Jesus Matters

Dear Brothers, Sisters and All Those In Between,

I had a conversation recently with a fellow Christian. I had put forth the idea that all you need to be a Christian is to believe in/follow Jesus.

He said, "When I hear Christians say, 'All you need is Jesus!' I think, 'I envy your faith.'"

For him, there is a lot more to it than that, and I won't disagree with his practice of faith.

Here's my statement of faith: all that you need to be a Christian is Jesus.

Now, believing in and following Jesus will probably lead to some other things for you (it certainly did for me.) When you follow Jesus, you'll probably want to know all that you can about Him. The New Testament of the Bible contains stories of His life, His death and resurrection, His teachings, and how He affected the people that He came into contact with.

Then, you might want to know more about what was important to Him. The Old Testament (or Hebrew Scriptures) is the Book that Jesus taught from. It contains the Commandments that He told people to follow, the words of the prophets that foretold His coming and the salvation of all mankind through Him. Jesus knew the Scriptures. They were important to Him, and so they become important for those of us who follow Him.

You'll probably want to do the things that Jesus did, the things that He thought were important enough to teach about and live by. You'll want to avoid the things that He thought were destructive to the body and spirit. There is a whole spiritual life to dive into after you meet Jesus. But, until you meet Him, none of that other stuff matters.

Jesus matters. (See what I did there?)

I love reading about Jesus in the Gospels, because I have a very cinematic mind. I don't just see the words of the Sermon on the Mount - I see Jesus standing before a crowd of thousands, telling them things that they never would have imagined hearing from a man called "Rabbi." I don't just read about Him purifying the Temple - I can see Him turning over the tables of the men who were profiting from the common people's desire for Divine Absolution. He is a gentle man, a passionate man, a man with a fire in his eyes and a voice that drew people to Him.

He is also God, and I don't understand that.

I don't understand it, because the Hebrew Scriptures talk about a God of Thunder and Lightning, of Earthquakes and Destruction... a Cloud by Day and a Fire by Night kind of God, a God who will smite His enemies and the enemies of His people down to the babe in arms. He's a God that demands blood to pay for our forgiveness, and death to pay for our sins.

That God makes me very uncomfortable. I don't want to know Him, and I don't want Him to know me. I've heard my atheist friends describe that God as "arbitrary" and "cruel." If I were basing my entire understanding of God off some of the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures, I think I would agree.

But, here's where it gets tricky: God showed Himself to us. He showed us His true face. It was Jesus.

God walked among us as a human being - a young, Middle-Eastern man, born to peasant parents in a backwater town in Palestine. This young, fragile God gathered a group of followers, and took on the very powerful religious establishment of His day. He called them hypocrites and vipers, and told them that God would sooner make followers out of the dead earth than of them.

And then, He ate with tax collectors and prostitutes. He touched blind men and lepers, and healed them. He wept over a friend, and then raised him from the dead. He told people that they were blessed in their meekness, in their mourning, in their poverty.

And He told stories. He told people that God was like a shepherd who would leave 99 sheep safe in the pen, and go out to search for one lost sheep. He told people that God was like a father whose son had squandered everything and dishonored the family name - but a father who welcomed that son back without any questions, with great rejoicing and gratitude. He told them that, in the Kingdom of God, those who had been most dishonored by men would be most honored by God, and those who had been made last their whole lives would be first.

He told them that their righteousness would have to exceed the righteousness of the religious leaders who had made an entire career and books of laws out of being more righteous than everyone else, if they wanted to please God. Impossible righteousness... but then he told them that pleasing God was easy.

This young, middle-eastern man of ignoble birth and no obvious means told anyone who would listen that what pleased God more than anything else... was them. That was what all the stories were about. God was their father, and all He wanted was His children back. He knew that they could never meet Him with their sacrifices or their attempts at righteousness. So, He turned the whole thing on its head.

He became the sacrifice, and He called us all righteous because of it.

I might have just lost some of you, but I hope you'll stay with me. I'm trying to tell you about Jesus, and Jesus matters. I'm touching on the topic of Divine Grace - which is also about Jesus - and that's a topic for another post. But, just imagine for a moment that you're a 1st Century Jew. Your whole life, you've been required to make regular sacrifices, because you're told that God will kill you for your sins if you don't. Suddenly,  a man appears who says that He speaks with God's voice, and He says that God does not want to kill you. God loves you. God loves you, even though He knows that you'll never be righteous. God loves you so much, that He's going to abolish this whole system of sacrifice with the single most amazing and counter-intuitive act in Hebrew history:

He's going to die for you.

Jesus matters, because He showed us the irrefutable proof that God loved us. Jesus matters because He taught us what Divine Love looks like, and then proved it to us with His death. This was not a cheap trick or a theological gimmick - this was a brutal, powerful, essential moment in history, in which the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe put Himself in our hands so that He might win our hearts. He could have compelled worship, but He didn't. He wanted to earn it. He wanted to show us why.

There are a lot of great stories about Jesus in the Gospels. The feeding of the 5,000. Jesus calming the storm. The redemption of Peter on the shore. But, I think my favorite is in Luke Chapter 24.

Jesus has died, and a few people have seen the evidence of His resurrection. Not many believe yet (would you?), and a couple of followers of Jesus are walking on the road to a town called Emmaus. Jesus appears and starts to walk with them (but He's hidden His identity - you have to love a God who prefer Clark Kent to Superman). He asks the two men why they look sad. One of them, Cleopas, wants to know where this guy has been to not know what they're talking about. So, Cleopas starts to explain to this Stranger about Jesus. They'd hoped He was going to redeem Israel, and save them all. But, now He's dead. Some people think He's alive again, but not enough people have seen Him to convince Cleopas and His friend.

The Stranger laughs at them (that's how I imagine it.) He says, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe what the prophets have spoken? Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter His glory?" Then, the Stranger starts to explain the Scriptures - starting with Moses and the Prophets - and how everything has pointed to this momentous event, this Divine coup de grace. They're fascinated, and when the Stranger looks like He's going to keep going after they stop, the two beg Him to stay and eat with them.

So, the Stranger and these two men go into a house and sit down to a meal. The Stranger gives thanks to God, then breaks the bread...

And, for the first time since meeting Him, the two men see Him. Then, Jesus disappears from their midst (I imagine with a sly wink in their direction.)

They had been with Him for hours, but hadn't recognized Him. It was in that simple act of breaking bread and giving thanks that they really saw Him. They remembered that this is what Jesus had been about: eating and talking and giving thanks. And, once He was gone, they said, "Weren't our hearts burning within us as we talked and He explained to us the Scriptures?"

It's easy to miss Jesus - even if you're already a follower - in the midst of the theology. Sometimes, it's in the simple acts of humanity - of life - that our eyes are finally opened and we see Him.

Jesus matters, and you matter to Him. I hope that, in that place where your heart is burning within you, that you can finally see Him - whether it be as a follower, or as someone meeting Him for the first time.

With All My Love to You, No Matter Where You Are,

Michael Brian Woywood
Saved By Grace
Following in Faith