Thinking Christian

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.

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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

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There sure are a lot of versions of Jesus out there. Can we know the real Jesus? How?

It’s almost embarrassing–yet not the least bit surprising–how many different views of him the world offers. Dallas Willard writes in Divine Conspiracy of one such opinion (p. 134),

Far too often [Jesus] is regarded as hardly conscious. He is looked on as a mere icon, a wraithlike semblance of a man, fit for the role of sacrificial lamb or alienated social critic, perhaps, but little more.

A well-known “scholarly” picture has him wandering the hills of Palestine, deeply confused about who he was and even about crucial points in his basic topic, the kingdom of the heavens. From time to time he perhaps utters disconnected though profound and vaguely radical irrelevancies, now obscurely preserved in our Gospels.

That’s one picture. There are others:

• To many political liberals, and especially to many Latin American theologians in the 20th century, Jesus was above all one who came to free the oppressed, often by redistributing wealth but also by showing a new vision of justice.
• To Mennonites, Jesus was a pacifist. (To many conservative American Christians, his way supports a strong defense.)
• To the Muslims, he was a great prophet.
• To followers of the Bahá’í faith, he was one of the many prophets, one of many manifestations of God who “have the same metaphysical nature and the same spiritual stature.”
• Various cults – Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unification Church followers, members of “The Way” (now defunct? I haven’t heard much of it lately), and others – accord him various levels of high prominence but deny his full unique godhood in the classic Christian sense.
• Whatever unity Unitarian-Universalists may believe in, there is no unity regarding their views of Jesus. Any view seems to be okay; though one Unitarian Universalist pastor once remarked to me that “The resurrection is a goofy doctrine.” (My response: that’s not the issue. The question is, “did it happen?”)
• New agers likewise have multiple views of Jesus, but tend to emphasize his love, his sensitivity, and above all his non-judgmentalness; and to call on him in support of their belief that everything is going to be just fine for everyone, especially if we could just realize we’re all really on the same path after all (see one example here).
• To at least one Buddhist, his true significance is hard to pin down. The one thing that’s clear is that it’s both appalling and repugnant to suggest he is the only way to God.
• Secularists consider him an interesting and probably important historical figure, whose actual significance as an individual (if he even existed) has been blown out of all proportion by his followers, many of whom now are rather annoying in their insistence that Jesus really matters.
• Many millions of us believe he is the Divine Son of God, Second Person of the Trinity, God with us, the sinless and perfect teacher and example, God’s own self-sacrifice for our sins, risen from the dead, now ruling in the heavens and coming back to claim and manifest his rule over all creation; the one who loves all, the one who rescues from sin and death any who will let themselves be so rescued. Given half a chance we would go on with even longer descriptions of his greatness and glory.

Even 2000 years later, he cannot be ignored. His influence isn’t going away. Everyone who knows about him has to make sense of him. This is certainly the reason you find so many versions of Jesus: everyone wants him on their side. In my observations it appears that he gets remade constantly into the image of whoever wants to claim him on their side. He’s a conservative, he’s a liberal, depending on whether you yourself are conservative or liberal.

Is there a way to sort out who he was, really? Is there a way to know the real Jesus, not one molded into our favored version? If there was some such method it would have to meet at least these standards:

• Absolute reliance on the primary sources. We know nothing reliably of him except what is in the Bible, especially the New Testament. Apart from that, every view of Jesus is pure fabrication.
• Attention to context: Jesus lived in a particular setting: a Jew among firmly monotheistic Jews, many of whom gave great credence to their Scriptures, including its prophecies of a Messiah. He lived in a land oppressed by an unwelcome occupying army, where certain religious leaders became his enemies.
• Great care given to guard against making Jesus a member of our own party.

I believe these standards can be satisfactorily met. Take the third one, for example. While I don’t believe in a Hegelian dialectic truth – we do not create new truths, about Jesus in particular, through dialogue – I certainly recognize the value of a kind of dialectic in how we interpret truth. Among people who take Jesus Christ and the original documents seriously, there are definite cultural and geographical variations. As C.S. Lewis reminded us, these variations cut across time. We have to test our views in relation to each other’s views. Philip Jenkins’ work on The Next Christendom (review) shows that we in the West ought to be learning from Christians in the South and East.

Ought we even to take the original documents seriously, though? Well, why not? Don’t we usually take source documents seriously? What is it about these, the New Testament biographies, history, and letters, that would lead us to treat them any differently? Well, of course they make some unusual claims. And of course they are controversial. As documents, though, it is more than well established that they stand out far, far above others in their attestation and reliability (see two very brief sources here and here). Not to mention that they have changed the world!

In the context of his time, most of the above listed options regarding Jesus are simply impossible. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they are just wrong, and necessarily so. Jesus could not be an impersonal God-force; the Jewish religion and culture would have none of that sort of thing, and he gave no indication of being that sort of thing. For the same reason he could not have been one of many equally valid manifestations of God. He couldn’t have been a completely non-judgmental teacher of love who only wanted everyone to get along: they wouldn’t have killed him for that, would they? And the picture Willard presented of an incompetent, confused rambling teacher seems hardly likely for the founder of the world’s most largest and most enduring social movement!

To make the record clear (and to avoid the N.T. Wright trap): I am thoroughly committed to the trustworthiness of the documentary record–also known as the Bible. My own concern is not whether it can be trusted, but what it takes for us to be trustworthy ourselves in the way we understand it. We have more we can count on, of course, than just comparing one opinion with another. We have God who intends to communicate, whom we can trust to be successful in doing so. He promised guidance by the Holy Spirit.

But I’m interested to know, what do you think? Who was Jesus, really?

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I gave this 30 minute talk at Colonial Harbor in York County, Virginia on June 15, 2008. The point is simple: Jesus Christ is the most awesome person of history. To be specific: people in all times since he walked this earth have had to deal with him. Many have tried to mold him into an image that fit their desires, or felt comfortable to them. He has always been uniquely who he has been, however. Never, no matter what the pressure applied to him, did he conform to what others wished he would be, for he knew his identity and his mission. And yet in spite of this solid stature, he always served others.

July 6, 2008 note: I’ve updated this talk on another blog entry.

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