"Your mission to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-revealing life among you; on  the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall consist in the life which you will live among men--the actual and living experience of loving men and serving them, even as I have loved and served you."

Jesus set us the pattern. We are told: "To 'follow Jesus' means to personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of the Master's life of unselfish service for man. One of the most important things in human living is to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose.

"Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it."

Then, having acquired that knowledge, simply passing it on is not enough: "You may preach a religion about Jesus but, perforce, you must live the religion of Jesus." The collection of statements that follow may help us with the first step. Living it is up to the reader--but why else would you have the book?

• Jesus said: If you could only fathom the motives of your associates, how much better you would understand them. If you could only know your fellows, you could eventually learn to love them.

• Love is more catching than hate. But only genuine and unselfish love is truly contagious.

• Jesus was imaginative but always practical. He frankly faced the realities of life but was never dull or prosaic. He was courageous but never reckless; prudent but never cowardly. He was sympathetic but not sentimental; unique but not eccentric; pious but not sanctimonious. And he was so well poised because he was so unified.

• Jesus' superb originality did not cause him to overlook the gems of truth of his predecessors. The most original of his teachings was in the emphasis he gave to love and mercy in the place of fear and sacrifice.

• Jesus exhorted his followers to preach the gospel to all peoples. Always his invitation was, "Whosoever will, let them come."

• Jesus never faltered in his faith. He was immune to disappointment and impervious to persecution. And he was untouched by apparent failure.

• Jesus was an unusually cheerful person--which he could maintain because of his unswerving trust in God and unshakeable confidence in people.

• Jesus constant words of exhortation were, "Be of good cheer." And "he went about doing good."

• Jesus was candid though always kind. He said, "If it were not so, I would have told you." He was outspoken in his love for the sinner and in his hatred for sin. But he was unerringly fair.

• Jesus unifies life, ennobles character, and simplifies experience. He enters the human mind to elevate, transform, and transfigure it. It is literally true: "If a man has Christ Jesus within him, he is a new creature; old things are passing away; behold, all things are becoming new." (quote from Paul in 2 Cor. 5:17)

• Jesus was full of grace and truth. His associates never ceased to wonder at the gracious words that proceeded from his mouth. You can cultivate gracefulness but graciousness is the aroma of friendliness which emanates from a love saturated soul.

• Jesus really understood people; therefore he could manifest genuine sympathy and show sincere compassion. But he seldom indulged in pity. While his compassion was boundless, his sympathy was practical, personal, and constructive. Never did his familiarity with suffering breed indifference. He was able to minister to distressed souls without increasing their self pity.

• Jesus could help people because he loved them so sincerely. He truly loved each man, each woman, and each child. He could be such a true friend because of his remarkable insight--he knew so fully what was in the heart and in the mind of people. He was an interested and keen observer. He was an expert in the comprehension of human need, clever in detecting human longings.

• Jesus was never in a hurry. He had time to comfort his fellows "as he passed by." And he always made his friends feel at ease. He was a charming listener. He never engaged in meddlesome probing of the souls of his associates.

• People had unbounded confidence in Jesus because they saw he had so much faith in them.

• He never seemed to be curious about people, and he never manifested a desire to direct, manage, or follow them up.

• He inspired profound self-confidence and robust courage in all who enjoyed his association.

• Jesus frequently set out to help a person by asking for help. In this way he elicited interest, appealed to the better things in human nature.

• Most of the really important things that Jesus said or did seemed to happen casually "as he passed by." There was so little of the professional, the well-planned, or the premeditated in the Master's earthly ministry. He dispensed health and scattered happiness naturally and gracefully as he journeyed through life. It was literally true, "He went about doing good."

• It behooves the Master's followers in all ages to learn to minister "as they pass by"--to do unselfish good as they go about their daily duties.

• Jesus said, "When a wise person understands the inner impulses of their fellows, they will love them. And when you love your brothers and sisters, you have already forgiven them. This capacity to understand human nature and forgive apparent wrong doing is Godlike."

• Jesus enjoyed a sublime and wholehearted faith in God. He never doubted the certainty of God's watchcare and guidance.

• Jesus faith was the outgrowth of the insight born of the activity of the divine presence, his indwelling Thought Adjuster.

• The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused in his mind as, "the will of the Father in heaven."

• In the face of all natural difficulties and all temporal contradictions of mortal existence Jesus experienced the tranquility of supreme and unquestioned trust in God.

• In the Master's life we discover a new and higher type of religion; one based on personal spiritual relations with the Universal Father and wholly validated by the supreme authority of genuine personal experience.

• In the human life of Jesus faith was personal, living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual.

• Jesus' faith was so real and encompassing that it absolutely swept away any spiritual doubts and effectively destroyed every conflicting desire.

• Whether in the face of apparent defeat or in the throes of disappointment and threatening despair, Jesus calmly stood in the divine presence free from fear and fully conscious of spiritual invincibility.

• In each of life's trying situations Jesus unfailingly exhibited an unquestioning loyalty to the Father's will. This superb faith was undaunted even by the cruel and crushing threat of an ignominious death.

• Always did the Master coordinate the faith of the soul with the wisdom appraisals of seasoned experience. Hence he never became fanatical, nor did he let his faith run away with his well balanced judgments concerning commonplace social, economic, and moral life situations. Jesus faith was wholly free from presumption upon God.

• Jesus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the greatest of all offerings: the consecration and dedication of his own will to the majestic service of doing the divine will.

• Jesus always and consistently interpreted religion wholly in terms of the Father's will.

• Jesus never prayed as a religious duty. To him, prayer was a mighty mobilization of the combined soul powers to withstand all human tendencies toward selfishness, evil, and sin.

• The secret of Jesus unparalleled religious life was his consciousness of the presence of God, attained by intelligent prayer and sincere worship--unbroken communion with God--and not by leadings, voices, visions, or extraordinary religious practices.

• Jesus depended on the heavenly Father as a child depends upon its earthly parents. His fervent faith never for one moment doubted the certainty of the heavenly Father's overcare.

• Jesus combined the stalwart and intelligent courage of a full-grown man with the sincere and believing optimism of a believing child. His faith grew to such heights of trust that it was devoid of fear.

• Jesus sense of dependence on the Divine was so complete and confident that it yielded the joy and assurance of absolute personal security.

• Jesus does not require his followers to believe in him but rather to believe with him, believe in the reality of the love of God and, in full confidence, accept the security of the assurance that all mortal beings are members of the one family of the heavenly Father.

• Jesus desires that all his followers should share in his transcendent faith. He touchingly challenges us to not only believe what he believed, but also to believe as he believed.

• Jesus earthly life was devoted to one great purpose--doing the Father's will--living the human life religiously and by faith. But that faith was wholly free of presumption.

• Jesus devotion to the Father's will and the service of man was a whole-hearted consecration of himself to an unreserved bestowal of love.

• The Master has ascended on high as a man as well as God; he belongs to mankind; we belong to him.

• The aim of kingdom believers should be to share Jesus' faith, to trust God as he trusted God, and to believe in their fellows as Jesus believed in them.

• As a man, Jesus progressed from consciousness of the human to realization of the divine; from the nature of man to the realization of the nature of God. He achieved this through the faith of his mortal intellect and the acts of his indwelling Father-Spirit. Jesus' ascent was an exclusively mortal achievement. This same pathway of achievement is open to all of us.

• Jesus taught us to place a high value on ourselves, both in time and in eternity. Because of the high estimate he placed upon us, he was willing to spend himself in unremitting service. What mortal can fail to be uplifted by the extraordinary faith Jesus places in us?

• Jesus led us to feel at home in the world; he delivered us from the slavery of taboo and taught that the world is not fundamentally evil. He did not long to escape earthly life; he mastered a technique of acceptably doing the Father's will while in the flesh, attaining an idealistic religious life in a realistic world.

• Jesus saw mankind as weak rather than wicked, more distraught than depraved. But regardless of our present status, he saw us as God's children and his brothers and sisters.

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Jesus lived his bestowal life as a revelation of the nature of God--insofar as that nature is comprehensible to mere mortals such as ourselves.

A discerning theologian once commented that the nature of God is best understood through a study of the parables of Jesus. Certainly we can get an idea of what God is like or not like from the parable of the earthly father who would not give his son a stone when he asked for bread nor a serpent if he asked for a fish.

Jesus three favorite parables were the prodigal son, the widow's lost coin, and the lost sheep-- which he used to show that God comes forth seeking for the sinner and that God's mercy has no bounds for those who ask.

Gradually, most of us will learn that the most important of all knowledge contained in the Urantia Papers really is the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it.