A Jesus who never corrects you is probably one you have shaped. The Jesus of the Gospels corrects his closest friends, unsettles every faction around him, and still calls people to come to him. This guide turns that observation into a week-long practice. You will write down the picture of Jesus you already carry, test it against scenes from Mark, and name one specific cost of following the Jesus you find there. You can work through it alone over a week or with a group in two or three meetings. Keep a pen nearby, because you will write something at the start and return to it at the end.
The guide draws on a Jude 3 Project conversation between Lisa Fields and KB, a hip hop artist who describes himself as a minister of the gospel and who wrote a book called Dangerous Jesus. KB uses the word “dangerous” in two directions. The real Jesus, he says, “is this individual that steps into the world, and he is a threat to all opposition.” A second danger runs the other way: “and use it for your own purposes, then that version of Jesus is dangerous.” He means a Jesus kept for his power and cut off from his character. This guide is about catching that version in yourself before you go looking for it in anyone else.
Start with the Jesus you already carry
Before you open a Bible, write a short portrait of Jesus as you actually picture him. Write what you would expect him to say if he sat across from you, not the answer you think you should give. Complete these five sentences:
- The thing Jesus cares about most is…
- The people Jesus is hardest on are…
- If Jesus looked at my politics, he would mostly…
- If Jesus looked at how I spend money and time, he would mostly…
- The last time Jesus told me something I did not want to hear was…
Now mark where each answer came from. Was it a passage you could find? A sermon? A parent or grandparent? A news channel, a feed, a friend group, a party platform? Most answers will have several sources. You are simply making them visible. If the fifth sentence was hard to finish, note that as well.
For groups: no one reads their portrait aloud. People can talk about which sources showed up most often without revealing what they wrote. Fold the page and keep it for the last session.
Read: Peter gets the title right and the picture wrong
Read Mark 8:27-38 slowly, twice. Jesus asks his disciples what people are saying about him, then turns the question on them: “But whom say ye that I am?” (Mark 8:29). Peter answers correctly. He calls Jesus the Christ.
Then Jesus explains what that title will mean: suffering, rejection, death and rising again. Peter takes him aside and rebukes him. Jesus answers, “Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men” (Mark 8:33). The archaic word “savourest” means roughly setting your mind on something. Mark is narrating an event rather than issuing a rule, but the point of the story is plain.
Write short answers to three observation questions:
- What did Peter get right about Jesus?
- What part of Jesus’s own description could Peter not accept?
- In verse 34, whom does Jesus call together, and what does he require of them?
Peter’s problem was not ignorance of the name. He had the right confession and the wrong expectation. He wanted the Christ’s power without the cross, which comes close to KB’s description of a Jesus separated from his character and purposes. He was also one of the most committed people present. He had left his nets and still needed correcting.
Look closely at verse 34. Mark says Jesus “called the people unto him with his disciples also” before saying, “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34). The call is not reserved for an inner circle. It goes to the crowd. Right after Peter tries to set the terms for the Messiah, Jesus sets the terms for everyone who follows him.
Four pressure tests for your portrait
KB and Lisa Fields describe several ways a counterfeit takes shape. Each one becomes a question for your portrait.
The allegiance test
KB recalls bringing police brutality to fellow believers he had served beside, and meeting resistance he had not expected. He describes it as “us finding out how politicized it was for people that we were in fellowship with.” The hard part, he says, was realizing “there are individuals who had allowed their politics a level of allegiance that I thought they only had reserved for Jesus.” Some of them were people he admired.
That detail matters. The counterfeit was invisible from the inside, even to sincere and gifted people. KB’s image for the result is sharp: people “who have approached Jesus as a civic religion, where Jesus is the mascot. He is not driving.” His examples come from conservative settings, and a reader on the other side could easily nod along and miss the point. Jude 3 teaches that our ultimate allegiance is to Christ and his kingdom, not to any party or politician. That standard leaves no party exempt, which is why this test belongs on your page rather than your opponent’s.
Ask of sentence three: when did your Jesus last disagree with your side?
The address test
A different counterfeit leaves Jesus true but places him at a distance. Speaking to young people at a church in Birmingham, KB says he sensed they needed to hear this: “in some ways we don’t see Jesus as for us. We see it for our grandmother.” When teaching warns only against the temptations of people with plenty, he says, the “Christianity becomes irrelevant to us.”
Consider: who is your Jesus talking to? Is it you, or someone older, richer, poorer, more religious or less broken?
The celebrity test
Lisa Fields turns the hip hop discussion back on the church. She observes that “Christians have idols of celebrity and fame” and look to famous people for what they think they lack. Her answer reaches back to Eden: “you don’t have to pick up something else when God has already given you everything.” This counterfeit is quiet. It is a Jesus who blesses you on the way to the life you actually want.
Hold sentence four up to this: is your Jesus mainly useful for getting somewhere else?
The joy test
KB argues that “The Christianity of the land has stolen Christians’ ability to simply enjoy their lives.” Lisa Fields adds that a joyless faith repels the very people searching for hope: “And so we walk around as if we have no hope.” A counterfeit can be harsh as easily as comfortable.
A last check: does following your Jesus make you suspicious of every good gift?
The deeper exercise: let one Gospel argue with you
Over the next week, read one of these scenes from Mark each day, with your portrait beside you.
- Mark 2:13-17. Jesus calls a tax collector and eats with people the religious leaders consider disreputable.
- Mark 3:1-6. Jesus heals on the Sabbath. Afterward the Pharisees go out and plot with the Herodians against him.
- Mark 8:27-38. Return to Peter’s rebuke after a few days away from it.
- Mark 10:17-27. A sincere man who has kept the commandments asks about eternal life. Jesus looks at him with love and tells him to sell what he has. The man leaves sorrowful.
For each scene, put a C in the margin wherever Jesus comforts, welcomes or restores, and an X wherever he confronts, refuses or unsettles. Then finish one sentence: Here the Jesus on the page did something my portrait would not have predicted. If nothing surprised you, write down which person in the scene you were reading as, and read it again as someone else.
Two scenes deserve extra attention. In Mark 3, religious rivals and political rivals find common cause against Jesus. He refuses to belong to any faction’s victory, and every faction eventually feels it. In Mark 10, Jesus loves a sincere man and still asks for the one thing he will not give. The counterfeits tend to keep only one of those two, the love or the demand.
A check on the checker
This exercise has a weak point, and you should know it. You are both the one being tested and the one grading the test. You chose which details count as comfort and which as confrontation, and your existing picture will tilt those choices. Four scenes are also a small sample, and anyone can pick passages that flatter their view. So before the final session, ask one person you trust, ideally someone whose background or politics differ from yours, to read one of the scenes and mark it without seeing your marks. Compare. Where your marks diverge, go back to the text and ask which reading accounts for more of what the passage says. Then, if you want to widen the test, read the rest of Mark 10 or all of Mark 2 rather than stopping where the list stops.
Counting the cost
Jesus told the crowds to think before they followed: “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?” (Luke 14:28). Counting the cost does not mean imagining heroic sacrifices. It means naming a real one.
KB describes what this looks like in his industry. A song or two about God is tolerated, he says, but as an artist’s life starts matching the lyrics, “righteousness becomes irritating to people who don’t want that around.” His cost is career and reputation. Yours may be closer to home: a friendship that runs on shared political anger, a habit that lets you avoid certain people, your standing in a group that needs your agreement, or a picture of yourself as the one who is always right.
Write one sentence that begins: If the Jesus of Mark is the real one, following him will probably cost me… Make it specific enough that you would know if you paid it. If the cost involves a painful relationship, especially one where you are being mistreated, talk it through with a pastor, counselor or trusted friend before acting. Counting the cost is not a demand to endure harm.
Then read John 6:66-68. After a hard teaching, many disciples leave. Jesus asks the twelve whether they will go too, and Peter answers, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). The same Peter who once rebuked Jesus now stays when staying is costly.
Lisa Fields names why this practice is worth the trouble: “I believe people are walking away from a counterfeit version of Jesus.” Her point bears directly on your portrait. A shaped Jesus is fragile. When your side loses, or a leader falls, or your comfort runs out, that Jesus has nothing left to offer, and it can feel as if Jesus himself has failed. Testing the picture now means that when a hard season comes, you are holding on to the one who said hard things from the start.
Questions for discussion
These work for a group or for one person writing alone. In a group, let people answer from the text before anyone answers from experience.
- Peter confessed the right title and still rebuked Jesus. What is the difference between knowing who Jesus is and accepting what he says he will do?
- Which of the four pressure tests was hardest for your portrait to pass? Which did it pass easily, and how confident are you about that?
- KB says the people who surprised him were heroes of his. Why might a counterfeit Jesus be hardest to see in people we admire, including ourselves?
- In Mark 3, opponents who disagreed with each other united against Jesus. What would it look like for Jesus to unsettle your group and the group you oppose at the same time?
- Where did your marks differ from your trusted reader’s, and what did the text say when you went back to it?
- Is there a version of Jesus you were handed as being for someone else? What would have to change for you to hear him addressing you?
- Is the cost you named something you could start paying this month? What would the first small step be?
For facilitators: question two can make people defensive about politics. Keep the conversation on whether each person’s own Jesus can correct them, not on whose party is wrong. If someone names a cost involving family conflict or a hurtful church situation, thank them and follow up privately rather than pressing in front of the group.
Return to the portrait
At the end of the week, unfold the five sentences you wrote at the start and read them beside your margin marks from Mark. Rewrite any sentence the Gospel argued with. For any sentence that still holds, write down the passage that supports it.
Look again at the fifth sentence, about the last time Jesus told you something you did not want to hear. If you have an answer now that you lacked a week ago, the practice has done its work. KB hopes believers will be surrendered “to who He is and not who we imagined Him to be.” The portrait on your page is the imagined one. Keep reading the Gospels until the page keeps winning.