything like Jesus when people hurt you?
Most of us don’t.
Do you remember the story of Beauty and the Beast? Of course, you do. There was a time when the Beast’s face was handsome and his palace pleasant. But that was before the curse—before the shadow fell across the castle of the prince. And when the darkness fell, he hid. Secluded in his castle, he was left with a glistening snout, curly tusks and a bad mood.
But all that changed when the girl came. Stunningly gorgeous. Contagiously kind. If ever two characters lived up to their names, didn’t Beauty and the Beast? Somehow the Beauty saw beyond the hairy, drooling, roaring exterior of the beast; she saw something worthwhile. She fell in love with him. And because Beauty loved the Beast, the Beast became more beautiful.
The story’s familiar, not just because it’s a fairy tale. It’s familiar because it’s your story, too. There is a beast within each one of us. It wasn’t always so. There was a time when humanity’s face was handsome and palace pleasant. But that was before the curse—before the shadow fell across the heart of Adam. And ever since the curse, we’ve been different—beastly, ugly, defiant, angry. We do things we know we shouldn’t do and wonder why we did them.
Then came Jesus—full of grace and truth. He loved us enough to become one of us. He reaches into our hearts and gives us a new spirit. No one living today is capable of measuring up to the standard that Jesus set. Sinners need a Savior, not a standard. But once we’ve let Jesus into our hearts, a change takes place within us. We want to be more like him, to follow in his steps. And that’s what the Holy Spirit helps to accomplish within us. Charles Spurgeon, known as the Prince of Preachers, once said:
A Christian should be a striking likeness of Jesus Christ... we should be pictures of Christ... Oh! My brethren, there is nothing that can so advantage you, nothing can so prosper you, so assist you, so make you walk rapidly toward heaven, so keep your head upwards toward the sky, and your eyes radiant with glory, like the imitation of Jesus Christ! (Nelson 103)
The Bible says, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29 NIV). Robert J. Morgan once explained this verse by telling the story of a heavyset woman who went to an exercise and diet clinic. The first thing the trainer did was draw a silhouette on a mirror in the shape she wished to become. As she stood before the mirror, she bulged out over the silhouette. The instructor told her, “Our goal is for you to fit this shape.”
For weeks the woman dieted and exercised. Each week she would stand in front of the mirror, but her volume, while deceasing, still overflowed. And so she exercised harder and dieted more rigidly. Finally one day, to her delight, as she stood in front of the mirror she was conformed to the image of the silhouette. (Nelson 103)
It takes time and trust in the work of the Spirit to conform to the image of God’s Son. The discipline of sorrow and suffering, the exercise of pain and trials conform us to his image. What Jesus is by nature, we can be by grace—as we follow in his steps! And so, the first picture we have of Christ is that he is our standard in life. Removing his second brush from his painter’s apron, Peter next paints Jesus as our substitute in death.
• OUR SUBSTITUTE
Listen to what Peter says in the next verse: “He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed” (vs. 24 NLT).
This is where the correlation with Beauty and the Beast ends. In the fairytale, the beauty kisses the beast. In the Bible, the Beauty does much more. He becomes the beast so the beast can become the beauty. Jesus changes placed with us. We, like Adam, were under the curse, but “Christ took away the curse... He changed places with us and put himself under that curse” (Galatians 3:13 NCV). The sinless One took on the face of a sinner so that we sinners could take on the face of a saint.
Scholars refer to this changing of places as the doctrine of substitutional atonement. He “carried our sins in his body” and “by his wounds you are healed.” He changed places with us. In his best-selling book, Next Door Savior, Max Lucado captures the concept of substitutional atonement in a chapter titled The Trashman.
He describes a soot-stained city, with darkened alley-ways and unbroken clouds, whose citizens all lug behind them Hefty-sized trash bags. They suffer from aching backs, stiff shoulders and raw hands—all because of the garbage bags. An old man, face ravished with wrinkles, carries a bag full of regrets. As a young father, he worked many long hours. His children don’t love him. A teenage girl totes a trash-bag full of rage. Rage at her father. Rage at her mother. A woman slings a sack of shame—too many hours in the wrong arms. Last year. Last night… shame.
Then a young man in his thirties comes to town—tall with angular cheeks and bright, kind eyes. Unlike everyone else, he doesn’t bear any garbage. He doesn’t have any. One by one, he invites the people to give meet him at the landfill Friday afternoon and give him their trash. With hope just barely outweighing hopelessness, people begin flocking to the site.
The landfill is tall with trash—paper and broken brooms and old beds and rusty cars. The line to the top is long. All wait in silence, stunned by what they hear—a scream, a pain-pierced roar that hangs in the air for moments, interrupted only by a groan. then another scream.
His.
As they draw nearer, they know why. He kneels before each, gesturing toward the sack, offering a request, then a prayer. “May I have it? And may you never feel it again.” Then he bows his head and lifts the sack, emptying its contents upon himself—the selfishness of the glutton, the bitterness of the angry, the possessiveness of the insecure. He feels what they felt, as if he’d lied or cheated or cursed his Maker.
One woman hesitates, but his eyes compel her to step forward. he reaches for her trash and takes it from her. With his head down, he empties her shame upon his shoulders. Then looking toward heaven with tear-flooded eyes, he screams, “I’m sorry!”
“But you did nothing!” she cries. Still, he sobs just as she had sobbed into her pillow a hundred nights. That’s when she realizes that his cry is hers. Her shame is his. With her thumb she touches his cheek, and for the first time in a longtime, she has no trash to carry.
People watch at the base of the hill as he is buried under a mound of misery. For a while he moans. Then nothing. Just silence. For days the people linger around the landfill—sharing stories, rejoicing in their trashlessness, but morning the man who took it. They almost miss the moment. It’s the young girl with all the rage that sees it first. She doesn’t believe her eyes. Her words are soft at first, intended for no one, “He’s standing.”
Then aloud for friend, “He’s standing.”
And louder for everyone, “He’s standing!”
All turn and see him silhouetted against a golden sun—standing indeed.
The paradoxes of the cross never cease to amaze me. Christ was wounded that we might be healed. He died that we might live. The Bible says, “For the wages of sin is death—that’s what Jesus paid—but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord—that’s what Jesus offers” (Romans 6:23 NIV). And that’s what substitutional atonement is all about.
In life, he was our standard; in death, he was our substitute. But now Peter paints with one last brush, revealing that Jesus is our Shepherd in heaven.
• OUR SHEPHERD
This is the third portrait of Christ. Peter writes, “You were like sheep that wandered away, but now you have come back to the Shepherd and Protector of your souls” (vs. 25 NLT).
Every lost sinner and is like a sheep gone astray—ignorant, lost, wandering, in danger, away from the place of safety, and unable to save themselves. But then Jesus came along and he said, “I am the good shepherd… My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:11,27-28 NASB).
The image of Jesus as our Shepherd has been burned into the collective consciousness of Christians everywhere. We can almost see him sitting in the Palestinian pasture, holding his staff in one hand while lightly petting the head of a little lamb with the other. It is said that shepherds in the East could name each sheep and that each sheep would respond to the shepherd calling its name. They followed their shepherd, just as we are called to follow our Savior. Jesus described a scene of sheep safely grazing in lush pastures. The great Shepherd clearly conveyed the idea of real contentment. When we place ourselves under Jesus’ care, we discover true freedom in and through him. On our own we frantically seek security, even though the threat of death overshadows us; in Christ we find the eternal life that he freely gives to us. Freedom in Christ does not mean being left to our own devices, but instead means living within the boundaries of his plans and directions. But as our Shepherd, Jesus promised total protection. That doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen; the will. That doesn’t mean trials won’t come; they do. Rather, Jesus is the “Protector of your souls.”
So many Christians go through life never truly certain of their salvation, always feeling as though they’re only one mistake away from being unforgiven. But our salvation and security is found, not in our own ability or performance, but in the strength of our Shepherd to keep us safe. As the sheep of his fold, we are safe and secure in the grip of his grace. Consider what the Bible says, “Yes, I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor ruling spirits, nothing now, nothing in the future, no powers, nothing above us, nothing below us, nor anything else in the whole world will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39 NIV).
Corrie ten Boom once put it this way: “When Jesus takes your hand, He keeps you tight. When Jesus keeps you tight, He leads you through your whole life. When Jesus leads you through your life, He brings you safely home” (Nelson 381).
Conclusion:
With this three-fold portrait of Jesus before us, it is no wonder we call him Savior. In life, Jesus is our Standard—the example which we must all follow. In death, Jesus is our Substitute—the spotless Lamb of God, who bore our sins in his body on the cross. In heaven, Jesus is our Shepherd—the Guardian of our souls.
Invitation:
Following in Jesus’ steps, for Charles Sheldon, meant counting the value of his famous book not in dollars earned, but lives touched. For all of us, following Jesus means following one step at a time. If you need help taking the next step in your relationship with Jesus, whatever step that may be, let us know—let us help.
