The following three posts are Facebook notes that I wrote last year. I was reminded of them because I've been thinking over these issues again. I highly recommend Your Jesus is Too Safe by Jared Wilson as well as The Holiness of God by RC Sproul (which I am currently reading). These two books will rock your world and shape your view of Jesus as He was on Earth and as He is as God.
I wonder why terms like "get saved," "ask Jesus into your heart," and
"relationship with God" make me wanna puke. It's not that I'm not
"saved" or that Jesus isn't a part of my LIFE or that I don't have a
relationship with God, it just may be that these terms have become
so...lame. I didn't GET saved...Jesus chose to have grace on me. And I
certainly didn't ask Jesus into my heart! I thought I had when I was
younger but now that doesn't make any sense to me. What would Jesus be
doing in my heart? What does that even mean? lol No, Jesus isn't in my
heart but He is my leader and the One that I look to in everything. He
is King and Lord. And I may have a relationship with God but it's not
like the relationship I have with my parents, my friends or even my
boyfriend. It's not like God and I hang out at the coffee shop or go to
the movies. God isn't just another person I pal around with. He is more
than that. Yes, I do see Him as a Father, a Friend and even a Lover but
He is still so much more than that. Yes He's personal in these ways and I
adore that about Him but He is also a ruler, a mighty ruler, who acts
out of justice and sometimes wrath. He is a King and He is sovereign. He
holds all things within His power and will. He is so much more than
even my mind can fully comprehend. I don't like to talk about my
"relationship with God" as if I'm discussing my relationship with my
boyfriend. Am I communicating the difference here? I hope so...I don't
want to sound heretical. I just think that Christians, especially
American Christians, forget who Jesus is and why who He is is so
important. We've gone into a spiritual slumber. Do we even recognize
Jesus' power? Are we so caught up in Christianity that we forget about
Jesus and the Gospel? Do we forget to follow? I've said this before and I
still believe it...we've watered down what Christianity is suppose to
be. We've changed it and made it more like the world....it looks like
everything else. Jesus was radical but do we express that at all?
Scripture is incredibly radical so why do we find it so boring? The very
plan of creation and redemption is amazingly radical but we don't seem
to even care! We go to church every Sunday but then live the rest of our
days as if Jesus is not who He said He was, as if we have no grace, as
if there is no hope, as if there is nothing to live for but ourselves! I
find it incredibly sad. I can't say that none of this is true for me
because it is and I hate it. But praise God that He is patient and full
of grace because He remains faithful even when I do not. So no, I don't
consider myself as one who "got saved" or as one who "invited Jesus into
my heart" or as one who has a "relationship with God." I am one who was
chosen by God to be brought out of the slavery of sin into a hopeful
life of grace to be lived for His glory. I am one who follows God by
allowing Him to lead every part of my life and to use me as He will. Do I
hang out with God? In a sense, yes I do, but not like I hang out with
other people. I read His unchanging Word, I can pray to Him whenever and
wherever I want, and I learn more about Him and grow closer to Him in
intimacy. Do I often screw this up? Heck yes I do and God will judge me
but He still offers grace and hope. I know I should be a better follower
but I don't want to forget why I'm even a follower in the first place.
_______________
Your Jesus is Too Safe is a book written by Jared C Wilson. It has been
sitting on my bedside table for months now and I just started reading it
today. All I had to read was the introduction to know that this is
going to be a good read. It is much like my previous note on my thoughts
about God. Wilson wrote this book in order to bring to remembrance and
realization that there is a real historical Jesus. Our nation has been
marketing Jesus as all kinds of things. Jesus has become our
"drive-thru, feel good Savior." He has been painted as a long haired,
brown eyed, blank stare, "he must be a nice guy" kind of Jesus. What's
worse is that even the CHURCH has misrepresented Jesus. "Yes, even the
church itself is guilty when it comes to the marketing of Jesus. We've
put our own gloss on him, our own spin. It's no wonder the world doesn't
get Jesus, because we've spent decades selling a Jesus cast in our own
image" (pg. 13). Christians read the Bible and still screw up the Gospel
and still view Jesus as their cuddly teddy bear. How can you read the
gospels and not understand who Jesus really is? Well, I must remember
that I knew the Gospel forwards and back and had a completely wrong view
of Jesus growing up. It wasn't until I started at Criswell that I began
to learn and know the real Jesus; the historical Jesus and how what He
did and said all those years ago meant then and now. I learned how
important it is to see and hear Jesus as His first century audience
would have. And let me tell you, it's completely different from how the
21st century church sees and hears Jesus.
"The purpose of Your
Jesus is Too Safe is to remind us, for the glory of God and the hope of
the world, of the original message of the historical person Jesus
Christ, who was, in fact, God in the flesh. We're going to remove the
gloss. We're going to venture beyond the hype and beneath the
misconceptions to see the real, historical figure of Jesus Christ in his
biblical and cultural context - and in this way to know God more fully,
to see what God wants us to know about the revelation of himself in
his son" (pg 15).
_____________
Jesus was a promise. He was a prophet. He was/is a forgiver.
In
the Old Testament Jesus was the promised Messiah. The Jews waited for
Him and when He came, they rejected Him. They didn't understand Him.
They wanted a King to come in and overthrow the Roman government and
deliver them from their oppressors. But that's not what Jesus came to
do. He came as the fulfillment of the Law. He came to bring a new
covenant, a new kingdom. "The deliverance wasn't happening the way that
so many people expected, as neither John nor Jesus had a sword, and
neither advocated actually overthrowing the government. Instead, they
wielded something far more dangerous: the radical message of a new
kingdom" (pg. 23-24). The Jews wanted freedom from an oppressing
government but Jesus came to offer Himself. He came and said, "I'm God.
I'm IT. I'm the fulfillment of the Law. Repent and believe because the
kingdom of God is here." The Jews didn't like this so much. They thought
He was crazy. What they didn't understand is that they were looking for
the wrong promise and the wrong freedom. "The real good news of the
kingdom of God arriving to reign over the world is that the promise is
not in stuff, but in God himself, manifest in the person of Jesus
Christ. The promise is not a monetary or political inheritance. The
promise is the king himself. The promise is Jesus" (pg. 25). So many
Christians, even today, "accept" Christ because they think they He will
give them a better life and that they will be blessed with things and
everything their heart desires. No longer do Christians long for Christ.
No longer do they yearn for Him and find satisfaction in Him. No longer
do we present the Gospel with Christ as the focus. We take Christ to
get something bigger and better as a result. Perhaps this is why we have
so many fake Christians and pastors in our churches today and in so
many Christian organizations. Perhaps so many people who call themselves
Christians have not actually met the powerful Jesus Christ of the
Gospels. They have only met a distorted figure of Him. Wilson says, "The
message of Jesus--that he himself is life and you can't get it anywhere
else, least of all in yourself--is the hardest message we could ever
hear, because it goes completely against our perceptions and
conceptions, our prejudices and our opinions. It goes radically against
the bent of our souls" (pg 27). This is one of the things that I have
always loved about Jesus. He is radically different. He came to do that
which He did in such a radical way, in such a way that no one expected
or even wanted. He did come as a promise and He fulfilled that promise.
He took the Law, the Law that the Jews followed so closely, and He put
the Law in context of Himself. He fulfilled it and now we no longer live
under the Law, but under Christ.
Jesus was a prophet. I don't
really have much to say about this. Wilson went over five criteria for a
prophet that can be gathered from any of the Old Testament prophets and
then he showed how Jesus fulfilled each of these criteria. At the end
of the chapter Wilson says this, "That is what irritates about Jesus the
Prophet. That is what disturbs about Jesus the Prophet. That is what
offends about Jesus the Prophet. He has no interest in our
self-interest, no concern for our personal space, no enablement for our
self-satisfaction. He proclaims and prophesies himself, and he makes no
bones about it" (pg 58).
Jesus is a forgiver. Not only did He come to fulfill but to bring grace
and forgiveness. Wilson discusses how important it is for Christians to
have grace and forgiveness. He says that the church is suppose to be the
face of grace to each other and to the world. Having grace and
forgiving someone is not innate within us. When someone wrongs us we
want to have vengeance, not forgive them. But we are to forgive because
we've been forgiven and we are to forgive as we've been forgiven. "...it
does mean we give up the option for vengeance, that we relinquish the
spiritual power that unforgiveness can have over us" (pg. 72). To
persevere in forgiveness is to be so unlike the world. To forgive as God
has forgiven us is a radical and godly characteristic that every
Christian should portray. And if at all possible, to create
reconciliation and bring healing to brokenness is a great testimony for
the kingdom of God.
______________
No comments:
Post a Comment