Jesus the Great Philosopher by Jonathan T. PenningtonSample

Day Two: The Christian Philosophy of Jesus Is the Ultimate “Guru” 

Because we have lost the image of Jesus as a whole-life philosopher, many faithful Christians find other gurus to help them figure out the questions of daily living. This is not necessarily bad or wrong, but it’s better to realize that Jesus the Philosopher is doing more than speaking to the religious and spiritual parts of lives. He is a guru for all human realities too—vocation, emotions, politics, and so on—in short, a philosophy of life. 

Even though Jesus said that He is “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6) and that He has come to give us “life to the full” (John 10:10), the experience of most Christians today is that our faith is religious but not philosophical. 

Here’s a quick test of that. In the two verses I just quoted from the Gospel of John, what do you think “life” refers to? If your answer is “salvation” or “heaven” or something comparable, then you’ve just proven my point. Herein lies the nuanced complication. Those future, heavenly-salvation glosses for “life” are not wrong. They’re just incomplete. It’s the conclusion to the book but it’s not the whole narrative. 

The reality is that Jesus means it when He says that He has come to bring people abundant life. This includes life now, not just an ethereal future. That flourishing life begins the moment anyone becomes a part of Jesus through faith and hope in Him. But our happiness is not complete, and life is mysteriously found in the midst of pain and loss, not in everything getting better and better. Life and happiness are found in learning to embrace the fullness of life’s emotions and circumstances—dark and bright—through the virtue of hope.

When we return to Holy Scripture, looking to Jesus as the faithful guru of true happiness, we find the biblical answers to be profound and life-transforming wisdom. When we, as the church, look to Jesus as our Lord, Savior, King, Priest, and Philosopher, we come to know what it means to be a Christian. We learn what it means to take on our role as ministers of the good news. We will be salt and light whose well-lived lives glorify God and draw people to Him (Matthew 5:13–16) as we “shine among them like stars in the sky as [we] hold firmly to the word of [the Good] Life” (Philippians 2:15–16).

When has Jesus given you abundant life while walking through hardship or difficulty?