By Nathaniel Marino
Many people, Christian and not, have heard the refrain “What would Jesus do?” or the slang “WWJD.” The problem with the phrase is not that it is false—Jesus really is the great ethical exemplar, and there are worse instincts than asking what he would do. The problem is that the question is too narrow in its scope. When we fix our eyes upon Jesus, we should not be examining only his behavior, any more than we should restrict ourselves to only his expressions, or his teachings, or his comfort. When we look upon Jesus our Lord we should see him for all that he is—the full expression of humanity in perfect unity with the divine.
So the question should not be narrowly “What would Jesus… fill in the blank?” It should be more holistically “Who is Jesus?”—and from there we ask what he would do, say, think, and feel. But here is where we must turn from vision to demand. Having beheld him, we cannot leave the matter as a picture we admire. We must become what we have envisioned.
Beholding becomes becoming
Paul makes the movement explicit: “we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory” (2 Cor 3:18)1. Contemplation is not the end of the sentence. Beholding is the means by which we are changed into what we behold. The same logic runs through the renewal texts: believers “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Col 3:10), and are called to “put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:24). Alongside these stands the New Testament’s call to imitatio Christi, in which believers are exhorted to pattern their lives after Christ’s humility and sacrificial loving-kindness (Eph 4–5; Phil 2:3–11).
This call to imitation does not demand exact correspondence with every particular of Christ’s life, as though his unique existence could be literally replicated by us. It means rather that Christ, in revealing true humanity, establishes a pattern to be reproduced in the lives of those who belong to him. This is the difference between imitation and impersonation. We are not asked to reenact his biography. We are being remade in his likeness.
The future has already begun
It is tempting to file all of this under “eventually”—a destiny to be received at the resurrection, with the present left to grim maintenance in the meantime. But Scripture will not permit the delay. A thing’s telos reveals not only its future but its present orientation, and if our destiny is conformation to the image of Christ, then Christology tells us not only what we will become but how we were created to function now.
Paul’s own reasoning works this way. The Spirit who raised Christ from the dead already indwells us (Rom 8:11), so the life of the age to come is not merely anticipated but already operative, already exerting real and transforming pressure on the present. Because Christ’s death and resurrection have ruptured the old order, the new self is not a future issue but a present wardrobe: “you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). We live after Christ now—not waiting to do so in the age to come. We are free and alive in Christ now.
Hebrews holds the tension without flinching. Those sanctified by Christ’s offering are described simultaneously as holy and as being made holy, as those who have been perfected and as those still growing toward perfection. That paradox is a pastoral gift in both directions. It refuses the moralism that measures us by our last performance, and it refuses the despair that concludes nothing is actually happening. Something is happening. It is not finished. Both are true at once, and neither cancels the other.
Conformity as the healing of the whole person
This is why conformity to Christ is not one item on a list of spiritual disciplines but the shape of healing itself. Notice what the New Testament’s conformation texts touch. Identity is reconstituted, as those who once located themselves in Adam’s story are relocated in Christ’s. Agency is restored, as the Spirit reconstitutes the capacity for purposive obedience that Sin had disabled. Community is reordered, since Colossians 3 and Ephesians 4 move immediately from the new self to the practices of forgiveness, truthful speech, patience, and love. The body is included, not left behind, because our destiny is bodily resurrection and not escape from embodiment. Affections, thoughts, will, relationships, and flesh are all inside the scope of the promise.
Behavior modification cannot reach that far, which is finally why “What would Jesus do?” is insufficient as a program of healing. It addresses the outermost layer of a person while leaving the deeper layers—what she believes she is, whom she belongs to, where she is going—untouched. A Christological anthropology addresses the person entire, because the Christ we are being conformed to assumed a complete human nature and healed what he assumed.
It is worth adding that this is not a vision reserved for believers alone. Every human being is patterned after Christ’s humanity and called toward the destiny revealed in him, even though not all will finally arrive there. Any discipline that studies human persons in the present, including psychology, is studying creatures whose nature is oriented toward a destiny that transcends what empirical investigation alone can disclose. Natural capacities can be studied in natural terms, and the disciplines have much value to say about them. But those capacities are penultimate realities meant to serve a higher end, and it is only in light of that end that the full significance of the person in front of us comes into view.
Become what you behold
So the exhortation is this: do not settle for a vision. Look long at Christ—his origin as the archetype you were made after, his life as the pattern you were designed for, his likeness as the end you are guaranteed—and then live as one who has seen him. Put on the new self, because you already wear it. Forgive, because you have been relocated into the story of one who forgave. Pray as he prayed, depend on the Spirit as he depended, and orient your whole life toward the end that has already begun. And do it without fear that the project depends on your consistency.
As Dane Ortlund put it:
“Christ loved his own all the way through death itself. What must that mean for you? It means, first, that your future is secure. If you are his, heaven and relief is coming, for you cannot be made un-his. He himself made you his own, and you can’t squirm out of his grasp. And it means, second, that he will love you to the end.”2
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He became like us so that we might become like him. That is our hope, and it is the healing of the whole person.
[1] All scripture references taken from the 2011 New International Version of the Holy Bible.
[2] Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (Crossway, 2020), 211.
Nathaniel (Nate) Marino, MA, is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Houston Christian University, with graduate degrees in Research and Experimental Psychology (Rutgers University–Camden) and Theological Studies (Houston Christian University). His research centers on social and personality psychology, with particular focus on moral cognition and behavior and the development of character and virtue. He is also deeply interested in the philosophical and methodological foundations of modern psychology, particularly in reframing them through a distinctly Christian worldview. Flowing from this, Nate is committed to pursuing psychological inquiry that is Christ-centered and biblically and theologically grounded. In future work, he hopes to explore how a Christ-centered psychology might shape Christian culture and church life, including discipleship, spiritual formation, church governance, evangelism, and practical theology.
