Pastor Scott Lothery of The Orchard Church (Chicago, IL) has developed helpful material called The Gospel-Nourished Life.
In it he presents the 13 virtues of Jesus and then shows how far we all fall short of those perfections.
- Jesus is the perfection of love, but we can all be callous and uncaring
- Jesus has the fullness of joy, entirely rooted in His Triune nature, but we feel entitled to happiness in all kinds of things except God
- Jesus is totally at peace with God and others but we foster divisions and strife in our relationships
- Jesus has absolute discipline and self-control but we are impulsive and compulsive, following our sinful desires
- Jesus is infinitely generous while we are miserly, hoarding the little we have for ourselves
- Jesus is wonderfully gentle, tenderly sensitive to our weaknesses while we are harsh, abrasive and rough
- Jesus is the embodiment of wisdom, understanding and insight, but we are foolish, confused and easily led astray
- Jesus is always filled with hope, unshakably confident in the Father’s plan, while we are pessimistic and easily discouraged
- Jesus is the epitome of humility, accepting infinitely less than he deserves, while we are absurdly proud and deeply preoccupied with our own thoughts, desires and feelings
- Jesus is eternally faithful, always true to His word, while we are unreliable and sporadic, tossed around by every wind and wave
- Jesus is the revelation of all that is good and worthy of honor, but we are immoral, twisted and corrupt
- Jesus is blazing with unquenchable zeal for the glory of God, while we are nominal, lukewarm and complacent
- Jesus is 100% patient, enduring delay and suffering long, while we are irritable, quickly annoyed if we are not immediately satisfied
If we consider the glorious supremacy of Christ it should have two effects: 1) we should worship Him with reverence and joy for the fullness of His perfection and 2) we should gratefully acknowledge our woeful inadequacy and rebellious idolatry and cling to Jesus in desperately dependent faith.
Read more on this to help apply the gospel to your personal struggles.