To acquire the mind of Christ one has to take the time to seriously reflect on the teachings of Jesus and then make a strong commitment to live in accord with these teachings. Many Christian people, because they feel that His teachings are too challenging and consider them impossible to embrace, attempt to water down His teachings. They find excuses for not loving their neighbors as themselves and, most assuredly, not loving their enemies. It seems that their thinking becomes much like the thinking of our modern society that seems to espouse the philosophy of “kill first or be killed.” This type of thinking really doesn’t fit into the Jesus way of thinking.

I’m sure many will say that to think and live like Jesus is very scary, especially in our modern world where it seems only the strong will survive. Modern times are not, however, very different from those when Jesus lived. Despite the pressure from His own people not to upset things by challenging the status quo, Jesus taught that “those who live by the sword will die by the sword” and that “we must love our neighbors and enemies” in order to truly be children of God.

Living in accord with the teachings of Jesus can be, and probably will be, challenging. It will probably mean not buying into the thinking of our modern society which promotes anything but love of neighbors and enemies. It may be difficult, and probably will be, to reject the modern world’s preoccupation with pleasure and instant gratification and the philosophy of looking out for NUMBER ONE, namely yourself. But living like Jesus is possible if you believe that He is God Incarnate and that revealed the right way to live as a spiritual, human person.

I do believe that many people tend to keep playing a tape in their minds that says, living like Jesus is impossible for me. This then becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you think something is impossible you can be sure that you will never achieve it. What we must say to ourselves is this: the Jesus way of living is the way God wants me to live. I therefore choose to do all in my power to live like Jesus, knowing that God will help me. It is a matter of really believing that God has truly revealed to us how to live in order to fulfill the reason why we have been created.

Like all prophets, Jesus believed He had to live in a certain way in order to fulfill His Father’s wishes.