I received an email yesterday from Allen, one of our Catch members, who for the last 15 years has directed a passion play at his church. The play has become a hit in the community having been performed every year since it was first written and enacted 50 years ago in 1963. He identified with the difficulty of getting someone to play Judas, but he also pointed out that it’s not like everyone is necessarily dying to play Jesus either.
I understands this. Think about all the portrayals of Christ you may have seen in movies or theater and tell me if there is any one of them that you can say, “Now that is what I think Christ was like.” Our expectations of Jesus are so high that I doubt any human being could fully capture it. Then there is this little thing about our sin nature that Christ did not possess. How do you portray not having a sin nature? How do you even know what that must have been like?
Yet of all the people represented in a passion play, Jesus Christ is the one we are asked to 
most emulate. “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ” writes Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:1. In every way possible we are to follow the example of Christ.
Have you ever had anyone ridicule you or call you names? How did you react to that? Were you like Christ in the hands of the Roman soldiers? How would you respond to being falsely accused? Were you like Christ before Pilate? How about loving your wife? Are you coming from a place of giving up yourself for her as Christ did on the cross? Are you willing to die for anyone? This gets personal doesn’t it?
Certainly there were things about Jesus that make Him more real to us when portrayed as a normal human being. He did normal human things and had human feelings and 
reactions. These all come to life when His life is enacted in any way. Whether we get this right is a matter of speculation. We know what He said, but we don’t know exactly how He said it. Still we would do well to ponder what it might mean to portray Jesus in any our own normal situations. (This is starting to sound like “What Would Jesus Do” — not one of my favorite marketing tools, but when taken in the best light is basically the same thing.)
What’s missing here and in all the WWJD stuff is the Holy Spirit. It’s an important and crucial step. None of us can “play” Jesus. None of us can “be” Jesus in every situation except by the power of the Holy Spirit in us. This is not just an asterisk on the Christian life; it is the only way it will ever get lived out through us in our lifetime.
Is the Holy Spirit going to show up every time someone plays Christ in a passion play? 
Probably not. Is the Holy Spirit going to show up every day, in every situation we face ready to empower us to do God’s will? You bet, and our ability to be like Christ will depend on whether we believe that, and count on Him in everything we do.
John Fischer The Catch 
Great thoughts here today.
You have me asking a question though.
If Christ had no sin nature was he really like us? Was he really tempted? We always hear he was fully human and fully God. If however he had no sin nature then was he really fully human just because he had a body?
If however he had a the same sin nature but remained sinless, wouldn’t that be the real sacrifice?
sailaway58….. The real sacrifice required a perfect being… no defects, no flaws…. innocent, perfect. Then real blood must be shed, (“without the shedding of blood….”), then real death being completed…. then the offering to God is fulfilled….. all those thousands of little lambs, and finally, the foreshadowed One, the Real Lamb…. “it is finished”….. and then He rose!
I think that was my point.
For Christ to be human, sexual temptation had to be real. The temptation for power had to be real. Whatever his weakness of the flesh was, to be human, he had to have them.
Having sin nature and not sinning is a much more pure sacrifice.
I think the greatest question we can ask is not, “What would Jesus do?” but “Holy Spirit, what would you have me do right now in this situation.” If we ask, “What would Jesus do?” our response is going to be, “Walk on water, heal the sick, raise the dead, etc.” If we ask, “Holy Spirit, what you have me do?” the answer may be, “Pray, listen, wait, be patient, etc,” which is often what He wants us to do. Doing the work of Christ today, as a member of the Body of Christ, is not the same as doing the work of Christ if you’re Christ. Being one part of the body is not the same as being the whole body. I think that is where we make our mistake.
thanks Waitsel…. ,r
Holy Spirit what would you have me do? Pray, listen, be patient, WAIT! Thanks for that, I have practiced that but was getting away from it. It is awesome how God uses someone’s comment to get me on track.