A Christological Mistake

In 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul insists that Christians imitate his example as he imitates Christ.  Although many Christians cannot even point to an exact book, passage, or verse that addresses the sinlessness of Jesus at all when cornered (as is true of other genuine and erroneous doctrines), the moral perfection of Jesus is a central idea of the New Testament, even if it is rarely mentioned directly.  What this does not mean is that every action performed by Christ is obligatory or that every act not performed by Christ is not obligatory.  Indeed, many of Christ's acts in the gospels are at most supererogatory--that is, morally good but not intrinsically obligatory (feeding specific crowds and forgiving sins are examples of this).

There is no Biblical or extra-Biblical evidence that Jesus married, drove a car, or used the internet, but singleness, driving, and internet use are objectively nonsinful on the Biblical worldview (Deuteronomy 4:2).  While none of these examples are necessary to show that it does not follow from Jesus being morally perfect that one must not deviate from any course of action he took, they do establish that the behaviors of Jesus are not especially relevant to Biblical moral epistemology.  Mosaic Law, which Jesus affirmed core tenets of (such as in Matthee 15:1-9), is the primary source of moral revelation in the Bible, and Jesus does nothing to dispute this.

It is one thing to call Jesus sinless, but it is another to look to his situational, often supererogatory behaviors rather than the moral ideas of the Old Testament which he affirms in the New Testament.  Christians in general are quick to point to principles Jesus vaguely acts on in the gospel accounts, but they are slow to look first to the very laws that Jesus came to represent.  No one can construct a sound and complete Biblical framework of social justice, criminal justice, government, sexual ethics, and so on simply by appealing to the words of Jesus.  In fact, the New Testament as a whole is utterly vague in its moral teachings because many of the specifics are already detailed in the Old Testament.

The person who says he or she just wants to "show the love of Jesus" cannot even firmly define which acts are and are not loving without knowing what rights the Bible assigns to their fellow humans, and nowhere does Jesus thoroughly elaborate on any of these rights.  One can identify numerous rights that the Torah describes as being possessed by all humans--and the person who truly loves their neighbor will treat others justly in accordance with these rights rather than in accordance with either party's conscience.  Gratuitous kindness is gratuitous; appealing behavior is subjective.  Until Christians on the right and left stop looking to the New Testament, including the words of Jesus, for the Bible's primary moral instructions, they will be forced to live out vague, arbitrary, and irrelevant ideas about love and justice.