If I were your example, how would you feel if I said ‘you must love me with all your heart and soul and strength’? I imagine you would walk away in anger.

Then if I said I were your example, and I raised the dead, healed the sick, walked on water, stopped storms and fed five thousand on a packet of hot cross buns and a tin of sardines, it would make you feel terribly inadequate.

You need to have some hope of doing what your example does. If you don’t, you feel betrayed and mocked by a standard you can never hope to reach.

So how would you feel if I said ‘we cannot be friends unless you do everything I tell you to do’? Yet that is precisely what Jesus said…

“You are my friends if you do what I command.” John 15:14

Jesus never claimed to be our example. He claimed to be our Saviour.

“The Father sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world” 1 John 4:14

He has my unlimited gratitude!

Elizabeth Price reprice@dragnet.com.au