the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. 1 John 2:6  NASB

In the same manner as – No one who claims to know Jesus will deny the truth of John’s statement.  If we say we have fellowship with Yeshua and that we participate in His unwavering love, then, says John, we ought to behave as He behaved.  We ought to walk in the Way.  More than that, we should be living in the same manner as He lived.  The Greek is a bit more complicated.  Literally it says, “ought as that one walked also himself to walk.”  “In the same manner as” is an attempt to capture the meaning rather than the exact wording.  But we get the picture, don’t we?  We see that if anyone is really a follower of Yeshua, that person will approach life with the same code of conduct, the same frame of mind and the same attitude of heart.  John could hardly make it any clearer when he states the opposite.  “If anyone says he knows God but doesn’t keep the commandments, that person is a liar.”

With this in mind, great New Testament scholars like F. F. Bruce can say “obedience is the full flowering of our love for Him,”[1] and “the character of God will be displayed in those who abide in Him,” and “so the life of Christ in His people will be manifested as their behaviour resembles His.”[2] Apparently everyone on both sides of the great Messianic divide agrees.  Those who call themselves by His name must demonstrate His actions.

Then how come Christians in general don’t follow the actual behaviors of Yeshua?  How come they worship on Sunday (He didn’t) and celebrate Christmas and Easter (He didn’t) and eat whatever they wish (He didn’t) and tithe according to the needs of the mortgage debt (He didn’t) and say blessing before meals (He didn’t) and pray to Mary (He certainly didn’t!) and restrict women to certain roles (He didn’t) and treat the Church as a replacement of Israel (He didn’t)?  How can great scholars like F. F. Bruce (and many more) say this and, at the same time, remain within the religion of Christianity?  The answer is paradigm shift.  What John says as a Jewish Messianic believer is transformed into something a post-apostolic age Christian would say.  In other words, John’s words are re-interpreted by the Church!  The paradigm says that John converted from Judaism to Christianity and therefore, all that John says must fit within the Christian idea of following, not the Jewish idea.

Can there be any doubt about the meaning of John’s phrase “in the same manner as” from a Hebraic point of view?  No!  The words are used over and over in the Tanakh to describe a way of life centered in Torah obedience.  That is, in fact, the way Yeshua lived.  But for most Christians these texts have been adjusted to fit the theological commitments of the Church.  The words are the same, but the meaning is radically different.  The paradigm provides the meaning.  It always has.  The question is which paradigm makes the most sense: the one that governed the culture, ethos and language of John as a Jew or the one supplied by Origen, Chrysostrom, Augustine, Aquinas and Luther?

If Jesus was a Jew, then where did Christian thinking come from?

Topical Index:  Torah, obedience, in the same manner as, 1 John 2:6, F. F. Bruce

[2] Ibid., p. 53.