LISTEN to MORE LIKE JESUS
“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” – Mohandas Gandhi


Several years ago, I came across this rather challenging quote from Ghandi. Is this really true of Christians? Is this how the world really sees us? In the years since, without much warning, this quote has sprung up and occupied the corridors of mind. Ghandi’s words have come to light as my friends have become more and more reluctant to identify themselves with this word — Christian. I’ve thought of his words as news outlets all across the globe have run thousands of stories of “Christian” leaders and groups being anything and everything but Christian.

“Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

Those words haunt me.

But it hasn’t always been this way. In Acts 11, the people of Antioch could not think of any other way to describe what they saw in the lives of their friends who had become followers of Jesus. When they tried to describe this profound transformation, the only description they could muster up was that these people had become just like Christ. So they called them Christians which literally meant “like Christ.”

Ghandi’s quote challenged me because on so many levels it is true of Christians today. Many people who readily identify themselves as Christians are not like Jesus Christ at all. Their lives do not resemble the life of Jesus in any way. Sure they go to church, give a little money, and serve when it is convenient, but that is where the comparisons stop. No one would ever accuse most American church goers of being anything like Christ.

But the real troubling reality of Ghandi’s words is that they don’t simply indict the Christian masses, they have often indicted me. They’ve forced me to ask a simple question:

Am I really like Jesus Christ?

1 John 2:6 says that “whoever claims to live in Jesus must walk as Jesus did.”

This is not about the Christian masses. This is about you.

So for the next couple of months we are going to challenge one another to ask one simple question … what if I really became more like Jesus? What if I became more like Jesus in speech, thought,and action? What if I became more like Jesus in the way I treated the sinner and the saint? What if I became more like Jesus towards the poor and hurting? What if I became more like Jesus in suffering, mercy, forgiveness, and grace?

What if I really became more like Jesus? 

I hope you will join us as we begin this time in the scriptures together starting Sunday, August 13th.

Dave Clayton

Leader | Vision and Teaching at Ethos Church