People of the Way
In the book of Acts, before the early Christians were ever called “Christians,” they were known by a simpler, more potent name: people of the Way. This designation, appearing in Acts 9:1–4 as Saul breathes murderous threats against the disciples, reveals something essential about what it meant to follow Jesus in those first, fire-lit decades. Faith was never conceived as a set of propositions to affirm or rituals to perform. Faith was a path to walk, a manner of living, a complete reorientation of existence around the person and pattern of Jesus Christ.
What is the Jesus Way?
“The Jesus Way is a life of radical discipleship to Christ, marked by love, grace, humility, justice, and communion with God and others. It means living the gospel daily, surrendering self-interest, embracing compassion, rejecting worldly power, and embodying peace, generosity, truth, and divine love. It’s a life rooted in prayer, worship, and abiding in God’s presence: drawing life from Christ as the true vine, listening to the Spirit’s voice, and walking in daily dependence upon God’s sustaining grace.”
This ancient path speaks with prophetic urgency into our present moment. In a culture that prizes accumulation, competition, control, and ceaseless activity, the Jesus Way offers a radical alternative. It’s a summons into a transformed life where success is measured by service, where enemies are loved, where the last become first, and where rest is understood as holy ground rather than wasted time.
The Biblical and Theological Heart of the Way
The Jesus Way doesn’t emerge from nowhere. It flows from the deep springs of Scripture, gathering the witness of prophets, psalmists, and apostles into a rushing river of redemptive purpose.
The Hebrew prophets thundered against religious hypocrisy that prioritized ritual over relationship, sacrifice over mercy. Micah’s cry echoes across millennia: “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Amos demanded that justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Isaiah envisioned a servant who would bear the wounds of the world, bringing healing through suffering love. This prophetic tradition forms the bedrock upon which Jesus built his teaching and embodied his mission.
Jesus stood squarely in this stream, yet he also transformed it. When he read from the scroll of Isaiah in the Nazareth synagogue, declaring good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, and liberation for the oppressed, he announced that the ancient hopes were being fulfilled in his very presence. The kingdom of God had drawn near. The Way had become flesh.
The Sermon on the Mount crystallizes this vision with breathtaking clarity. Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. These beatitudes overturn the world’s assumptions about power and blessing. They describe the contours of life in God’s upside-down kingdom, where mourners are comforted, the gentle inherit the earth, and those persecuted for righteousness find their home in heaven’s embrace.
Paul grasped the theological significance of this pattern. In his letter to the Philippians, he portrays Christ as the one who, though existing in the form of God, didn’t consider equality with God something to be grasped. Instead, Christ emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming obedient even unto death on a cross. This self-emptying love, this kenosis, becomes the model for all who follow the Way. The apostle urges believers to have the same mind as that of Christ Jesus.
The Gospel of John offers another essential image: the vine and branches. “Abide in me, and I in you,” Jesus says. “As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” The Jesus Way is sustained through an intimate connection with Christ. Fruitfulness emerges from relationship rather than religious achievement, from communion rather than conquest.
The Early Church: Living the Way Together
The earliest Christian communities took this calling with profound seriousness. The book of Acts portrays believers who shared everything in common, broke bread together, and prayed with glad and generous hearts. They sold possessions and distributed them to anyone in need. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship. The result was striking: the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
This communal existence scandalized the surrounding culture. Roman society was organized around patronage, power, and hierarchy. The early Christians subverted these structures by creating communities where enslaved persons and free, Jews and Gentiles, males and females found themselves welcomed at the same table. The dividing walls of hostility crumbled in the presence of Christ’s reconciling love.
The early church faced tremendous opposition. Persecution came from religious authorities who saw Jesus’s followers as dangerous heretics and from imperial powers who demanded allegiance to Caesar. Yet the disciples persevered, often at great cost. They understood that the Way of Jesus led through suffering, that the path of cruciform love would bring both joy and hardship.
What sustained them was the conviction that death didn’t have the final word. The resurrection of Jesus had inaugurated a new creation. The powers of darkness had been defeated. Hope was no longer fragile optimism but unshakeable confidence in God’s redemptive purpose. This resurrection faith enabled ordinary people to live with extraordinary courage, extending forgiveness to enemies, serving the poor, and proclaiming good news even in the face of execution.
Why the Jesus Way Matters Today
Our contemporary world desperately needs this ancient Way. We’ve constructed systems that devour the earth, economies that crush the poor, and technologies whose power outpaces our wisdom. We chase achievement, curate images, and measure worth by productivity and platform. Anxiety and depression have reached epidemic proportions. Loneliness festers even amid constant connectivity. Political polarization tears communities apart. Injustice persists in myriad forms.
Into this context, Jesus speaks: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
The Jesus Way addresses the deepest struggles of human existence. Where the world tells us that happiness comes from wealth, status, and control, Jesus invites us to discover spiritual riches in simplicity, generosity, and trust in God’s provision. Where culture praises competition and teaches us to get ahead at any cost, Jesus calls us to compassion, seeing others as companions rather than rivals. Where society rewards the accumulation of power, Jesus demonstrates greatness through servanthood, washing feet, and embracing the lowest place.
“Where society rewards the accumulation of power, Jesus shows greatness through servanthood, washing feet and embracing the lowest place.”
The Way offers healing for our fractured relationships. Retribution seems natural when we’re wronged, but Jesus commands forgiveness seventy times seven. He tells the story of a father running to embrace a wayward son, of a Samaritan bandaging the wounds of an enemy. This extravagant grace breaks the cycles of vengeance that imprison hearts and generations.
The Jesus Way addresses systemic injustice with prophetic clarity. Jesus didn’t offer a privatized spirituality disconnected from the world’s pain. He touched lepers, dined with tax collectors, defended the woman caught in adultery, and overturned tables in the temple. He challenged religious hypocrisy that tithed spices while neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Following Jesus means caring for the hungry, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned, for Christ himself is present in the least of these.
The Way speaks to our divisions with a vision of radical embrace. In a world that excels at drawing lines, Jesus tears them down. He crosses boundaries of ethnicity, gender, class, and religion. He welcomes the outcast, honors the forgotten, and invites all to the feast. The church that follows Jesus must become a community where exclusion gives way to belonging, where strangers become family, and where the dividing walls of hostility crumble in the presence of reconciling love.
What Difference the Jesus Way Makes
When individuals and communities embrace this Way, transformation follows. The change is interior and social, personal and communal, spiritual and material.
In our inner lives, following Jesus reshapes our desires, our fears, and our sense of identity. We learn that our worth doesn’t depend on what we produce or achieve but flows from our belovedness as children of God. The relentless striving for self-justification gives way to the freedom of grace. We discover that in losing our lives, we find them.
In our relationships, the Jesus Way cultivates compassion, patience, and the hard discipline of forgiveness. We learn to listen rather than dominate, to serve rather than use, to bless rather than curse. Marriages deepen when partners adopt the posture of mutual submission. Friendships flourish when rooted in grace rather than transaction. Communities heal when reconciliation becomes the practiced rhythm of common life.
In our churches, the Jesus Way challenges institutional patterns that have often strayed far from Christ’s example. Too many congregations have been baptized by the culture’s values of success, competition, and power. Too many leaders have wielded authority rather than washed feet. The Way calls the church back to its original vocation: to be a servant people, a prophetic witness, a foretaste of the kingdom. When churches embody the Jesus Way, they become refuges for the weary, sanctuaries of healing, and signs of hope in a fractured world.
In our engagement with society, the Jesus Way inspires advocacy for justice, care for creation, and solidarity with the vulnerable. Christians formed by this path have built hospitals and schools, fought against slavery and oppression, and cared for the dying and destitute. The Way doesn’t permit retreat into comfortable piety but sends us into the world as salt and light, agents of transformation in every sphere of life.
The Issues the Jesus Way Addresses
The Jesus Way speaks into every dimension of human struggle and societal fracture. It addresses our relationship with possessions and wealth, offering freedom from the tyranny of accumulation. It confronts the competitive spirit that poisons workplaces, families, and even churches, replacing rivalry with the radical hospitality of compassion. It challenges the abuse of power that has damaged so many lives, presenting servanthood as the true mark of greatness.
The Way speaks to our deepest wounds and grievances, offering the costly gift of forgiveness where retribution seems natural. It refuses to let us remain comfortable while injustice persists, calling us to stand with the marginalized, the exploited, and the forgotten. It addresses the conflicts that tear apart families, congregations, and nations, insisting that peacemaking is central to the identity of God’s children.
The Jesus Way liberates from the crushing weight of legalism that has caused so many to abandon faith, revealing a God whose grace can’t be earned and whose love can’t be exhausted. It confronts the exclusionary impulses that have turned churches into fortresses rather than fields of welcome. It challenges the expressive individualism of our age, which reduces faith to private spirituality and identity to self-creation, and instead offers the rich soil of community, where we discover who we truly are. And it addresses the epidemic of burnout and exhaustion, inviting us into the sacred rhythm of rest, contemplation, and slow discipleship.
These are the struggles of our moment. These are the fractures in human existence that cry out for healing. The Jesus Way doesn’t offer easy answers or quick fixes, but it does provide a path, a pattern, a presence. Christ himself walks with us into these places of pain and possibility.
The Movements of the Jesus Way
The Jesus Way unfolds through a series of transformative movements, each one a shift from the patterns of the world toward the pattern of Christ.
We move from material success to spiritual riches, loosening our grip on wealth and status, trusting that true abundance is found in God. We move from competition to compassion, setting aside rivalry and seeing others as beloved companions. We move from power to servanthood, laying down control and embracing the humility of Christ. We move from retribution to forgiveness, offering mercy even when it costs us everything. We move from indifference to justice, refusing to look away from our neighbors’ suffering. We move from conflict to peacemaking, pursuing reconciliation even amid division. We move from legalism to grace, discovering that God’s love can’t be earned and need not be measured. We move from exclusion to embrace, opening our hearts and communities to those the world would push to the margins. We move from expressive individualism to community, finding our truest selves in belonging. We move from frenetic activity to slow discipleship, learning to abide rather than merely achieve.
These movements are interconnected, each one reinforcing the others. Together, they form a holistic vision of the transformed life, a portrait of what it means to follow Jesus in thought, word, and deed. Progress in one area naturally strengthens the others. Compassion and justice walk hand in hand. Forgiveness and peacemaking flow from the same spring. Grace and embrace are inseparable companions. The Jesus Way is holistic, addressing the whole person and the whole community.
Practicing the Jesus Way Today
The Jesus Way is practiced through daily decisions and disciplines. It requires intentionality, community, and dependence on the Spirit.
Spiritual practices anchor us in this path. Prayer creates space for communion with God, teaching us to listen as much as we speak. Scripture immerses us in the story of redemption, forming our imagination around the narrative of grace. Sabbath teaches us that we’re held even when we cease striving, that our worth doesn’t depend on productivity. Fasting loosens the grip of appetite and desire. Generosity breaks the power of accumulation and opens our hands to share what we’ve received. Solitude quiets the noise so we can hear the still, small voice. These practices aren’t techniques for self-improvement but means of grace through which we’re conformed to the image of Christ.
“We live the Way in our small decisions repeated over time, in our daily choices that shapeour character and form communities of grace.”
The Jesus Way is practiced in the ordinary texture of daily life. It looks like choosing kindness when frustration rises, speaking truth when silence would be easier, and forgiving when resentment feels justified. It looks like sharing meals with neighbors, visiting the sick, defending the vulnerable, and caring for creation. It looks like slowing down when the world demands speed, saying no to another commitment so we can be present with those already before us. The Way is lived in small decisions repeated over time, daily choices that shape character and form communities of grace.
Community is essential. We can’t walk this Way alone. The church, with all its imperfections, remains the community through which the Jesus Way is transmitted, practiced, and embodied across generations. Small groups, shared meals, honest conversations, mutual accountability, and common worship form us in ways that solitary spirituality can’t. The Way is learned through imitation, caught as much as taught, absorbed through proximity to those further along the path. We need companions who remind us of grace when we stumble, who challenge us when we drift, who celebrate with us when we grow.
The Spirit empowers what we can’t achieve in our own strength. The Jesus Way isn’t a program of moral improvement but an invitation into transformation wrought by God. We plant and water, but God gives the growth. We practice and persist, but the Spirit produces the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is the mystery of grace: we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it’s God who works in us to will and to act according to his good purpose.
An Invitation to the Way
The Jesus Way isn’t a destination but a journey, not a finish line but a path walked daily in the presence of Christ. It’s demanding and liberating, costly and joyful, ancient and urgently contemporary. Those who have walked it across the centuries testify that the burden is light, the yoke is easy, and the rest is real.
The world is desperate for people who will live differently. The hunger for authentic faith, genuine community, and transforming hope has never been greater. The Jesus Way offers precisely what the human heart most deeply needs: belonging rather than isolation, meaning rather than emptiness, love rather than fear, grace rather than condemnation. In a fragmented age, this Way holds out the promise of wholeness. In a culture of performance, it offers the freedom of belovedness. In a time of despair, it kindles the flame of hope.
For those who want to explore this Way more deeply, my forthcoming book, Ten Movements of the Jesus Way, examines each of these transformations in detail, offering biblical foundations, theological reflections, and practical guidance for embodying this path in daily life. It’s available for pre-order now at https://www.ivpress.com/ten-movements-of-the-jesus-way and will be released by InterVarsity Press in July 2026.
But you don’t need to wait for a book to begin. The invitation stands open now. Come to Jesus, all who are weary and burdened. Take his yoke upon you and learn from him, for he is gentle and humble in heart. You will find rest for your souls.
The early Christians were called “the people of the Way” because their lives testified to a different path. Their love for one another, their care for the poor, their courage in suffering, and their joy in worship marked them as followers of Jesus. The same calling extends to us.
Will you walk this Way?
“The road is narrow, but it leads to life. The cost is everything, but the reward is immeasurable. The journey is long, but we don’t walk alone.”
Jesus goes before us. The Spirit dwells within us. The Father welcomes us home.
This is the Jesus Way.
New Book
Graham Joseph Hill. Ten Movements of the Jesus Way: Shifting from Worldly Self-Interest to Radical Discipleship. InterVarsity Press, July 2026. Preorder here: https://www.ivpress.com/ten-movements-of-the-jesus-way
