“For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps” (1 Peter 2:21 NKJV). Faithful Christians must always try to walk in the steps of Jesus, but no one will ever fully succeed. The reason is that Jesus is perfect. Just look at verse 22 that follows the above Scripture. “Who committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth.” Hebrews 4:15 says of Jesus that He was “…tempted as we are, yet without sin.” No matter how hard we try to please God, we, though Christians, will still sin. God knew that before He created us, and that is why He provided a Savior for us.
Yet, that doesn’t diminish our need to live the way God has told us to live. Not only did He give us a pattern to follow in the steps of His perfect Son, but He gave us the most beautiful book ever written, the Bible! Because of that book, we cannot plead ignorance in knowing what God expects of us. We cannot say that we weren’t given an opportunity to walk in the steps of Jesus.
When I was a child and when we were blessed with snow, whenever an adult walked through the snow in front of me, I tried my best to walk in his footprints. Many of us have done that. We didn’t do that because we despised the snow, because we loved playing in the snow, having snowball fights and building snow forts. We tried to walk in those footprints because someone else had made a pathway through the snow, and we wanted to see if we could walk in those same steps.
That’s the way we should follow Jesus. We need to follow in His steps. He has paved the way for us. He has shown us how to walk a straight and narrow path without wavering. He showed us it could be done! The writer of Hebrews exhorted brethren to “…make straight paths for your feet” (12:13). In other words, keep on the right path because if you don’t, you’ll be on an imperfect path that leads to sin.
We’ve all seen little babies learning to take their first steps. It’s not easy for them, and it can be a frightening stage in their early lives. When a baby takes his first steps, he is probably going to take a tumble. He or she may cry but will get up and brush away the hurt. Babies get up and go again! A baby doesn’t begin walking successfully overnight. It may take days of encouragement, falling, getting up and going again. Learning to walk accords with the truism, “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again!”
There are many things in life that may cause us to follow the same kind of determination and exercise that a baby must follow when learning to walk. However, nothing in this life at which we try to succeed is as important as learning to be faithful children of God. Christians are never told that when they become children of God that they will never sin again. In fact, Paul cautioned the Roman brethren, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” (Romans 6:1-2). The implication is that we will continue to sin, but we are not to test God’s patience. When Christians fall, they must always get up, dust themselves off by asking for forgiveness and, like Paul, continue to “…press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14).
In Jesus, Christians have this assurance: “My little children, …if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:1-2). Sometimes we sing this song: “Footprints of Jesus that make the pathway glow; we will follow the steps of Jesus where-e’er they go.” Faithful Christians must always walk in the steps of Jesus.
