Living as the Living Jesus

One objective all Christians hold in common is to grow in maturity and faithfulness. Achieving that goal, however, is a constant and difficult challenge. Ethicist Kenneth W. M. Wozniak shows how the author of the epistle to the Hebrews argued that the mature Christian life is a disciplined one lived consistently in the moral realm of human experience. Although the authority for such living traditionally has been the picture of Jesus as found in the Gospels, that picture is only a partial and incomplete one. It does not include Hebrews' essential depiction of the current, living Jesus--both exalted Son and High Priest--who is the focus of worship and whom Christians claim to follow. Wozniak argues that only the often-ignored Jesus of Hebrews, when coupled with the Jesus pictured in the Gospels, is the complete Jesus Christians must obey, emulate, and implant within themselves if they are to live as mature followers of Jesus; it is to this Jesus that they must respond if they are to live faithfully as those who claim "Jesus is Lord!"