I've been working on something for awhile, inspired by some recent political events, that I thought would be interesting to share on the blog. Because I'm not nearly done - and it's honestly felt so empowering to go through the process - today I want to share with you how you can go about creating your own study of the same sort.
What I wanted to focus on for my study were the specific commands out of the mouth of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). I've also jotted down the idea for the future to do a study on ways the early church lived the Christian life. You can choose whatever topic you want to learn more about.
Mine was pretty easy: I looked in my NASB study Bible (I could do a whole other post on why I like the NASB, but just use whatever translation you are comfortable with), opened up to Matthew, and wrote down every single statement Jesus made that was in the form of a command, all the way through the end of John. This part would be even easier if your Bible has Jesus's words in red!
Next, I looked at my long list, and marked out what was very obviously not directed to me. Please note, I wanted to be careful not to make assumptions that His commands weren't for me; so the only things I marked out were commands He made that could only apply to a specific person/time period (think "get behind Me, Satan" - I'm obviously not Satan).
Now I was left with my list of all Jesus's commands that could apply to me. I opened up a Word document and began listing the commands. If there was any ambiguity whatsoever, I sought further explanation from commentaries. I found a website where I could type in a verse, and it would pull up multiple commentaries all on one page. So I read through those, and picked and chose which descriptions made the most sense to me and/or were easiest to make applicable to my life. I copied and pasted those explanations beside the verse or passage to which they applied. I'm currently still on this step.
My goal is to end up with a comprehensive list of every command Jesus made that believers should be following - even the ones that we tend to think aren't for us, but maybe they possibly could be. Personally, I want to basically be able to "grade" myself on how I'm doing in these areas. Maybe my list could be a tool for others to see how well they're doing? I don't know. It's just a project I really felt led to undertake, and I'm enjoying/being challenged by it so much that it was worth sharing with you. I'll probably do some sort of blog series on my study when I'm done with it.
Please, please don't hear this as me saying none of us measure up and we need to berate ourselves for it! I'm using the tool to personally determine whether or not my life actually looks like it's trying to emulate the life of Christ, which is what it's supposed to do if I'm truly His follower. Think about it this way: we know from every story we've read of His ministry that Jesus spent more time with sinners than with religious leaders (it's the sick who need a doctor, not the well). Do I spend more time with sinners than with religious leaders? It's easy for us to say we know that about Jesus and think it's great; it's another thing entirely to model our lives after it.
So what do you think? Have you ever embarked on this type of study? Does something like that interest you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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