Early in His ministry, Jesus chose 12 men to be His apostles. They were probably quite ordinary men, for they were from the common occupations of the time and place and included fishermen and a tax collector. They exhibited human frailties and passions such as we do now and which hinder us from achieving exemplary lives. Here and there in the Four Gospels these human problems make their appearance among these men. So we are much impressed when we read in Acts 4:13, "Now as [the Jewish High Council] observed the confidence of Peter and John, and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, [they] began to recognize them as having been with Jesus." Peter and John, formerly simple Galilean fishermen, had not had the advantage of formal training in the rabinic schools of Jerusalem to make them suave, polished men like those before whom they were being tried. But there was something extraordinary about their demeanor that the judges could not help but notice, and the only explanation for it was that they "had been with Jesus."
For three years Peter, John, and the other apostles had felt the impact of the personality of Christ upon them. That impact had changed them from men who engaged in petty squabbles over rank, who wanted to respond to insult with violence, and who fled their Master in fear in His moment of trial. In short, they had become men of character in the true sense of the word. The impression of Jesus' nature upon them had transformed them into men who wanted to serve others rather than be served, who returned good for evil as a matter of course, and who willingly sacrificed themselves to glorify God. During their time with Jesus they had acquired from Him such qualities as reverence to God, love of truth, purity of mind, courage, self-control, integrity, and all the rest we associate with good character.
Coming to these qualities that constitute character leads back to Heb. 1:3, where the New Testament, in its solitary use (in Greek) of the word "character," applies it to Jesus. If we are not careful, we will presume to define for ourselves what constitutes character. As Christians, we should not look to human concensus for such definition, but realize that character is conformity to a high standard that we our-selves do not determine.
About 25 years ago someone designed a program called "Character Counts" and promulgated it in schools across the nation. I first became aware of it in August 1999 when it was adopted in the high school where I was a teacher. I was initially enthusiastic about it, because if there is anything we need to instill in our youth, it is good character. It is more lacking in the current generation than it was during the 1990s. But when I looked at the program carefully, I discovered I could not accept the character model it used. It featured one that had been drawn from the human disciplines such as psychology and philosophy. I do not think we can develop our own model, because what might be considered good character by one society would not be judged so by another. Just think of the models used by Nazi Germany, Marxist communism, and radical extremists.
I was asked by my school in 1999 to introduce in our first teacher in-service the character model to be taught . It was a surprise to many when I rejected the national model and proposed instead the model that has been featured in the New Testament for two housand years. That is the model centered upon Jesus in what He taught and the kind of life He lived.
