To Walk as Jesus Walked

Jesus Walked in MEEKNESS

If you’re among the 360 million people worldwide who use a fitness tracker, you know how many steps you take on any given day. Health experts recommend 10,000 per day, but the reality is somewhere between 3,000-4,000.

Jesus didn’t have the luxury of a pedometer. People did not conceive of the concept until the 1400s when Leonardo da Vinci sketched a device to track a Roman soldier’s steps.

Even a cursory read through the Gospels and you can’t help but notice: Jesus moved around. A lot. He thought nothing of traveling from Judea to Galilee, even taking the hardest route through Samaria. A week’s journey of some 250,000 steps.

The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the one you’d expect to find riding in the most opulent chariots of the day, instead walked 50,000 steps a day. A softly spoken word would have had any beast of burden bowing their back to Him. Yet the one time He did ride, it was on a donkey.

Jesus walked in meekness.

I was originally going to use the word humility. However, while meekness often results in being humble, there is an important distinction.

Humility is an attitude toward oneself. While meekness is a behavior or action toward others.

Many misunderstand meekness as weakness or submissiveness. In reality, it signifies a quality of gentle strength, humility, and self-control, not a lack of power or assertiveness.

Some see Jesus as a religious weakling. Spinelessly allowing the abuses that were heaped upon Him. In truth, Jesus yielded His divine power to fulfill God’s purpose.

“Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.” (John 10:17-18)

Jesus modeled meekness, power under God’s control so we can do the same.

Over and over, scripture exhorts us to put on meekness. In Colossians, Paul says, “put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering;”

Peter goes so far as to lay it as part of the foundation from which we give our defense of the Gospel, the hope within us. (1 Peter 3:15)

It is especially imperative to respond with meekness (not weakness) when insulted, bruised, or treated wrongly.

Why?

Because it shows we trust God.

Biblical meekness goes beyond one’s outward behavior and, as Vine’s NT puts it, “it is an inwrought grace of the soul; and the exercises of it are first and chiefly towards God.”

Just as Jesus put Himself and His divine power under the Father’s control, we, too, are called to surrender to the will of the Father.

“Let Christ Himself be your example as to what your attitude should be. For He, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to His prerogatives as God’s equal, but stripped Himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man:” (Phil 2:5-7).

We are no longer our own. “For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (1Cor 6:20) God is our Father, and we can trust Him to meet our every need.

Unrighteous anger and worry often result from having our needs violated or unmet. But if we trust God for our needs—our finances, our friends, and our reputation—we have the power to respond in meekness.

What about you? Are you angry or worried? Have you responded to someone in anger or frustration?

Examine the situation. Does it reveal a lack of trust in your Heavenly Father?

If so, spend the time you need reading your Bible and praying to realign your will with God’s.

Shalom.

Photo Credit: @neom on unsplash