Thinking Christian

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.–John 1:14

Jesus–referred to here as “the Word”–came with glory reflecting his Father in heaven. Part of that reflection was in the grace and truth he expressed. Henry Cloud (previously referenced here) was the one who showed me how these work together, through his book Changes That Heal.

There is a productive, fruitful dynamic tension between grace and truth. Truth is the standard; grace is more relationship and freedom oriented. They are complementary, though, not contradictory.

Jesus lived out truth first by being true, by his utter integrity. He spoke truth in confrontation, he spoke truth in teaching, and he lived what he spoke. He lived out truth by setting the standard and living up to it. He is (as the verse quoted above hints) the Word, the expression of God, and a true representation of God’s character.

Truth in at least one sense is a hard, unyielding kind of thing. You can’t get it to change its mind, nor can you persuade it to be something other than what it is. Reality is what it is. Cloud clarifies* the importance of facing reality for what it is, including

• The truth about ourselves: our strengths, weaknesses, successes, failures, opportunities, and limitations.
• The truth about the world, that it is what it is and we can’t magically change it.
• The truth about God, that he is Creator and King, and has a claim on us

To dwell on the obvious, truth is a good thing. It gives solidity to reality. But it can also produce pain when we collide with it–especially when the truth we slam into is the truth of our own inadequacies and failures.

Grace is relationship-oriented. It opens the door for forgiveness, for acceptance in spite of faults. It is what can soften the blows of reality and truth. Yet it cannot stand without truth; it would be like trying to erect a skyscraper out of jellyfish skeletons.

It would not be quite right to say Jesus balanced the two. Better to say he expressed them both fully. One great example is his extended encounter with the woman at the well in John 4. He pointed out her sins quite frankly. She must have been embarrassed. Actually, though, before that point she must have been somewhat confused at his willingness even to talk to her. There were cultural and racial barriers in that day that normally would have prevented such a conversation even from beginning. Thus Jesus demonstrated his orientation toward caring relationship, even while he was insisting on dealing with the realities of her life. By the end of their conversation she understood that he was the one who could free her from her sin, and could show her (and her people) how to worship God truly.

Grace and truth were both expressed on the cross: sin had to be paid for, and it was; but he took our payment upon himself.

I have two very quick applications to draw from this. First, we ought to express grace and truth in our relationships with each other. That means recognizing the truth about ourselves, and being open to what others have to tell us about it. It’s often easy to hide from our own realities. It also means helping others see what is true and deal with it squarely. At the same time, grace impels us to remember that we’re all in the same condition: we need help, we need love, we need forgiveness; sometimes we just need to be given a break!

Especially if I have a difficult issue to work through, I’m going to look for counsel from someone who lives out both grace and truth: truth so I can see the realities I’m dealing with, and grace to help me with the walk through them.

Second application: thank God for his truth! What kind of world would it be without some solidity to it? And thank him for his grace, too, for we who cannot meet God’s true and just standards on our own must rely on his grace in order to have any hope at all.

*Oxymoron intended

Posted by Tom Gilson under Worshiping Christian | 7 Comments »

It all revolves around one man: Jesus Christ. Either he was the greatest person of history, the unique Son of God, or he is nothing at all to us today. What kind of man was he really?

We’ll have to take this one topic at a time, starting with this startling claim:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”

Had he not been able to say that, Jesus would have stood in quite precarious position. The Law of which he spoke includes this:

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, Let us go after other gods, which you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul…. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God…. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

Jesus was a prophet giving signs and wonders. If he had been turning the people away from their God, he would have stood condemned for it. Indeed, he was killed on account of his claims.

Let’s back up a moment, though, and consider just that one statement of his, that he had come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, what Christians refer to as the Old Testament. Judaism in Jesus’ day was thoroughly imbued with these writings, along with a considerable body of rabbinical commentary. The Jews of the time were as monotheistic as any culture in history. Several hundred years prior, they had suffered exile for their idolatry and chasing after pagan Gods. The exile cured them: they never fell into sin of that sort again. Still, they knew their Scriptures said it would be hard to follow their God; that they would have to fall on his mercy, for they could not claim any personal righteousness before him.

In the midst of this milieu, then, Jesus says he has come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. He meant it in two senses. First, that he would follow their commands fully; second, that he would complete them.

The audacity of the claim is astonishing. He said he would live the way no one had lived–not Moses, not Joseph, not Daniel, not Esther, not any of the best examples of Hebrew saints. Maybe you would like to try this: walk up to any strongly religious person and say that you expect to perfectly live out their religion’s tenets. See what kind of reaction you get! The crowds who heard him “were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.”

Jesus’ fulfilling of the Law and Prophets is explained most fully in the New Testament book of Hebrews. There had been an elaborate sacrificial system in the Hebrew religion. Animals were slaughtered in huge numbers daily for the sins of the people. Hebrews says all of this was a foreshadowing of Christ. When he died on the cross, his death was sufficient to cover what virtually infinite numbers of animals could not–the guilt of all the people. He finished the sacrifices, by his one sufficient sacrifice.

There was yet another sense in which Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets: he literally fulfilled prophecy. The two most striking sources were Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, both of which describe his crucifixion; but there were hundreds more besides. (I’ve made

It was an incredibly audacious claim that he made. Who could say such a thing? In the context of the day, it was more than unthinkable, and it was unthinkable still for decades following, which is one reason I can’t give much credence to claims that early Christians invented sayings like these.

So what can we conclude about Jesus from this one statement? He was wrong or he was right. If he was wrong, he would have surely been found out. Trust me–I had a blowup in the office this morning myself–it’s hard to pretend you’re perfect when you’re around people for very long. Yet the people who knew him best were his most ardent followers. Certainly this speaks to the truth of Christianity.

Posted by Tom Gilson under Worshiping Christian | 3 Comments »

They thought they had Jesus figured out, and they also thought they had him under control. Not so:

He [Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor] entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” (John 19:9-11)

Pilate thought he had authority, and that only by his command would Jesus fate be determined. But the authority lay elsewhere. A few hours earlier Jesus had held back a follower who had tried to use force on his behalf:

Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 26:52-54)

The power lay not with Pilate, nor with the religious leaders or the crowd who pushed the governor to execute Jesus. The power lay with God, who had the whole circumstance planned out and prophesied long before.

There is yet another irony of which I was reminded at church this morning. It’s in Luke 24:13-34. Jesus, just risen from the dead, is talking with two people about the events of the weekend. They do not recognize him immediately in his resurrection body. So he asks them what’s been going on. They reply,

“Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And he said to them, “What things?”

It reminds me of a story, probably true, of two English gentleman having a dispute over some topic. One of them suggested they settle it by consulting the Encyclopedia Britannica. The second one pulled it off the shelf, read the entry, and said, “Well, according to this, apparently you’re right.” And the first one said, “Yes, well, that’s what I thought I wrote there.”

Jesus must have been enjoying a similar kind of playful smile inside when he said, “What things?” They thought he was the one person who didn’t know what happened; he was the one who really did know! Read the rest of the story, though, and you’ll see that he didn’t move into gloating over his knowledge as our encyclopedia author. He taught them instead, in a way that connected deeply with their hearts.

The lesson again is not to try to outwit or outpower God. We are on his turf and meet him only on his terms–terms that are good and loving, for our life and freedom, and sometimes even with a sense of humor besides!

Posted by Tom Gilson under 21st Century Faith & Worshiping Christian | 2 Comments »

The religious and political leaders thought they had Jesus all figured out. I doubt there’s anything in history or literature to match the irony of that.

They expected was the kind of thing they usually saw during a trial and execution: fear, self-protection, defensiveness; or possibly something like guilt, regret, or remorse. They thought they were in control. They thought it was about a political power struggle, in which Jesus was, to some of them, a nuisance, and to others a pawn. They thought they were taking care of themselves.

They had it all wrong.

It started a few days before Jesus’ arrest, when the high priest, no friend of Jesus, was tapped by God to utter an inadvertent prophecy:

“You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. (John 11:49-52)

The context of the whole begins many months earlier, though, when Jesus made it known that he had come for an unexpected purpose:

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. (Matthew 16:21)

When they arrested him they were on his agenda. It was not that he had a death wish; he dreaded his coming ordeal. But he knew his purpose, to stand in through his death for the deaths of many others. The crowd had it in for him; they did not realize they were setting up a perfect illustration of what Jesus’ death was all about: he died so that others might live:

Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream.” Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!” And he said, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!” (Matthew 27:15-23)

And Pilate let Barabbas go free, while Jesus was executed in his place.

They mocked the king by pretending he was a king:

Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. (Matthew 27:27-31)

While he was on the cross, others mocked him further:

And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” (Matthew 27:39-43)

They derided him for not saving himself; they did not know he was saving them. They thought his claim to be the Son of God was dying along with him; they did not know it was about to be proved with unparalleled power.

Pilate and the Jewish leaders got into a squabble about the charge under which he was to be executed.

Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.” (John 19:19-22)

This was all political: Pilate was trying to embarrass them, to show that Rome had power over anyone among them who seemed to be someone, and especially over their Establishment. In the process, he got it right: Jesus is king of the Jews and of all creation.

The ultimate irony was revealed on Sunday morning. On Friday, Jesus looked like the weak, despicable loser. He died an agonizing and humiliating death. He was wrapped in thick grave clothes and interred behind a heavy stone in a tomb. He lay there lifeless for two nights.

Then he stood up.

He stood up, and the stone rolled away, and he appeared in his true power and glory as the conqueror of all humiliation and the master over suffering and death.

There’s a lesson for us in all this. Jesus had a plan all along. They thought they were dealing him on their terms, when all along he was dealing with them on his terms. But he was obviously not perpetrating a power play; he was sacrificing himself for their good, and for ours. The lesson for us, then, is that God will deal with us on his terms, too; not for the sake of power but for the sake of our good, and to submit to his terms is very, very good. Or, the next time you think you have God figured out and you can set the terms for him, remember he doesn’t work that way–his way is better.

You see, we live in irony, too: the greatest freedom and life come by submitting to the one who died for us.

(Scripture quotations from the English Standard Version)

Posted by Tom Gilson under 21st Century Faith & Worshiping Christian | 1 Comment »

Christians often pray, “God, let us see you work in power.” We may not understand what it is we ask. God does His best work following a death.

I approach this topic very cautiously, for though there is something important to say here, there is a danger of trivializing it. I just spent several hours with a very good friend whose mother passed away a few weeks ago. Her passing was very difficult. The pain of my own mother’s death, almost a year and a half ago, is still very real, though not as fresh and strong as my friend’s grief is today. Death is not what God originally intended. It means something is wrong with the world. It is an enemy. In Christ’s resurrection, death was dealt a mortal blow; but it still kicks in its final throes. It is the last enemy yet to be defeated, at the end of the age.

Imagine being one of Christ’s followers in the day when He was taken to trial, to torture, and then to execution. He had told them often in advance that this had to happen. They did not understand; they fought the idea. Nothing, not even His frequent warnings, could prepare them for the loss, the injustice, the massive dashing of their hopes and dreams. Peter denied Him, others deserted Him. The women, more than the men, stayed with Him to the end; yet even for them, what a horrific end it seemed to be. This man had brought them unparalleled hope, healing, and love. He was the one who had words of eternal life. He had proved his supernatural power through repeated miracles. Then He was gone. I don’t know if any other death in history could have produced so much shock and grief.

We experience the grief of loved ones dying. We each face our own end. Further, we all experience loss and disappointment: being turned down by someone we love, being rejected by family members, losing jobs or opportunities, suffering injury or disease. These are lesser deaths.

Yet just as Christ’s death brought unparalleled pain, surely His rising brought His followers unparalleled joy! What could compare to Mary’s elation when she saw Him alive that Sunday morning, or the other disciples’ relief and happiness when He appeared among them? How often and with what unrestrainable smiles do you suppose they spoke of that among themselves, the rest of their lives? What could have been a happier moment than seeing Him alive? And what could have been a greater display of God’s power?

We pray for God to work in power, not always remembering that this is when we see Him most at work: when we most need Him. God does His best work following a death, even if it’s of a death of the lesser, figurative sort.

In 2001 my wife and I realized we ought to leave our positions at the headquarters of Campus Crusade for Christ. I was getting what I call “headquarters disease.” I was a Human Resources director, with national responsibilities, but I was getting disconnected from the field and from the reason I was doing what I was doing. When someone called me on the phone, it felt like an interruption, a bother to me. That was obviously wrong, and we decided the cure had to include leaving headquarters and going back to front-line ministry work.

We ended up in southeast Virginia–and it didn’t turn out to be what we had expected. We experienced some very deep disappointments, unfulfilled expectations, and very difficult conflict (this was with persons who are not now part of the ministry). I was certainly part of the problem; some real changes were needed in my own heart.

For a while it was, well, really awful. We had uprooted our family from one city, and now we were seriously wondering whether we were going to stay in this new one for long. We were living in an apartment we had rented as a base for living while we hunted for a home to buy. It would have been easy, in one sense, just to leave. It would have been terribly wrenching in another sense.

My wife was feeling it as badly as I was. One day she went for a drive down a street that we had visited more than once before, that we thought would be a particularly nice place to live. There were only a few houses on the cul-de-sac at the end of the street. None of them, unfortunately, were for sale. She prayed that day in a kind of desperation for answers and for hope “God, we don’t know if we’re supposed to be here. If you want us to stay, would you please, please, please open up a house on this cul-de-sac suitable for us to live in!”

Two days later I was with several co-workers driving north toward a conference in Gettysburg. We hadn’t even crossed the county line when my cell phone rang. My wife said, “The real estate agent has a house for us to look at.” I said, “Come on, you know I can’t look at any houses until after the conference!” She said, “It’s on the street we want, Tom.” I said, “Oh!” (Brilliant, no?) “I guess you’d better go look at it!”

She checked it out that same morning. It was listed for well below market price, and it fit our desired description almost exactly. The seller accepted our bid with a contingency clause, such that we could pull out of it if I disagreed when I came home. That house is where we’re living now. God was starting to do some of his best work, giving us hope and direction in the midst of what seemed like a deathly situation.

Relationships at work did not improve just then; in fact, for a while the situation continued to get worse. It became clear that I was not going to thrive in that position, and that we would have to make a change. We had no clue what that could mean. We had bought the house, we were not interested in moving (nor did we believe God wanted us to move), and yet there was no other position on the horizon for us locally. Around that time we also took a very severe financial loss, and my father-in-law died a very difficult death. Things were not getting easier.

And then another job with our organization opened up, virtually out of nowhere right near home. It was going to be what I would have considered to be my dream job, working with some of my favorite people in the organization. (And the office was walking distance from Starbucks!) It started out looking great, but even that dream died, too, when for reasons too complicated to explain, there just wasn’t a lot of work to do. The income was there, but the projects weren’t. Another dream seemed to have been spiked.

But God was doing some of his best work still. I was starting to recognize what I had learned from the rough relationships I had just been in–some extremely important personal leadership and character lessons. I can’t go into them here without sharing more openly than I should about the whole situation. Suffice it to say that I couldn’t be doing what I am now without having been through all of that. I am stronger than I was; and I am unreservedly grateful to God for it all.

Now let me back up a moment to another dream. I had always wanted to write–I just never had a clue how to get published. Now I was in a situation that afforded me time to think, study, and write–and now, too, there was blogging. That was the beginning of this whole adventure; and the dream has borne fruit in being published several times beyond the blog (see “Clips” above). I can’t imagine how this door would have opened without being in a situation that seemed like a dream that died.

And since then, the job projects and opportunities have opened up as well, just as I had thought and hoped they would two years earlier. (The story on that transition is as amazing as others I’ve told here, but to go into it all would make this long post really long.) I believe this new set of responsibilities and opportunities was in the plan all along–but that God also had a plan to fulfill a lifelong dream and vision (writing) along the way.

This has been bought the short version of a long story. I could tell much more about this and other things like it, and so could any follower of Christ. The Bible is full of such tales–Joseph, Moses, and many more. We all have dreams, hopes, plans, relationships; and some of those dreams, hopes, plans, and relationships die.

I look back over the past few years and I see both deaths and resurrections. The resurrections are where God’s hand is most clearly visible. They are where God has been most glorified. They wouldn’t have happened–couldn’t have happened–without the deaths. These experiences are miniatures of his final work yet to come, when both death and resurrection (for His followers) are not metaphorical but very real. Christ was first. He opened the door, so that any who are willing to follow may walk through after Him.

For a follower of Christ, no death, whether figurative or literal, is final. It’s God’s preparation for His best work.

Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us

• Part 1: Our Roots In God’s Plan
• Part 2: Broken Roots
• Part 3: The Extent of Brokenness
• Part 4: Restorations
• Part 5: Who Christ Is
• Part 6: Among Us, Loving Us
• Part 7: Showing How to Live
• Part 8: Death and Resurrection
• Part 9: The Cross, Again
• Part 10: Resurrection, Again
• Part 11: Life in Christ

Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions. This post elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a very long answer in the form of this series.

Posted by Tom Gilson under 21st Century Faith & Worshiping Christian | 11 Comments »

In a series on what Christ does for us, one post on Christ’s cross and resurrection is hardly enough. I must linger a while longer.

Ravi Zacharias once said (according to a friend of mine), “The only alternative to the cross is the trivialization of sin.” I’m sure he was speaking pastorally, to Bible believers, for if he had been speaking philosophically he could have suggested other alternatives. The cross–Christ’s death, in other words–is presented in the Bible as a drastic solution to a most serious problem. The problem is our sin: our rebellion from the God who created us in love; and the pain, alienation, and death that result. Christ’s death was the payment of the death penalty on our behalf, and a costly payment it was, being a torturous sacrifice made by God Himself.

So if the cross means nothing, then sin must mean nothing, says Zacharias. But let’s consider some other alternatives. If Christ’s death is not, as the Bible says, a drastic solution to a serious problem, then we have these choices:

1. There is no serious problem: sin is not what the Bible says it is.
2. There is a serious problem, but the death of Christ on our behalf is not the solution; there is another (at least one) way out of it.
3. There is a serious problem with no solution.

Option one cannot be entirely true. We don’t need the Bible to tell us we have a serious problem. We are at each other’s throats, in war, in office backstabbing, in greedy competition, in racism, in political maneuvering, and on and on. Every parent knows we do not need to train our children to do wrong; we need to teach them to do right. Moreover, there is pain, sickness, and death, which the Bible explains as the result of having turned our backs on God.

What we cannot see just by these observations is that the true source of these problems is in our rebellion against a true God. We cannot tell without God’s revelation that our conflict, self-centeredness, and pain and death are the result of this untrendy, meddlesome concept of sin. Perhaps it’s just a matter of competing for our place in the reproductive scheme of things. That’s what evolution implies: all of life is a fight for position. Some win, some lose. All die, but some leave more behind.

There is one observation from nature that counts against that view, I think: of all the organisms engaged in this struggle, only humans seem to care about it. Only we notice injustice. Only we have a vision of the good: love, joy, right relationships, giving, altruism. Only we foresee our own deaths, fear what comes after, and truly recognize and mourn the loss of others. This hints that there’s something different going on, something that doesn’t fit in the evolutionary scheme of things, something that may just have come from elsewhere. As the Bible says, we have the image of God impressed upon us; and by it we understand so much more than the animals do.

Option two accepts that we have a serious problem, something more than the obvious ones of death and discord, something spiritual; but suggests that there are many solutions. The alternative to Christ’s death might not be the trivialization of sin, but some other remedy that takes care of it another way: “there are many paths to God,” or if not to God, then at least to wholeness, or oneness with the cosmos, or some such thing.

We could spend a long time on this, which we will not do. Consider a few brief points in response. If there are many paths to God or to some sense of right living, then they ought to agree on the fundamentals. They don’t. The major religions and philosophies of the world disagree mightily as to the nature of ultimate reality, the truth of the human condition, what constitutes the ideal goal (heaven, Nirvana, whatever), and how one attains to it. If any one of these religions or philosophies is true, then the others are false; for contradictory beliefs cannot be true together at the same time and in the same relation.

If the cross of Christ is the solution for our problem, it is the only solution. If there is another answer, then the cross is irrelevant. But only Jesus’ death for us satisfies our need for being brought into right relationship with God, through the forgiveness of sins we could never rise above on our own; and only his resurrection satisfies the need for the defeat of pain and death.

Option three is more honest than option two. It recognizes our alienation from one another, it takes seriously our impending deaths. But it throws up its hands and says there’s nothing we can do about it. This was Bertrand Russell’s stand. It is a philosophy of despair, and Russell’s brave posturing cannot make it otherwise. It is nevertheless the only conceivable outcome of a materialist philosophy that considers all reality to be just the result of matter and energy interacting through natural law and chance. I do not suggest that Russell did not have try to rise above injustice, or that he gave up working to improve the human condition. I merely say that his philosophy provided no hope of ultimate success in that quixotic effort.

This series has not been about proving the Biblical view is the correct one, and I do not have space here to start down that path. I have been trying instead to make more clear what the Bible teaches by contrasting it with other views. These other options all float around our consciousness, for they are all to varying degrees prominent in our culture. Even Bible-believers can be affected by them: and thus, we can easily trivialize sin, as Ravi Zacharias said.

Make no mistake, the cross of Jesus Christ is a drastic solution to a serious problem, and the problem is our fundamental distance, because of rebellion, from the God who created and loves us. He loves us enough that He was willing (”for the joy set before him” Christ did this) to sacrifice Himself to solve our problem. There is no other solution for such a deep difficulty as we are in. It was, as was already said, a very costly solution. Do we trivialize our own faults? Do we recognize the sacrifice by which we are freed from them?

Thank God for the price He paid! Let us not regard it lightly, nor let us regard lightly our own sin, which led Him to pay it.

Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us

• Part 1: Our Roots In God’s Plan
• Part 2: Broken Roots
• Part 3: The Extent of Brokenness
• Part 4: Restorations
• Part 5: Who Christ Is
• Part 6: Among Us, Loving Us
• Part 7: Showing How to Live
• Part 8: Death and Resurrection
• Part 9: The Cross, Again
• Part 10: The Resurrection, Again
• Part 11: Life in Christ

Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions. This post elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a very long answer in the form of this series.

Posted by Tom Gilson under 21st Century Faith & Worshiping Christian | 6 Comments »

By outward appearances, Jesus Christ had a decidedly mixed beginning. He was born in a stable, but heralded by angels. His parents were obscure nobodies, but His birth aroused such fear in King Herod that the family had to escape to Egypt. Though Magi were bringing Him gifts including gold and fine spices, still when it came time for His circumcision, the offering His parents provided was but the one God had prescribed for the poorest people to bring. (The Magi, the ones traditionally thought of as Wise Men, arrived weeks to months later, and we have no indication the family became rich off them in any event.)

We know very little of Jesus’ youth, except that He was (Luke 2:41-52) obedient to Mary and Joseph (in spite of an apparent streak of independence), and He displayed astonishing wisdom for His age. Beyond that we know that He “grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” I have many questions I would like to ask someday about Jesus as a youth, and how others experienced life with Him.

Sometime around age 30 He was baptized by John in the Jordan River; and the Holy Spirit, symbolized by a dove, came upon Him in a new way. The Father inaugurated His ministry with the words, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

And the contrasts continue. Immediately after, “He was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry.” Newly inaugurated leaders expect a “honeymoon period.” Jesus was tested instead. I used to be skeptical of the forty days of fasting, doubting anyone could survive it; now I know many people, including friends of mine, who have fasted on just water and juices for that length of time. And afterward, yes, they were hungry.

It was at that point that Satan pounded Jesus with temptation. He tempted Him with shortcuts to sustenance, with power, and with the fame accorded to one who makes himself a public spectacle. Most of all he tempted Him with an easy (but false) road to glory. Jesus rebuked him with words of Scripture; Satan left for a more opportune time. Jesus would not bow to anyone but God the Father; He would not have Himself worshiped under false pretenses; he would not take shortcuts to the will of God or to honor.

Thus He began. How, now, to summarize HIs few years of ministry? He must have been a palpably warm, inviting, friendly, trust-producing person: men and women dropped all and followed Him with just a word of invitation. He lived compassion. Lepers of the day (and the word could denote a variety of skin conditions) were outcasts, never to be touched, but He touched and healed many; and of course His healing ministry was not just for lepers. He showed grace to a repentant woman of adultery. (There are cryptic notes in that passage that make me think He found a way to get the right message across to the man, too.) There was another admittedly loose woman who found grace and a changed life through Jesus.

In fact, Jesus did astonishing things, for His day, to elevate the status of women. You can hear the surprise in the disciples’ questions during that last linked passage–they didn’t expect Him to be talking with Her. The honor given to the Virgin Mary preceded and foreshadowed what He Himself did. At the end, it was the women among His followers who had the awesome, historically unique privilege of first discovering and reporting that He had risen from the dead. The story of His life is framed by women. “Just so,” you might think, “that is, after all, nothing but what might be expected.” But not so in that day.

He demonstrated the peace that comes from knowing one’s God. This shines most clearly in the incident of a dark night, in stormy waters on a boat piloted by fisherman who in spite of their lifelong experience were terrified of death. Jesus, unperturbed, was asleep in the stern. When they woke Him He spoke a word to the weather, and all was calm.

Yes, He was a worker of miracles. And a man of great strength. “Gentle Jesus meek and mild” hardly begins to convey the way He stood up to the religious leaders of His day, men who had twisted God’s word into a means for personal prestige and pride. Read the Six woes Jesus pronounced on this group for their pride, and for leading many into error. He said among other things that they were no better than dead themselves: “You are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing.” They tried often to trap Him in error after that, but He just out-thought them. And he made it explicit that His teaching was for those who would receive it, not for those who had false purposes (here, for example).

Oh, this is just scratching the surface! Jesus showed us how to live: with compassion, under obedience to the Father, resisting temptation, eschewing shortcuts, welcoming the outcast, being friendly, experiencing the peace that comes through trust, displaying strength against injustice and untruth. At the end of it all, when He was brought to trial by the establishment He had so offended, they were unable to find any true charges to bring against Him. He bore this, too, knowing that He was fulfilling what He had come to do. He accepted the torture and death they gave Him, and on the cross said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

We still don’t know what we’re doing, in many ways; but to follow Jesus, this most astonishingly great man of history, is surely a right place to start.

Still more to come.

Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us

• Part 1: Our Roots In God’s Plan
• Part 2: Broken Roots
• Part 3: The Extent of Brokenness
• Part 4: Restorations
• Part 5: Who Christ Is
• Part 6: Among Us, Loving Us
• Part 7: Showing How to Live
• Part 8: Death and Resurrection
• Part 9: The Cross, Again
• Part 10: The Resurrection, Again
• Part 11: Life in Christ

Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions. This post elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a very long answer in the form of this series.

Posted by Tom Gilson under 21st Century Faith & Worshiping Christian | No Comments »

The stage has been set in Parts 1 through 5 (linked below). The human race, meant to be great under God, in worshipful relationship with Him, has fallen mightily by rejecting that relationship. God did not reject us, though. The plan was prepared since before the foundation of the world: Jesus Christ, God Himself, second Person of the Trinity, maker and sustainer of all creation, would come and provide our rescue. His coming was prophesied centuries in advance, here and in many other places:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.

Thus this glorious King and and Deliverer comes and breaks into our world–helpless and tiny, lying in a feed trough in a stable.

Nobody ever said Christianity was without paradox and surprise. This is one of the greatest of them. God humbled Himself to become one of us, far more truly so than anyone had ever anticipated. The image here well conveys the stunning reversal. He came because of His love for us, but the glory of that love is completely veiled, so that what we notice instead is Mary and Joseph’s adoration.

Not all His greatness was darkened when He came. The angels announced His coming to the shepherds in great glory. But this, too, is a reversal. Shepherds were of a class not much more respected than garbage collectors in our day. Why did God grant them this great privilege?

One author called Jesus’ rule the “Upside-Down Kingdom,” where humility reigns and the proud fall. This upside-down-ness of Jesus’ way began right at His own beginning on Earth. He laid aside His divine privileges, and as we saw in Part 5, became united with humanity.

What does Christ do for us? This was His first action on our behalf in the human form of Jesus, the person who revealed God by walking among us. His first action was to join with us.

His joining with us would extend to growing up and sharing in human joys and grief, in laughter and in pain, in weariness and refreshment, in friendship and in rejection. Ultimately it would extend to experiencing what none of us should ever face, though too many have: immense injustice, torture, and death.

What Christ does for us is love us intimately, from nearby.

There’s more to come.

Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us

• Part 1: Our Roots In God’s Plan
• Part 2: Broken Roots
• Part 3: The Extent of Brokenness
• Part 4: Restorations
• Part 5: Who Christ Is
• Part 6: Among Us, Loving Us
• Part 7: Showing How to Live
• Part 8: Death and Resurrection
• Part 9: The Cross, Again
• Part 10: The Resurrection, Again
• Part 11: Life in Christ

Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions. This post elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a very long answer in the form of this series.

Posted by Tom Gilson under 21st Century Faith & Worshiping Christian | 4 Comments »

Returning to this series after a short break, I’m also taking a short detour. What Christ does for us depends on who He is.

It’s just a few weeks since the Christmas season, and I’m sure readers know about Christ in a manger, born to a virgin. The gospel of Luke tells us He was conceived in Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. In human terms he was of the lineage of David. David had been the king of Israel many years before, and to him God had made a promise that his offspring would have an eternal kingship. Jesus Christ, many generations, was God’s fulfillment of that promise.

But Christ was also “conceived of the Holy Spirit,” as the Apostle’s Creed phrases it, indicating His godly lineage; He was and is in fact, God Himself (all references from the English Standard Version):

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1)

The following context identifies “the Word” with Jesus Christ. He took a dispute with unbelieving religious leaders to a climax with this:

“I and the Father are one” (John 10:30)

And they understood exactly what he was getting at, even though they disagreed:

The Jews answered him, 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)

He is what no mere man could ever be, the exact representation of God, as spoken in Hebrews 1:2-4:

In these last days he (God) has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

And there we see much more of the greatness of Jesus Christ. He is “heir of all things,” meaning that all creation is to be handed over to Him and put under His rule. He is the One through whom all creation was made (and “without him was not anything made that was made,” John 1:3, somewhat a redundancy but an intentional one for clarity). He “upholds the universe by the word of his power,” He made purification for sins, a topic we’ll return to later as we consider what Christ has done for us. He rules next to God the Father. He is far superior to the angels, with the most excellent name of all.

Paul wrote similarly in Colossians 1:15-20,

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

How the superlatives run rampant! And this is hardly the beginning; to do this topic justice would take a book (like this one, for example).

I was listening yesterday to a podcast on this by William Lane Craig (mp3; note also his follow-up on how Christ’s deity came to be recognized by the early church). Craig was making no attempt at raising emotions; he was explaining and teaching, not stirring up anything intentionally. And yet I was moved to deep worship. This man Jesus, whom we know by His life and teachings on Earth, is also the God who holds the universe together! Theologically He is understood as being one person, having both a human and divine nature (more on that here or here). Certainly there are mysteries there about how this can be true, but that it is true is as certain as anything the Bible teaches.*

The greatest passage of all describing the majesty, the sacrifice, and the exaltation of Jesus Christ is Philippians 2:5-11:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

We will indeed all bow to Him. We will all, someday, recognize His divine majesty, and part of our worship will be based on recognizing how He sacrificed Himself on our behalf. None of us sees it clearly now, but on the day of his full revealing, it will no longer be a matter for doubt or debate.

As we move later into the story of Christ’s life on Earth and His work on our behalf, this backdrop of His divine identity will be essential at every stage.

Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us

• Part 1: Our Roots In God’s Plan
• Part 2: Broken Roots
• Part 3: The Extent of Brokenness
• Part 4: Restorations
• Part 5: Who Christ Is
• Part 6: Among Us, Loving Us
• Part 7: Showing How to Live
• Part 8: Death and Resurrection
• Part 9: The Cross, Again
• Part 10: The Resurrection, Again
• Part 11: Life in Christ

Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions. This post elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a very long answer in the form of this series.

*Though this is an apologetics-oriented blog, I reserve the right at times to state what I am convinced is true without explaining each time why I am so convinced. The purpose of this series is not to prove the story of Christ but to tell the story of Christ. That story is powerful in its own right. For those who doubt or question it, by following this series you will at least know better what you are doubting and questioning.

Posted by Tom Gilson under 21st Century Faith & Worshiping Christian | 3 Comments »

Earlier in this series (see below) I described what Scripture says about God’s original intent and purpose for humankind, and how we fell away from it. God in His love intended that we live in close, intimate fellowship with Him. He gave humans their start in conditions of harmony with the world, with genuine intellectual and moral significance, and in real, closely connected relationships with God, the environment, and each other. They were rightly dependent on God, their Creator, and they acknowledged Him as their loving Master.

We are still dependent on God for every breath, for He still holds everything in His hands. We still experience God in every joy of nature and in every relationship of love. But ever since the first humans chose independence from God, we’ve lost sight of Him in these things, and we’ve especially turned away from Him as the one in charge of His own world.

The loss is ours. God in His love expresses grief over our rebellion, and in His justice expresses what the Bible calls righteous anger over it. But we experience death, distance, alienation, sweat, struggle, all the misfortunes and tragedies that we can never seem to grow accustomed to in spite of centuries of living them them.

God’s purpose since then has been to restore us to the original plan: that we would rightly bow to Him in worship as our Master and God, that we would experience the fullness of love in relationship to Him and to one another, and that our alienation from the rest of the world would be repaired. This is what Christ came to do for us. In very brief outline form:

1. It is through His sacrifice for us, His death on the cross, that we can be brought back into relationship with God, reconciled to Him, forgiven for our sins, made right again in God’s eyes.
2. It is again through that sacrifice that we can recognize God’s glory, know Him as worthy of our worship, and acknowledge Him as Lord (Master, Chief, King).
3. It is also through the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit that we can live according to God’s plan.
4. And it is through Christ’s sufferings that the world will be repaired of the curse of sin.

I’m not able this evening to take time to flesh this out fully as it should be. (My daughter is playing trombone in a school concert not long from now.) It seems to me anyway that, since I’ve been taking a narrative approach in the first posts in this series, I ought not stray too far away from that yet. Better to view this list of four restorations as a preview of what we’ll encounter as we continue to walk through the story of what God has done for us through Christ.

Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us

• Part 1: Our Roots In God’s Plan
• Part 2: Broken Roots
• Part 3: The Extent of Brokenness
• Part 4: Restorations
• Part 5: Who Christ Is
• Part 6: Among Us, Loving Us
• Part 7: Showing How to Live
• Part 8: Death and Resurrection
• Part 9: The Cross, Again
• Part 10: The Resurrection, Again
• Part 11: Life in Christ

Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions — a post that elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a long answer

Posted by Tom Gilson under 21st Century Faith & Worshiping Christian | 24 Comments »