As in all things, Jesus set the best example for us in how to love the Father with all one’s strength. Ironically, He also showed us the key to accomplishing this is to humbly rein in one’s personal strength, acknowledge one’s human limitations, and reach for the strength only the Father could impart, because Father knows best. Or, to put it simply, to love God with all God’s strength. You’ll get it by the end, I promise.

Jesus did this by living a life of utter dependence on the Father. Though knowing He was the son of God on earth in a flesh body, Jesus said, incredibly,

By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

John 5:30, NIV

We are meant to live like Jesus lived on earth.

Like Jesus, we are meant to live a life motivated by desire to love and please the Father, and to do so with humility. As Jesus walked the streets of earth, He did not presume to judge people and situations on his own, but actively sought to know the thoughts and judgments of His heavenly Father.

The best example is in John Chapter Eight, where the Pharisees — experts in God’s religious law — tested Jesus by trying to force Him to judge an adulterous woman. Not only did the law call for such a woman to be stoned, it required the first stones to be thrown by her accusers. If Jesus wanted to pass their test, he would bend down, pick up a stone and hurl at the woman with all His might. Instead, He bent down and wrote something in the dust. Then he said to the accusers: Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.

No one throws a rock. Not one. They cannot, because they are also lawbreakers, and they know it. In fact, based on Jesus’ statement, HE is the only one present qualified to throne a stone at the adulterous woman, yet He does not. Why?

After all, this very law was instituted by God in the days of Moses, which had been codified in the Torah for hundreds of years. If anyone could be expected to honor that law, it would be Jesus, the Son of God. That is, if we are assuming stuff. Which Jesus did not.

What He knew, and man hasn’t always understood, is that God loves justice; that the law was given as a system by which to dispense justice, but true justice only resides in the heart of the Almighty God who gave the law.

Jesus did not judge, but He did bring the Father’s justice to the moment.

We cannot know what Jesus wrote on the ground, but we do know this: Jesus consulted His Father in such moments. If so, the Father showed Him was right and just, which apparently was to judge the hypocrisy and sin of the whole self-righteous religious crowd and show mercy to the woman. That crowd dispersed quietly, one by one, until Jesus and the woman were alone. Jesus asked her,

“Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

John 8:10-11, NIV

What just happened? What didn’t happen is that God did not nullify or make light of the law. He did not treat lightly the sin of adultery. What did happen was justice based on the sum of God’s all-knowing about every soul in this moment — something we cannot know.

The Bible reveals that justice is one of God’s highest values. And God knows how to serve justice with mercy in a way that never undermines that justice — a fact of which we are all blessed recipients.

Judgment happens.

We constantly and quite naturally make judgments about things all the time about people and situations. Pretty much every decision we make and action we take flows out of our judgment place.

Beloved, God does not desire puppets or mindless subjects who never think for themselves. He is training us how to be that new self, learning how to walk in true righteousness. And there will be times when that can only be done by leaning entirely upon His wisdom in the moment; probably more often than we imagine.

The Word of God speaks to us from the presumption that with the Spirit’s help, we can walk in the footsteps of Jesus. We are all in different stages of learning to relate to Him. Years ago I asked God to inform my judgments about many things I do not inquire about today, because I’ve learned what His will is in certain situations. However, where the hearts of others are concerned, I always inquire of the Lord for guidance, because I do not know their hearts as God does.

What was good for Jesus is even more needful for us.

If the Son of God in His earth suit thought it was right to check in with the Father on how to judge and evaluate stuff, how much more should we! Imitate Jesus and humble yourself, because as David wrote:

He leads the humble in justice, and He teaches the humble His way.

Psalm 25:9, NASB

To be led in justice is to be led in what is right — right for that moment, that situation, the people involved and the state of their souls. Only God knows the truth about all this, so it will always be right to confess, “I probably don’t know all I should about this; what I believe may not be right. Please show me the right thing, Lord.”

We each must go through our own process of training to live as this new self created to be like God. No teacher or even just the Bible can do this for us, because the variations of what we face and must judge in real life are endless. This life was never meant to work independent of the Spirit’s help. Father knows best, and it is the Spirit who reveals to you what the Father knows.

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This material first appeared as a Spirit Life Daily Devotion.