Jesus is God and the Word made flesh, so when we do anything to undermine him, his power, or his Word to make people feel comfortable, we blaspheme him. What right do we have, as servants of the King, to edit the message that He has sent us to deliver?
If you were a messenger, or a servant of a king, and he sent you on a journey to deliver a message he wrote to someone else, and you edited it or changed it because you were worried about how it would be received, you wouldn’t be a very good messenger? You would possibly be put to death for high treason, or be put in prison as a traitor, but at the very least you would be considered a bad servant to the king. By your actions you would be doing a couple of things.
First you are misrepresenting the king. Who are you to alter what he is saying? Is your place above his? Second you are doubting the wisdom of the king and in the case of Christ we are saying that somehow the creation has insight or wisdom that the Creator does not. This truly is foolishness.
The second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, spoke the world into existence and is God, along with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, we get a glimpse into the creation story from a different perspective than we get from Genesis 1. John attributes the origin of all things to Christ. John is showing that although Jesus was born into humanity by a virgin girl in the first century, this wasn’t his true beginning, He has no beginning and no end. The Son is the image of the invisible God and has no beginning and has no end. Jesus Christ is the example and visual representation of God on earth.
The Holy Spirit, through the writing of John, reveals Jesus as Messiah and as God. The culmination of all prophesy, all history, and all creation hinges on the person of Christ. This why we cannot flippantly portray Jesus in any way that is not supported in the Scripture. If we believe that the Scripture is the true and inspired Word of God, then why wouldn’t we carefully weigh our view of Christ, the Gospel, and eternity on him?
Although we are indwelled by the Spirit of God if we are truly saved, we must remember that it is easy to let our emotions and our flesh mislead us. We must, therefore, reconcile ourselves to the Scriptures because the Holy Spirit of God will never contradict the written Word of God because Jesus is the Word.
It is not only foolish, but it is dangerous to view Christ in a way that doesn’t line up with the Scripture. So much of what is said about Jesus in our culture today is not biblical and because of this we have allowed a view of Jesus into the church that is passive and accepting of everything. But when contrasted to the picture of Jesus painted in the Gospels, and the picture of God in the Old Testament, something much different emerges.
The message of Jesus in the New Testament isn’t any different than the message of the prophets in the Old Testament, because they are the words of the same God—a God who never changes. To think that the God of the universe, who created time, would bend His will to change just because of some worldly culture, is not only a small view of God but it is also heretical in sight of what the Scripture teaches.
The message of repentance for the sake of salvation is a common thread throughout the Bible and has never changed. The only difference between the repentance message the prophets spoke of, and the repentance message Jesus spoke of, is that when Jesus spoke it he said, “Repent for the kingdom of God has come near.” This is because he was the long-awaited Messiah, literally the essence of heaven walking on the earth. Also, this spoke of the actual kingdom which his life, death, and resurrection would set into motion. A kingdom that he would rule for all eternity.
John records an interaction that a teacher of the law named Nicodemus had with Jesus in the third chapter of his Gospel. Like the teaching Jesus gives about the radical cost of discipleship in Luke 14:25-27 where He says that we should hate father, mother, sister, brother, and even our own lives, and that we must deny self, pick up our cross, and follow him, what he tells Nicodemus is equally intense.
“Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.’” John 3:3 (NIV)
Jesus tells Nicodemus that to see the Kingdom of Heaven we must be born again. All men are born of water, but to take on the nature of Christ we must be born of the Spirit. So being a disciple isn’t just abandoning an old way of life and taking on a new one, it is to put to death an old nature and to be reborn into a brand-new nature. This is why people who are not reborn in the Spirit have such a hard time understanding what Jesus asks of us. It is in conflict with our sinful nature and is impossible to do without the internal transformation that comes from the work and indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
This is a problem I have with much of today’s preaching. Out of desperation to explain the unexplainable, we devalue the worth and mystery that makes up the transformed life of the spiritual man and the vastness of the triune God. There is a lot of reasonable evidence in science, nature, and logic to use in a balanced Christian apologetic. But as A.W Tozer would put it, “To describe God’s function isn’t to explain Him philosophically.” We truly show how little we understand spiritual things when we think that we can fully explain the supernatural God of all creation through and by natural causes.
I believe that we should study the Scripture deeply and intently. Not to amass theological knowledge, but to hear from God himself and to know him from his own living words. We spend a lot of time trying to explain God instead of spending time adoring God. Jesus himself is the Word and he himself is revealed and can be experienced through his Word. A person who had no preconceived notion of God will have a much easier time experiencing God’s Word and discovering the person of Christ in that word. Jesus as revealed in the Scripture is not that hard to accept if a person has no preconceived notions. The obstacle of belief is not only the adding of truth, but it is also the removal of lies.
Most have been influenced by lies and misconceptions about God, lies and misconceptions about ourselves, and lies and misconceptions about the world. For the most part you are the product of whatever your environment dictates unless something from the outside intervenes. Your view of reality is greatly influenced by your culture; where you were born, how you were raised, and what you were taught. There are cultures that are taught to hate other cultures from birth and spend their lives despising a group of people, that if they were not taught to hate would probably have no problems with. This is why when we are born again everything must be reconsidered in view of the cross, and everything must be reexamined in light of the Scripture. Our greatest teacher and example is Jesus Christ who is God and also our Savior.
“Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.’” John 14:8-11 (NIV)
All we need to know about God is revealed to us in Christ. To see Jesus is to see God, to know Jesus is to know God, and to be in Christ is to be justified before God on the basis of faith. Jesus wasn’t merely a messenger, or a prophet, He is the image of the invisible God and the person of the Godhead that God the Father chose to endow with all power and authority.
Jesus is the dividing line between true worship and false worship, true Christianity and cults. The truth about everything in this life, in this world, and in the universe must be judged on its ability to reconcile itself to Jesus Christ. Jesus doesn’t merely possess or fully comprehend the truth, he is the truth, he is light, and he is life. We could write books from now until the end of time and never come close to exhausting those concepts or fully grasping the majesty, wonder and power of the truth, Jesus Christ.
In Christ,
Pastor Joshua
Joshua West is a pastor, evangelist, and author. He is also director of the World Challenge Pastors Network.
