Walk in the Same Way

This claim is spoken with deep gratitude, and it deserves to be heard that way: “Yeshua kept everything we cannot keep, and that has become the believer’s. So all we need to do is receive.”

Part of this sentence is simply true, and that is the place to begin. Yeshua did keep His Father’s commandments. He kept them all, and He said so Himself. It is also true that salvation is received, not earned. As Chapter 1 showed, a sinner is justified by grace, through faith, as a free gift.

The question, then, is not whether Yeshua kept the commandments, for He did. The question is why He kept them: so that we would not have to, or for some other reason. The claim gives one answer, and the New Testament gives its own, more than once.

Just As

We begin with Yeshua’s own words about His keeping:

John 15:10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay(love); just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His agape(love).

This verse appeared in Chapter 2 in the third step of salvation. Here the small words that hold it together deserve attention: “just as.” The Greek is kathos καθώς kath-oce', in the same way as, to the same measure as.

Yeshua sets two sentences side by side. The first, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My agape(love),” is about the disciples. The second, “I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His agape(love),” is about Himself. The words “just as” tie them together, so that what He did with His Father’s commandments becomes the pattern for what His disciples do with His.

Yeshua does not say, “I have kept My Father’s commandments, so you will not need to keep Mine.” He says that His keeping is the model of theirs. His keeping is offered not in place of ours but as the shape of ours.

A Copy to Trace

Peter says the same thing in plainer words:

1 Peter 2:21 For to this you have been called, because Messiah also suffered for us, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His steps —

Peter was writing about suffering, and he points to Messiah’s suffering. Yet what he says Messiah left behind is an example, “so that you might follow in His steps.”

The word for “example” is hypogrammos ὑπογραμμός hoop-og-ram-mos', and it comes from the schoolroom. When a child was learning to write, the teacher wrote out the letters at the top of the tablet, and the child copied them, stroke by stroke, underneath. That model at the top of the page was the hypogrammos.

Picture that child. The teacher has written a perfect line of letters. Suppose the child says, “The teacher has written it perfectly. That is enough. I don’t need to write anything.” Any teacher would smile and hand the pencil back. The perfect line was not written so that the child could put the pencil down. It was written so that the child would know how to hold it.

Peter’s second picture, “follow in His steps,” makes the same point. The word for “steps” is ichnos ἴχνος ikh'-nos, a footprint or track. When someone walks ahead through deep snow, he leaves prints, and the one behind him puts his feet into them. The prints were made to be walked in.

The Way He Walked

John adds a third witness:

1 John 2:6 Whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked.

“Ought” is opheilo ὀφείλω of-i'-lo, the word for owing a debt. Whoever says he abides in Messiah owes it to walk the way Messiah walked, and John does not leave this as a suggestion.

We have already heard how Yeshua walked, for He said that He kept His Father’s commandments. He also told us what He came to do with the Torah:

Matthew 5:17 Do not think that I came to abolish the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) or the prophets — I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.

We studied this verse in Book 1, so here we need only one line from it: “I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.” The One we are told to walk like came not to abolish the law. If we say we abide in Him, John says, we owe it to walk as He did.

Paul names where all of this is heading:

Romans 8:29 Because those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.

God’s purpose is not that His Son would live a life of obedience while His other children stay exactly as they were. His purpose is that the children would come to look like the Son, “the firstborn among many brothers.” A firstborn goes first, and the brothers come after him, bearing the same family likeness. Being conformed to His image is walking as He walked.

Received, and Then Walked

Where, then, does the claim go wrong? It does not go wrong in its gratitude or in its insistence that salvation is received. It goes wrong in its final phrase: “all we need to do is receive.”

Paul put the receiving and the walking in the same passage. Many readers know Ephesians 2:8-9, which we read in Chapter 1: saved by grace through faith, “not as a result of works.” But Paul did not stop there, and the very next verse continues:

Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Messiah Yeshua for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Read the two parts together. In verses 8 and 9 we are saved by grace, not as a result of works. In verse 10 we are created in Messiah “for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” The works do not produce the salvation; the salvation produces a person made for the works. Nor did we invent the works, for God prepared them beforehand, and our part is to walk in them.

This is how the two halves of the truth fit together. If someone says, “Messiah accomplished it all, and now we follow Him with all our strength in the love we have received,” we can say amen to every word. Messiah’s work is complete, and nothing we do adds to it. The one thing the claim misses is that He did not walk the path so that we could stay home. He walked it so that we would know where the path is.

The line at the top of the page was written perfectly, and now the pencil is in our hand.

Yet one more step is often taken at this point. “Fine,” someone says. “What the Spirit writes on the heart is love, the love of the Son of God, who died for me. That is the true law, not the Ten Commandments.” It is a warm and moving thought, and it leads to the question of what the Bible itself says love is.