Remember singing the song “I would Be Like Jesus”?

Be like Jesus, this my song,

In the home and in the throng;

Be like Jesus all day long!

I would be like Jesus.

Is it possible to be like Jesus? Or was that song a mistake? Is it possible to be like Jesus in some way and not in others?

To begin with, we know that there is one way in which we can never be like Jesus–for He is God and we are not. He is our Creator, and we are only creatures. We can become partakers of His divine nature through His indwelling presence in our lives. But we will never be more than human beings. So in that sense we can never be like Jesus.

“The incarnation of Christ has ever been, and will ever remain a mystery. That which is revealed, is for us and for our children, but let every human being be warned from the ground of making Christ altogether human, such an one as ourselves; for it cannot be.” – Ellen G. White Comments, S.D.A. Bible Commentary, vol. 5, p. 1129.

But even when we limit our comparison to the human aspect of Jesus’ nature, we still find that we can never be exactly like Him. He was born “that holy thing,” sinless by nature from birth, as we noticed in Thesis 90. We were born separated from God, sinful by nature from birth. So long as we live in this world, we will have that difference in our very natures. See Christ’s Object Lessons, page 160.

Another way in which we can never be like Jesus is in our sinful past. We have a bad track record. Throughout eternity we will always find ourselves in need of the justifying and pardoning grace of Christ to cover our past sins. Since Jesus never sinned, He never had a sinful past.

However, it is still possible for us to be like Jesus! We can live as Jesus lived and work as He worked. We can have the victory over temptations in the same way He did, through dependence upon a power from above, rather than a power from within. We can live in relationship to God as He lived and thus find that the differences between us make no difference!

Jesus lived as man. Throughout His entire life on this earth, He never used His divine power until the morning of the Resurrection.

All of the miracles that Jesus performed–raising the dead, healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, casting out demons, walking on water, reading people’s minds–all were performed by His followers. The works that Jesus did were works done by His Father. Jesus said so in John 14:10,

“The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”

About eleven times the book The Desire of Ages mentions that

“divinity flashed through humanity.”

The first time was at the first cleansing of the temple, when for a moment the veil of humanity seemed to have slipped aside, and mankind saw a glimpse of the divinity within. But even there, the wording is significant. It says divinity flashed through–not forth. Even then, the Father was in control, and it was the Father’s divinity that was revealed through His Son.

But even more important than the miracles that Jesus performed is the victory that He was given in His battle with the enemy. Through communion with His Father, through dependence upon His Father, He gained the victory. And His victory can be ours. Just as the Father’s works were manifest in Jesus’ life, so He can work in us,

“to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Philippians 2:13.