Somewhere around 20 years ago, my oldest son, himself about 20, met me at Schlotsky’s, a deli near our house. He spoke to me honestly about his concern for his recently born little brother. “Dad,” he said, “be gentle with him.” Seth’s own upbringing had not been marked by gentleness, something I regret with every bone in my body. He wanted his little brother’s experience to be different, and out of a love for me and for his brother, he told me in so many words that the family needed a dad more like Jesus.
Seeking to be more like Jesus is a worthy theme with which to end our survey of the book Stott on the Christian Life.1 We learn a great deal from John Stott. He was passionate about presenting Christianity to a skeptical world. He was committed to teaching the Bible and devoted to uniting the church. But at heart, he was a man who wanted to be like Jesus. Congregations need pastors, sons need fathers, and pastors need mentors who, whatever their deficiencies, want to be like Jesus.
To pursue Christ-likeness, though, requires a clear vision of the character of Jesus. That clarity is sadly sometimes muddied.
I came of age on the back end of the Jesus movement. Jesus seemed to fit well among the gentle flower children with bare feet and a carefree demeanor longing for peace and unity. Jesus was the clown of the musical “Godspell” who questioned modern culture by his counter-cultural life and words. This Jesus had an appeal to me.
But I soon became attached to circles which insisted that Jesus was no long-haired weakling. He was a manly-man made therefore attractive to modern men. He was the Jesus of men who could field dress a deer and keep their families in line. Today men who are told they’ve been emasculated by modern culture are given this Jesus to follow.
A Christian ministry geared toward men recently posted a meme with words set against a backdrop of what appears to be a lion’s mane. It said, “Bold-hearted men are always called mean-spirited by cowards.”2 That is, if you, men, speak boldly, those who judge you to be mean are nothing but wimps and can be discounted.
I’m puzzled and a bit angered by this. Maybe someone is being called out for being mean-spirited because he is, in fact, mean. It’s worth noting that Jesus was called many things but never mean-spirited, even by his most cowardly opponents. This vision of Christian manhood seems forced and to be drawn more from cultural relevance than historical reality.
To follow Jesus as Jesus himself commissioned his church to do requires us to be certain that the Jesus we’re following is the Jesus of history. The Jesus who in the Bible is quoted as saying “I am gentle and lowly of heart” seems far removed from such modern visions of Christian manliness.
The “bold-man caucus,” of course, can’t take me seriously. I would rather sit in a coffee shop and discuss books than sit in a blind and kill deer. I lack manly credibility.
But perhaps 18th Century American theologian Jonathan Edwards would be heard. Writing at a time when our modern culture wars were not even a twinkle in anyone’s eyes and forty years before there was a constitution to which a second amendment could be attached, Edwards wrote A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections in order to help Christians get a handle on what genuine Christian discipleship looked like. According to Edwards’ biographer and interpreter George Marsden, Edwards was insistent that the Christian believer be characterized by “the lamblike, dovelike spirit and temper of Jesus Christ.” Such a Christian, Edwards notes, would reflect the “spirit of love, meekness, and quietness, forgiveness and mercy, as appeared in Christ.”3
Christ-likeness, that is, doesn’t leave the aroma of meanness but of gentleness. To follow the Jesus of the Bible is to practice mercy, servanthood, forgiveness, and love. These were the attributes at the heart of who Jesus was, and as such they were the attributes to which John Stott aspired. I aspire to them as well.
Years ago I read a little book written by British New Testament Scholar R. T. France called I Came to Set the Earth on Fire: a Portrait of Jesus.4 In keeping with the sub-title, France creates from the gospels a portrait of Jesus that is so compelling that when I finished reading I simply resolved that I wanted to follow this man, this Jesus of the gospels. I wanted to be like him. We learn a great deal from our mentors, but our goal is not to be Spurgeon-like or Keller-like or Piper-like or even Stott-like. We are to be Christ-like.
For my son to confront me as he did, to gently call me to gentleness, required courage, not cowardice. He called out my meanness because I’d been mean. He was the bold one as he, in a Jesus-like way, called me to Jesus. I still have miles to go. The gentle boldness of friends and sons and of models like Stott urge me on.
Tim Chester, Stott on the Christian Life: Between Two Worlds (United States: Crossway, 2020).
The quote is attributed to Charles Spurgeon a 19th century London pastor. Spurgeon, though, like Mark Twain, Martin Luther, Winston Churchill, and a host of others, is often said to have said things he never really said. So, I am reticent to really burden him with this quote.
Quoted in George Marsden, Infinite Fountain of Light: Jonathan Edwards for the Twenty-First Century, (United States: Inter-Varsity Press, 2023), p. 121.
R. T. France, I Came to Set the Earth on Fire: a Portrait of Jesus, (United States: Inter-Varsity Press, 1975). It was also published as Jesus the Radical and has been republished under that title. I highly recommend it.
Randy, thank you. Blessed to begin the week listening to your podcast. Blessed. I'll be in San Diego visiting my youngest son and family.