Not long after Judy and I were married, our pastor challenged me to go to the New Testament for the answer to a matter about which he and I disagreed. The issue itself is unimportant, but his challenge took root. Not long afterward I spent a week alone in a cheap motel some 300 miles from home. I took with me only my typewriter, two favorite Bibles, and paper, pens, and pencils. No books. No commentaries. No concordance. I had decided to broaden my inquiry beyond the issue we had discussed, and try instead to isolate all the New Testament’s commands. At that point I was not interested in doctrines or beliefs or opinions, neither mine nor our pastor’s. I wanted to know what the Bible commands Christians to do.

The issue prompting the search was no mere doctrine. It was personal to Judy’s and my life in a very practical way. Whatever I discovered could well change the focus of our daily and weekly lives, as well as many of our relationships. I did not realize at the time to what an extent my very faith and walk with God hung in the balance in Judy’s mind.

On the morning of my first day I opened my Bible to Matthew 1:1, placed a blank sheet of paper in my typewriter, and started through the New Testament. The initial entry on the top of paper did not come until Matthew’s third chapter. The words came out of the mouth of John the Baptist. From the second verse of that chapter, I typed out the first direct command to be found in the New Testament, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

I continued on with my list. Several days later I reached the end of Revelation. By then my list was forty-four pages long. That I was not trying to tailor my list to suit my own preferences and expectations is obvious as I now look back to read one of my final entries, from Revelation 22:11: “Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong.” It is by any standards, an odd command to include at the very climax of the Bible. But there it was, so I typed it into my list. I could not make it my list…I was trying to find God’s list.

That week’s study changed my life. I knew I had touched the heart of God’s instructions to man about how we are meant to live. I knew that I had laid hold of the anchoring purpose of Jesus’ mission, the core and foundation of Christianity, the daily mechanics of discipleship, the basis of fulfillment and purpose in life, the origin of wholeness of personhood, the lifeblood of relationships, even the essence of who God is and what are his eternal purposes for his creation, his universe, and his people.

These realizations did not come to me, fully formed, all at once. I continued to pore over my list, to study and reflect on the commands, synthesizing and categorizing, differentiating between direct and indirect and implied commands, prioritizing the commands of Jesus above those commands that came from others, and distinguishing between universal commands intended for all men and women (Love your neighbor as yourself…do unto others as you would have them do unto you…do good to those who mistreat you) and those specific commands that were intended only for a moment of time to those involved in the gospel story (Give me a drink…stretch out your hand…come here). It was obvious, too, that many specifically-given commands were also intended to be universal for everyone to obey in all circumstances (Let he who is without sin cast the first stone).

The commands became a lifetime study. Out of it emerged the conviction that Christianity was not primarily about ideas, beliefs, doctrine, theology, salvation, baptism, church membership, faith, heaven, hell, prophecy, justification, sanctification, being born again, speaking in tongues, prayer, or even about the resurrection or whether Jesus was the Son of God. All these come into it as vitally important, but secondary, aspects of Christianity. At its rock bottom crux and foundation, I realized that Christianity was a way of life, not a set of ideas. Its distilled essence was embodied in how we live, and whether or not we live by God’s commands and instructions. I came to recognize that the Bible’s commands, and preeminently the commands of Jesus in the four gospels, represented what I call “the true North of God’s compass.” They pointed the direction he intended men and women to walk as they made their way through life.

When reading a book some years ago about the basics of Christianity by a certain renowned theologian, I was struck by a startling statement: “Christianity is not a code of conduct.” The author then went on to discuss being “born again” and various doctrines of Christian “belief,” including the necessity of “trusting Christ for salvation.”

I’m sure he was trying to emphasize the truth that being a Christian is not synonymous with simply “living a good life” but doing so apart from God. Being a Christ-ian means literally to be a “follower of Christ.”

That means walking in the direction he walks, ordering one’s steps by his compass. It means following him—doing what he says and heeding his example. It means being a disciple. There’s a cost, a commitment to following someone else’s life-compass. It means following that person so completely that your goal is to model your life after his. You are bound in his direction, toward the direction his compass points, not a direction of your own.

Eventually I could not escape the conclusion that this highly respected theologian had it wrong. Christianity is precisely a code of conduct. Jesus taught behavior and attitudes, not a doctrinal belief system. He did not primarily teach ideas or theology. He taught conduct and behavior—what we do, how we live, how we think, how we treat others.

Christianity is a code of personal character. Jesus laid out very succinctly and specifically what that code is. Then he told his listeners, “If you want to be my follower, if you want to be called my disciple, if you want to be identified with my name by calling yourself a Christian, do these things. Live by these principles. Think by these patterns. Behave in these ways. You cannot be my follower any other way than by adopting this code of conduct and character. This is the North of my compass. It is pointed toward my Father and his will. To be my follower, you must point your life compass in the same direction, then live by and obey the commands I give you.”

As I say, these conclusions emerged out of many years studying, pondering, and reflecting on the New Testament’s commands, praying that God’s Spirit, and what Paul calls “the mind of Christ,” would illuminate, clarify, and deepen both my understanding of the commands and my personal dedication to orient my life compass to the attempt to live by those commands.

During those early years I wrote a book based on my study called How to Do What Jesus Said. It was never published, yet shows that the commands of the New Testament had changed my entire perspective of what calling myself a Christian meant. It is probably accurate to say that my study of the commands plays a role, whether specifically or between the lines as an underlying perspective, in every book I have written since.

The men whose books and teachings have influenced me through the years—among them most specifically in this particular regard Henry Drummond, Thomas Kempis, C.S. Lewis, and George MacDonald—have occupied such a pivotal role in my growth because their writings have been anchored in obedience to the commands…the imperative do of the gospel. The commands are the unifying thematic thread linking their writings to my life, and in turn to my own writings. Jesus is the cornerstone giving strength and eternal power to their life-works, and I hope my own. The life he came to example and teach is one we attempt to follow. In revering these men, I revere them for solidifying the imperative importance of the Lord’s commands in my life.

Earlier I expressed my conviction that Christianity was not primarily about ideas.

Though not primarily about ideas, however, there are very important ideas that are indeed intrinsic to a full understanding of what comprises the Christian life. Some of these are not merely important but imperative, foundational, essential.

Because my perspective of what constitute the central ideas of Christianity have emerged out of the New Testament’s commands, and are lived and personalized by obedience to the commands, they occupy a very different list of Christian fundamentals than will be found in any book on Christian doctrine or heard from any pulpit. Two books on my shelf, by two of the most highly touted evangelical theologians of our time—one of them boasting his book to comprise the “essentials” of the Christian faith—give ninety-four and one-hundred-and-one doctrines their authors consider required for an understanding of Christianity.

My list of imperative truths contains three.

I do not call them doctrines at all, but truths that point to the nature and substance of who God is, and the heart of his eternal purposes in the universe.

The first essential and foundational truth Jesus taught was a simple yet revolutionary one—the divine Fatherhood.

God is mankind’s Father. This was a revolutionary truth—and mankind has been obtusely stubborn to acknowledge its veracity—because Jesus taught, contrary to millennia of false imaginings that continue in our own time, that God was an infinitely good, loving, kind, trustworthy, and forgiving Father, whose desire is only good for the men and women of his creation. He will never cease the attempt to do them good, even beyond death if necessary.

This may seem like a doctrinal or theological concept. In fact it is the most practical truth we will ever encounter. If God is infinitely good and loving, more loving than can be imagined, our true Father who is more a father to us than any earthly father could ever be, that resounding truth changes everything we have wrongly been taught, and that most people—Christians and non-Christians alike—persist in wrongly believing about him.

It has to be true because Jesus told us so: God is your Father, and I am a reflection of him. He is just like me. I and the Father are one. Upon the foundation of the goodness of divine Fatherhood is built everything that comprises what we call Christianity.

The second foundational and essential truth Jesus taught was equally revolutionary—the truth of childship Christlikeness.

In addition to telling his followers to do what he told them—to obey his commands—over and over Jesus hammered home the truth that, the Father being the Father, he was the Son. He was the child of his good and loving Father. He was subservient to the Father. His own will was nothing. His only will was to do the will of his Father—to obey his Father.

He taught the truth of perfect childship—his own childship as a Son of God the Father. With a good and loving and perfect Father, what else could a child desire than to obey? The Father wants nothing but good for his child. That goodness emerges out of obedience. Obedience to his good and perfect will can do no other but result in complete goodness for the child. Thus, the delight of Jesus was in being a perfect Son by obeying his good and perfect Father.

Then he told his followers, I want you to be happy, whole, fulfilled, obedient children just like me. You are my brothers and sisters and God is our Father. Be his children and become like me. Live in the eternal childship of the Father. Let all the goodness of the Father’s nature flow into your life by living as he tells mankind to live, by obeying him. Be his sons and daughters.

These words I have imagined from the mouth of Jesus are a command, an invitation, and a promise. Obeying the command, accepting the invitation, and entering into the fulfillment of the promise, reveals the great, high, eternal purpose of God throughout his creation and in the lives of every man, woman, and child who ever lived and ever will live. That high purpose is Christlikeness. The purpose of God in creation is to grow and develop sons and daughters—you and me!­—who will mature throughout their earthly lives and into eternity into beings who reflect the very nature of his firstborn Son—sons and daughters who become like Jesus.

This high purpose, as C.S. Lewis says, will not be completed in this life. But it is God’s intent that we move steadily toward it. That is why he has given us his compass—to point us toward the North of Christlikeness. And he has given us very clear instructions how to follow that compass in the direction it points.

This brings me to the third imperative truth of the Christian walk of faith. At last I come back around to where I began—obedience.

The commands are the mechanism by which God’s Spirit grows the Lord’s followers into his sons and daughters who gradually, over a lifetime, come to reflect the nature and character, the attitudes and behavior, the motives and responses, and the eternal perspective of Jesus. This is the ultimate goodness, fulfillment, and fruitfulness of life. It was for this purpose that Jesus came. Obedience to his commands is the doorway into the Christlikeness which is God’s purpose and is our eternal destiny.

These, then, are the threefold pillars of my belief system as a Christian man. All the doctrine and theology, church activity and experientialism and ministry, which consumes the interest, practice, and obsession of 99% of Christendom must all proceed out of these three. Whatever does not emerge out of these high truths, whatever does not lead to obedience to the commands, and thus whatever does not produce Christlikeness of discipleship-character, in my opinion, it will be revealed as wood, hay, and stubble in the end. Much in Christianity’s theology interests me. I have written about many aspects of it. I love ideas. But I never lose sight of what is primary and what is secondary.

In my writing, therefore, I try to emphasize these three towering truths above all else.

Fatherhood—God’s nature and purposes: I try to illuminate spiritual and scriptural truth in ways that enable Christians to understand the nature and character of God’s Fatherhood and his eternal purposes more accurately and personally, and thus encourage readers to relate themselves in all ways to the daily imperative of God’s divine Fatherhood.

Childship growth into Christlikeness: I always emphasize personal growth toward becoming God’s obedient sons and daughters of increasingly selfless childship, encouraging Christians to make it their life desire to model their lives after the character of Jesus, which is God’s eternal purpose for every man, woman, and child of his creation.

Obedience: I hope to challenge Christians in everything I write toward obedience to the commands of Jesus, and other biblical commands that harmonize with and amplify the foundational commands of the four gospels.