A fad began in America in July 1996 when someone was teaching a youth group and told them that in life they should always ask the question, "What would Jesus do?" He recommended to them a book writ­ten over a century ago by Charles Sheldon entitled In His Steps. Over the years this has sold 30 million copies. The leader was trying to help teenagers come to right decisions in the maelstrom of daily living. Somehow that phrase (long known in Christian cir­cles) broke out from that circle, and a year later the letters "WWJD" had become familiar across the States. You cannot visit the USA today without meeting the four letters, WWJD. They are visible in airports on T-shirts and accessories, especially wrist bands and bracelets, 15 million of these being sold in 1997 alone. They are the sort of objects marketed in Christian Book Shops, but they are now sold in cor­ner gas-stations, Wal-Mart shops, and everywhere. WWJD is big business, and the letters are worn more for fashion than the original good intention. Crude kids say that the letters stand for, "We Want Jack Daniels" (a brand of whiskey). How do we look at this foreign phenomenon?

1. WHJD is a question that precedes WWJD. That is, "What Has Jesus Done?" is the more crucial issue. It has priority over the question "What Would Jesus Do?" WWJD is Law, while WHJD is gospel. WWJD makes the Lord Christ a role-model more than a Saviour. Of course he always did that which was right, and "he is our childhood's pattern, day by day like us he grew," sings Mrs. Alexander in her hymn, "Once in royal David's city." But there is no good news in that. The only use in WWJD to the natural man is to bring him to despair. Because if the life of Jesus be the life that God requires, who can stand in his holy presence? WWJD is useful only to those who have already been redeemed. The good news is that the Son of God has become the Lamb of God and by himself has obtained our salvation.

Seventy years ago the great New Testament scholar and professor at Princeton Seminary, J.Gresham Machen, wrote, "we depre­cate the popular books for young people which appeal to the sense of loyalty as the first way of approach to Jesus; it seems to us very patronizing and indeed blasphemous when, for example, Jesus' choice of a life-work is pre­sented as a guide toward the choice of a life-work on the part of boys and young men. The whole method, we think, is wrong. The example of Jesus is, indeed, important, but it is not primary; the first impression to give to a child is not that of the ways in which Jesus is like us but of the ways he differs from us; he should be presented first as Saviour and only afterwards as Example; appeal should be made not to latent forces capable of following Jesus' example but to the sense of sin and need" ("What is Faith?" p.112, Banner of Truth). First, we trust in his redeeming blood, and then we try his works to do.

2. WWJD appeals to the kind of vaguely religious people who think that the principles of Jesus will solve all the problems of their lives and also of society. It needs to be said that this way of approach to Jesus will not work. An ideal is quite pow­erless to a man who is under the dominion of sin. The real glory of Jesus is that he pro­ceeds to break the power of the sin (whose guilt he has cancelled by his death on Calvary) of every single per­son who puts his trust in him. So instead of giving mere guidance — as an example would — he gives power for holy living also.

3.  WWJD encourages a mentality that one must put into practice "the principles of Christ" by one's own efforts. These are merely new ways of earning salvation by one's own obedience to Christ's teaching. WWJD plastered on a T-shirt could only be worn by someone who has a lax view of what the Lord taught. Are you aware of the sort of things Christ said? The Lord Jesus said, "whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart ... if thy right eye offend thee pluck it out, and cast it from thee ... whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whoso­ever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery ... resist not evil: but whosoev­er shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also ... and whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain ... if ye for­give not men their trespasses, neither will your Father for­give your trespasses." Those were some of the high and holy words spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ. No one weighing up such words can be casual about them. But always a low view of the demands of the Lord brings legalism into religion. A high view of law makes a man a seeker after grace. WWJD actually turns people to the village of Morality and to the house of Mr. Legality, who is reported to be very skilful in relieving men of their bur­dens. Mr. Legality has today disguised himself in a reli­gious T-shirt, but is still wearing phylacteries on his wrists, and talks about Jesus the example, but he is the same deceiver as the one of whom Bunyan wrote in Pilgrim's Progress (Banner of Truth).

4. To answer the question WWJD one has to go to the Bible for the answer, the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, not to the discussion group, or the Counsellor, or to one's strong feelings. In the Old Testament the Spirit of Jesus Christ was in Moses and the prophets as they recorded the God-breathed Scriptures. The apostles of the New Testament had a unique rela­tionship with Jesus Christ. They were his companions from his baptism to his resur­rection, and he gave them the Spirit which led them into all truth. Through the Spirit of Jesus they wrote the four gospels and their letters. So if anyone wants to answer the question, "What Would Jesus Do?" he can only discover the answer by picking up one unique Book and reading it.

5.  WWJD needs to be understood as "WWJesusD", because that must be the emphasis, upon the Lord Jesus Christ. He is not an American Jesus, or a teenage Jesus, or a 20t^h century Jesus, or a white Jesus, or a liberal Jesus, or a conservative Jesus. He is the Jesus of the Bible. He regard­ed himself as the Messiah, in that lofty meaning by which it designated the heavenly Son of man, the glorious figure who appears in the seventh chapter of Daniel in the pres­ence of the Ancient of Days. That is who Jesus is, and who he considered himself to be. The One by whom young people are told to judge their conduct actually believed that he was one day to sit upon the throne of God and be the Judge of these young people and assign them to a place in heaven or hell. If Jesus is only an ideal, he is not a perfect ideal, for he claimed to be far more. But if he is the Saviour from sin, then he is the perfect example that can never be surpassed.

6. WWJD is not nearly as complex a matter as peo­ple make out. The ethi­cal parts of both the Old and New Testaments are amongst the most straightforward sec­tions of the Bible to under­stand. The Ten Command­ments have their own lucidity. What young people so often declare to be a problem of guidance — "Oh, WWJD?" ­turns out to be a problem of fundamental conflict with what the Lord says. Whether a Christian should start going out with someone who has no interest at all in Christianity is not a matter of guidance. It is a matter of obedience to the word that says marriage is "only in the Lord." The mat­ter of aborting a child cannot be resolved by pleading WWJD? It can only be resolved by heeding the Lord's commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."

If the WWJD campaign, which has never been directed by the church, and now is in the hands of marketing men, at least gives some profile to the Lord Christ, and makes people think there is something rele­vant in his life worth giving some attention to, then WWJD is not wholly in vain. By itself it gives us perplexity.