The world is full of frustrated people. Some of them are
even Christians. Specifically, some dissatisfied searchers are looking to
understand Jesus Christ.
Now on the surface that sounds like a very good thing, doesn’t
it? Pursuing understanding of the Lord Jesus is about the finest activity in
which a human being can be engaged, at least in my experience.
But there are ways of pursuing the knowledge of Christ that
may be quite a let-down; roads of spiritual inquiry which we may travel
only to find a dead end or a bridge out.
“… we want to know what was Jesus really like. And that quest to understand what he was really like has turned out to be very disappointing.”
What can hinder us in such a crucial inquiry? Let me suggest
three things just for starters:
1) Reading Into the Text
Making assumptions based on our experience and preferences
is perfectly natural, but it is a huge barrier in the search for truth. Judah
Smith, for instance, thinks Jesus “would have enjoyed a good time” and has been wrongly portrayed as “serious … to a fault”. It will be almost instantly clear to any reader that Judah is a cheery, amiable
fellow who cherishes a good laugh. Because he sees humor as God-given and valuable,
he has made an assumption about the Lord Jesus. And who knows, he may well be
correct. But since he has not provided a shred of scriptural evidence for his
opinion, we would be unwise to base much on it.
In the Psalms, God accuses his people of starting from the
wrong place in their search for him. “You thought that I was one like yourself,” he says. Much to their chagrin, he is not.
Asking the question “What does Jesus mean to you?” may seem
profound, but it grasps the wrong end of the stick.
In addition to being the Eternal God, Jesus Christ was a complex
and fully rounded human being about whom scripture says a great deal. If we want to talk about his gentle nature, we
can find verses to support that. If we want to contemplate the intensity of his
righteousness, we can find evidence to prove our point. If we care to discuss
how he dealt with the poor, that subject is also extensively covered.
In fact, if we start from our own preferences and inclinations, with a little bit of stretching here and there and a some studious inattention to anything that contradicts our thesis, we can easily transform him into almost anything that suits us.
In fact, if we start from our own preferences and inclinations, with a little bit of stretching here and there and a some studious inattention to anything that contradicts our thesis, we can easily transform him into almost anything that suits us.
But it won’t be him. It’ll be a divine Marty Stu.
We build a much more faithful and accurate composite picture
of the Lord Jesus when we work outward from the gospels and epistles than when
we work backward from our presuppositions.
2) Occupation with the
Lesser Qualities
Human beings put a premium on the qualities that makes us
distinctive. As teenagers, many of us are obsessed with standing out and being
able to draw attention. The things that are most obvious about a person become,
to such folks, their defining features. When you ask your teenage son what his
new girlfriend is like, unless he is remarkably mature for his age he will
probably give you a list of things something like: “cute, quirky, funny, passionate,
good sense of humor, likes cats”. He is less likely to tell you the love of his
life is loyal, courageous or honest. Though these things may be true, they also
take time and attentive observation to establish.
But of course those are the things that really matter, aren’t
they? “Man looks on the outward appearance”. Nothing matters less than what the Lord actually looked like, the Shroud of
Turin notwithstanding. The Lord Jesus had “no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him”. His glories were moral and character-related, not the sort of thing that would turn heads or draw attention. What compelled the crowds were his words, not his appearance, charismatic personality or polished delivery.
I sometimes wonder if people who feel compelled to invest Jesus with a sense of humor or a preoccupation with politics haven’t
missed the point entirely.
3) An Inaccurate View
of Scripture
There is nothing deadlier to spiritual discovery than
misapprehensions about the nature of the word of God, and this is what has led
Wayne Meeks and his friends to disappointment in understanding what Jesus was
really like. He asks, “Who was Jesus, really?” and it seems he would genuinely
like to know.
Here is the source of his disappointment:
“All we have from this period about Jesus is text, finally.”
Oh dear. No streaming video. Okay, that’s probably not his
biggest concern. This is his major complaint:
“… in history facts always lie under interpretations and we never get to the facts. They’re only interpretations. There is only an interpreted Jesus, there are many interpreted Jesuses. So where do we begin? We begin not with Jesus, we have no access to him. We begin with the responses to Jesus, by his followers, by outsiders who heard about him ... We begin with those reactions as they're enshrined in the text we have.”
You see the problem. Wayne and his friends have a low view
of scripture. They’re under the mistaken impression that what the writers of
the Bible recorded about the Lord was merely their “interpretation”. Wayne has
not internalized the truth that “All Scripture is breathed out by God”. If Matthew’s, Mark’s, Luke’s and John’s gospels have been breathed out by God,
they may well include the personality quirks of the individual writers, but
they are equally armor plated against error in what they declare about the Son
of God. Mark’s “interpretation” of the motives or actions of the Lord is more
reliable than the total of 2+2 in mathematics or the fact that when I let go of
a glass, it will fall rather than rise.
We can know Jesus because what is said about him in
scripture is ultimate truth.
The Text is the Only
Way
Now it’s true that Christians who take scripture literally
are sometimes accused of bibliolatry: of worshiping the Bible rather than its
Author.
And it is certainly possible to become obsessed with the
knowledge of scripture while failing to put it into practice. James warns that is the road to self-deception. We definitely want to avoid over-occupation with
acquiring understanding upon which we are unprepared to take action. But the problem with the Bible student who doesn’t witness or love his neighbour
is not the Bible: it’s his failure to practice what it teaches.
Forgive me if what follows sounds tedious, hyper-conservative
and numbingly obvious: There is only one way to know Jesus Christ in this life,
and that is through obedience to the text of scripture, walking in his footsteps. It is in being an imitator of God — specifically as he is revealed in the sacrificial love of the Son — that I come to understand him. To do this, I need to know precisely what he did, and for that I require the
text of scripture. There is nothing else; no easy way, no short route, no
experience I can pay for or search out.
That will not satisfy would-be mystics, I realize. But
dreams, neat ideas and ecstatic experiences are not the substance of faith.
Subjective impressions about Jesus are not necessarily invalid or false, but
they are absolutely unverifiable and therefore worthless in the church and of a
very secondary value in my own spiritual life. How may I “test everything” and “hold fast what is good” if there exists no objective standard to which my experience may be subjected?
So which Jesus do you worship? Gentle Jesus, meek and mild?
The great teacher? The passionate advocate for his Father who cleansed the
temple?
They are all the same Jesus. You just need to read about him a little more.
They are all the same Jesus. You just need to read about him a little more.
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