The first Christians referred to their movement as "the Way" (Acts 9:2; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:22). They were people who walked with God, following in the footsteps of Jesus the Messiah.
The expression "walking with God" is a familiar one in the Bible. In the early chapters of Genesis, Enoch "walked with God" (Ge 5:22, 24), as did Noah (Ge 6:9). Similarly, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob "walked before God" (Ge 24:40; 48:15). So did King Hezekiah of Judah (2 Ki 20:3).
Jacob described God as his shepherd who guided him from behind (Ge 48:15). God was also said to walk in front of (Ex 13:21) and among (Lv 26:12) his people.
This kind of language pictures a close relationship between God and his people. Moses instructed the children of Israel to walk in all the ways of God, following his commandments (Dt 11:22). In the same sentence, he spoke of "loving the LORD your God" and "holding fast to him."
The metaphor of walking with God, a prominent one in the Bible, isn't found in other ancient cultures. Neither is the idea of repentance, where one who has strayed from God's way returns to it. For most ancient people, the gods were mysterious and arbitrary. People weren't sure what the gods required of them or how to appease the gods when the gods were offended. So pagans didn't really think of themselves as being on a journey with the gods.
On August 9, 2025, Sherry and I attended a workshop at Hope College in Holland, Michigan on the metaphor of walking with God. The workshop was sponsored by the Center for Hebraic Thought and En-Gedi Resource Center. The main speaker was Baruch Kvasnica, founder and head of Jerusalem Seminary.
Kvasnica reported on his doctoral research, where he looked at the appearance of the metaphor of walking with God in ancient Greek sources.
He explained that in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) translation of the Hebrew Bible, the language of "walking with God" is translated in a few different ways. In the Genesis passages about Enoch, Noah, and the patriarchs walking with God (Ge 5:22, 24; 6:9; 24:40; 48:15), the LXX says that they were pleasing to God.
A Greek word for "going," poreuomai, appears frequently (almost a thousand times) in the LXX. This word is often used to render "walking with God" language---e.g., in Leviticus 26:3, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 40, 41 and Deuteronomy 10:12; 11:22; 13:4; 19:19; 26:17; 28:9; 30:16.
A Greek word for "walking," peripateo, appears 26 times in the LXX. Usually this word is used in situations where someone is walking somewhere. In a couple of cases, it is used figuratively for walking with God (2 Ki 20:3) or walking in the way of righteousness (Pr 8:20).
So at the time when the LXX was produced, Greek-speaking Jews may have just been starting to speak of "walking with God" with the word peripateo. By the time that the New Testament was written, though, such an expression was often used.
Kvasnica observed that this language is seldom used in the Synoptic Gospels. The one exception is in Mark 7:5, where Jesus is asked, "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders?" The Synoptics speak more often of following Jesus.
In John, "walking with God" language appears in John 8:12; 11:9-10; 12:35. John uses this language in his epistles in 1 John 1:6,7; 2:6,11; 2 John 4,6; and 3 John 3,4. In Revelation, we see it in 3:4 and 21:24.
Paul uses "walking with God" language frequently; Kvasnica counted over 30 instances, including Romans 6:4; 8:1,4; 13:13; 14:15; 1 Corinthians 3:3; 7:17; 4:2; 5:7; 10:2, 3; 12:18; Galatians 5:16; Ephesians 2:2, 10; 4:1, 17; 5:2, 8, 15; Philippians 3: 17, 18; Colossians 1:10; 2:6; 3:7; 4:5; 1 Thes 2:12; 4:1, 12; 2 Thes 3:6, 11.
In a survey of ancient Greek literature, Kvasnica found that "walking with God" language only appears in "Jewish Greek." Outside of the New Testament, such language appears, for example, in Philo and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Josephus, writing from Rome to Gentiles, does not use such language.
Why then, Kvasnica wondered, does Paul use this language so often in his epistles to churches with large Gentile populations? The answer may be that many of the Gentiles in his audiences were "God-fearers" who had some familiarity with the Bible through contact with synagogues.
When we hear the Greek word peripateos, we think of the English word peripatetic. Kvasnica was asked if the language of walking in a certain way of life could have also been influenced by the "Peripatetic school" of philosophy. He explained that this school got its name not from the fact that its teachers "walked around" or walked in a certain way, but from the place where the school met, the Peripatos. (Similarly, he said, the Stoics got their name from the stoa where they met.)
This was a stimulating workshop that helped us think about what it means to walk with God.
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