Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?

Here’s how you test for the genuine Spirit of God. Everyone who confesses openly his faith in Jesus Christ—the Son of God, who came as an actual flesh-and-blood person—comes from God and belongs to God. – 1 John 4:2 MSG

There are so many versions of Jesus being offered up today that it's hard to keep track. There is Jesus, the life coach, whose sole purpose was to provide us with a model for self-improvement. Just follow His instructions and you can be just like Him. Then there's Jesus, the moralistic monk, who gave us a host of wise sayings to quote and even to live out if we so choose. This Jesus was kind of a Hebrew Muhatma Gandhi, who spoke against social injustices and promoted peace and love. There's Jesus, the martyr, a radical peasant who tried to bring about a social revolution, but died while trying. His faithful followers picked up where He left off and kept the spirit of His cause alive. There's even Jesus, the Son of God, who whose a man chosen by God to be a living example of what it looks like when men learn to live in harmony with their Creator.

But the problem with all these versions of Jesus is that they are not the real Jesus. They may give us brief glimpses of some aspect of His life or a partial view of His nature, but they leave out the most important, life-altering point of His existence. He is Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God who took on human flesh, in order to pay for the sins of mankind and satisfy the just demands of a holy, just and righteous God. John made this point clear at the very beginning of his letter, stating, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life — the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us” (1 John 1:1-2 ESV). Jesus, the eternal life, had been manifested or made known to John and the other disciples. They had seen, touched, and heard Him. They had spent over three years living with Him. They had seen Him perform miracles, transfigured, walk on water, raise the dead, and suffer a brutal death by crucifixion. But they had also seen Him alive three days after He had been buried in a borrowed tomb that had been surrounded by guards. They had heard Him say that He was going away, but that He would be returning for them some day. And they had clearly heard His parting words as He gave them His great commission to spread the good news regarding Him to all the world. This is the Jesus John preached. This is the Jesus Paul proclaimed and gave his life for. This is the Jesus of Peter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Titus, Timothy, the Philippian jailer, Lydia, Silas, Barnabas, James, Tabitha, Phillip and millions upon millions of others over the last 2000-plus years.

But we live in a society that has a difficult time accepting the truth about Jesus. So they re-invent Him. They come up with their version of Him that makes Him more palatable and acceptable. The Jesus of John and the disciples is too intolerant and demanding. Their version of the gospel doesn't come across as good news at all. So people reject it or simply revise it to suit their tastes. In his book, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society, Lesslie Newbigin writes:

The gospel is news of what has happened. The problem of communicating it in a pluralistic society is that it simply disappears into the undifferentiated ocean of information. It represents one opinion among millions of others. It cannot be “the truth,” since in a pluralistic society truth is not one but many. It may be “true for you,” but it cannot be true for everyone. To claim that it is true for everyone is simply arrogance. It is permitted as one opinion among many.

The problem is that John and the disciples present Jesus as the only way. “Everyone who confesses openly his faith in Jesus Christ—the Son of God, who came as an actual flesh-and-blood person—comes from God and belongs to God” (1 John 4:2 MSG). Even Jesus Himself claimed, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6 ESV). He wasn't one way among many. He wasn't just another option. He was the only way. The exclusive, no-other-alternative-available way. It was A. W. Tozer who said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” But I would add, what comes into our mind when we think about Jesus is what will determine our relationship with God. Jesus was and is the Son of God. He is the God-man, 100 percent deity and 100 percent humanity. A mystery that is inexplicable by man, but essential for the salvation of mankind. Jesus lived a sinless life. Yet He was required to die a sinner's death, in order to pay the penalty due for the sin's of mankind. He died in our place. He took on our sin and the punishment we deserved, so that we might receive forgiveness, pardon, and escape from the condemnation of death. But we must believe that He was who He claimed to be. We must accept the gift that He so graciously offers. We must believe in and trust our lives to the Jesus Christ as sent by God, proclaimed by the apostles, taught in the Bible and confirmed by the presence of the Holy Spirit. No other Jesus will do. No other way will suffice. No other version of the truth will work. “And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:4-5 ESV).

God Made Visible.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life… – 1 John 1:1 ESV

The very idea that God became a man is a difficult one to reconcile. From the earliest days of the church, there have been those who have attempted to discount it as nothing more than a myth, dispute it as an impossibility, or simply rationalize it away through various man-made explanations. Even the Jews of Jesus' day, who were desperately awaiting the coming of the Messiah, were not expecting God to come in human flesh. They were looking for a human savior, a warrior-king in the same vein as David. Their greatest conflict with Jesus was not so much that He claimed to be the Messiah, but that He claimed to be God. That concept was unfathomable and unacceptable to them. In fact, it was His claim of deity that led them to seek His death. “This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18 ESV).

Yet, at one point, Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16:13 ESV). Peter's response was most revealing. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16 ESV). And Jesus commended Peter for his answer. “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17 ESV). Jesus went on to say that the very essence of Peter's confession would be the foundation on which He would build his church. Rather than deny or dispute Peter's statement, Jesus fully agreed with it and acknowledged the indisputable necessity of it. In yet another confrontation with the Pharisees, they sarcastically said to Jesus, “So the Jews said to him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am’” (John 8:57-58 ESV). Jesus knowingly used the very words that God spoke when revealing Himself to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). And His words did not escape them, because they immediately picked up rock with which to stone Him.

The Pharisees could not reconcile Jesus' claim to be divine. They could not make it work within their understanding of God, so they wrote Jesus off as a blasphemer. He was little more than crazy. But there are still those today who would deny the divinity of Jesus. The late Robert W. Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminar, once wrote, “We should give Jesus a demotion. It is no longer credible to think of Jesus as divine. Jesus’ divinity goes together with the old theistic way of thinking about God.” His rejection of Jesus as divine was clear. “A Jesus who drops down out of heaven, performs some magical act that frees human beings from the power of sin, rises from the dead, and returns to heaven is simply no longer credible.” But Funk and his fellow members of the Jesus Seminar are not alone. Unitarians and Universalists reject the deity of Christ, teaching that He was merely a man. Over the centuries, there have been countless attempts to either rationalize away Jesus' deity. What we cannot explain, we tend to reject. But the gospel of Jesus Christ hinges on the deity of Jesus Christ. He was not just a man sent by God to live an exemplary life and die a martyr's death. He came to live a sinless life and die a sacrificial, substitutionary death as the unblemished Lamb of God. But even with this Robert W. Funk and others take issue. “The doctrine of the atonement—the claim that God killed his own son in order to satisfy his thirst for satisfaction—is sub-rational and sub-ethical. This monstrous doctrine is the stepchild of a primitive sacrificial system in which the gods had to be appeased by offering them some special gift, such as a child or an animal.” At the core of man's rejection of Jesus' deity is the notion that we don't need a savior. Either we reject God's assessment of our sinfulness or we somehow think we can fix the problem ourselves. We can be our own saviors. But God knew the only solution to our problem was to send His Son to do for us what we could never have done for ourselves. “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3 ESV). God entered time and space in human flesh. Unbelievable? No doubt about it. Inconceivable? From a human perspective, yes. But God became visible so that salvation might be made possible. Sin required a sacrifice. That sacrifice had to be a man. The righteousness of God required that man be without sin. The unbelievable, inconceivable, inexplicable nature of Jesus as the God-man, made it possible for Him to meet that requirement and satisfy the just demands of a holy God. He came. He lived. He died. He rose again. God became visible and made man's salvation possible. I don't have to explain it, but I do have to accept it.

The Incarnation.

It has been interesting to see some of the responses to my recent posts concerning the book of First John. Much of what John was dealing with in his letter head to do with heresies entering the early Church. As Christianity spread, so did the variety and numbers of different interpretations of the gospel. The book of First John is a pastoral letter addressed to believers and designed to both warn and encourage them. His intention was to provide them with assurance concerning their beliefs in Christ. Throughout the letter John used the phrase, “by this we know.” He wanted them to know, without a shadow of doubt, that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. But He was much more than just a human savior, an earthly deliverer who would provide them with victory over their earthly enemies. He came to be their Savior from sin and their means for enjoying a right relationship with God. For generations, the Jews had believed that the Mosaic Law was the key to achieving a right relationship with God. Human effort had been the accepted means by which men could find favor with God. The sacrificial system, given by God, was used by men to have their sins cleansed and forgiven. The very fact that the sacrificial system existed was proof that men were incapable of keeping God's commands. Paul writes, “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,  so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:20-21 ESV). The law revealed man's sin, but could do nothing to remove it. The law simply exposed man's inability to meet God's holy standards. Which is why God provided a Savior. But it is at that point that so many continue to stumble today. I have received comments from some who refuse to accept the deity of Christ. They argue that Jesus was nothing more than a man, created by God. This is not a new view. John battled the same errant belief in his day. One of the comments I received stated, “‘And the Word was made flesh’ talks about the Word or the Speaking which became a reality, namely a man of flesh and blood, who after his resurrection proved to his disciples that he was not a Spirit (though God is Spirit) and told them so.” It is subtle, but what he is saying is that Jesus was nothing more than a man into whom the Word or Spirit of God entered. He was flesh and blood. But the disturbing point about this teaching is that it rejects the deity of Christ. For John, the deity of Christ was a non-negotiable ingredient to the gospel. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…” (1 John 1:1 ESV). He was not speaking of some disembodied Spirit or force, but of Jesus Christ Himself. He was from the beginning. He was the eternal life. As John states in his gospel, “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:2-3 ESV).

There are those today who still reject the deity of Christ. They refuse to accept Him as God. This was the same problem Jesus ran into during His earthly ministry. On one occasion, as Jesus was walking through the temple in Jerusalem, the Jews demand to know if He is the Messiah. Jesus makes a simple, but direct comment: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30 ESV). And the immediate response of the Jews was to pick up stones and kill Him. Why? They provided the answer. “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God” (John 10:33 ESV). The Jews clearly understood Jesus' claim to be God. He was not just claiming to be a man who had the Spirit of God within Him. He and God the Father were one. It is Jesus’ deity, miraculously blended with His humanity, that made Him a fitting sacrifice for the sins of man. To believe anything else is to believe another gospel. If we believe that we can simply emulate the life of Christ and share in the divine Spirit as He did, we miss the point of His life, death, and resurrection. The belief that God became flesh is essential to the gospel. Yet, as in John's day, there are those who refuse to accept it.  Again, one of the recent comments I received put it this way: “Having come down in the form of a god, does not mean Jesus came down as the God of gods.” In other words, Jesus was NOT God, but a little god. And according to this teaching, we can become a little god by following His example. But this is NOT the gospel. And the apostle Paul had strong words for those who would attempt to explain away the true essence of the gospel message. “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:6-9 ESV).

Something Worth Proclaiming.

…that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. – 1 John 1:3 ESV

John had enjoyed an intimate, eye-witness relationship with Jesus. He had listened to Him teach and preach. He had watched Him heal and even raise Lazarus from the dead. He had stood with Mary, the mother of Jesus, at the foot of the cross on which Jesus was being crucified, and heard Him say, “Behold, your mother.” From that day on, John would take Mary into his home and care for her. John was close to Jesus. He loved the Lord and was loved by Him. But what John was proclaiming in the opening verses of First John was far more than a knowledge about Jesus the man. He was proclaiming the truth regarding Jesus, the God-Man. The entire letter of First John is based on the foundational principle and reality regarding the incarnation of Jesus. John was not just giving an historical, eye-witness account of Jesus' birth, life and death. He was proclaiming His deity and His role as the spotless sacrifice for the sins of mankind. There were those in John's day who denied the deity of Christ. They rejected the idea that He was God come in the flesh. As we will see later on in John's letter, these people claimed to be Christians and bragged of having a relationship with God, but they denied the Christ. Many viewed themselves as sinless and therefore, in no need of a Savior. But John will make it clear that fellowship with God is impossible without acceptance of His Son as Savior. John had heard Jesus Himself boldly claim, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6 ESV). Jesus was NOT just a good man attempting to live a morally exemplary life. He wasn't just another martyr who had sacrificed His life for a good cause. What John was proclaiming about Jesus was radical and risky. Jesus was the Son of God and through Him and Him alone, man could enjoy a restored relationship with God.

Jesus had told His disciples, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves” (John 14:10-11 ESV). What John is proclaiming in these opening verses is unbelievable. It sounds more like fantasy than reality. But John believed it whole-heartedly. He proclaimed it boldly and without apology. Because of who Jesus was and what He did, men can be restored to a right relationship with God. They can enjoy fellowship with the God of the universe. The apostle Paul reminds us, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8 ESV). But there's more. “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (Romans 5:10-11 ESV). We have been reconciled, made right with God. Which is what allows us to enjoy fellowship with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. Which should produce in us a joy that is full and complete, lacking in nothing. Jesus Christ, the word of life who gave life to creation, is also the eternal life, God Himself. The Son of God took on human flesh and then took on the sins of man. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24 ESV). John was proclaiming what God had long ago prophesied. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6 ESV). It was Jesus' deity that made possible His sinlessness. It was His humanity that made Him an appropriate sacrifice. It was His death that paid for our sins. It was His resurrection that proved He was who He claimed to be: the sole source of eternal life. Now that is something worth proclaiming.