students of jesus

(NOTE: This post is part two of an article begun Monday. You can read it here.)

How did Jesus become the man he was? As the record of his life unfolds in the gospels we are faced with an unspoken question: how did Jesus do the things he did? If we choose to say simply, “he was the Messiah, God come to earth,” how can we explain his statement in John 14:12? “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

His earliest followers understood that Jesus lived a life that demonstrated full reliance on the Holy Spirit: a life in perfect submission to the Father’s will. True, he was without sin and in his perfection Jesus‘ sacrificial death paid the price for our pardon. But his life was more than a substitution, more than payment for our sin--as great as that sacrifice is. His life was a model for anyone who would follow him, a model of both moral excellence and ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit.

But how can his life be a model for anyone if his character and power cannot be imitated? Whether we articulate the question or not, each of us is forced to wrestle with the nature of Jesus--was he God or was he man? If he was only a man, how can his death pay the price for all mankind? If he is God, how can he reasonably expect his followers to live up to his example? It's an important wrestling match because our answer may well determine our own progress as a follower of Jesus.

Jesus clearly expected his followers to do the same kind of works he did. The instructions to the twelve in Luke 9:2 are clear, “he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” Just one chapter later he widened the commission to at least 70 of his followers. In short order they returned joyfully, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name." (Luke 10:17) Even as Jesus was pleased with their works he reminded them of their own need for redemption, and then--filled with Holy Spirit-inspired joy, made a most startling statement: "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.”

The “wise and learned” debated the nature of Jesus the man and Jesus the Son of God for nearly 400 years. Finally, in 431AD at the first Council of Ephesus the church settled on this formulation: Jesus was one person, not two separate people: completely God and completely man, all wrapped up into one person.

Both aspects of his nature are important for everyday living. Only God’s own Son can purchase the redemption of all humanity--no human sacrifice will do. Our forgiveness rests completely in the sufficiency of God’s own sacrifice. We need to approach him as the only one capable of dispensing divine mercy and grace. At the same time, Jesus is the example of a human life lived in full accordance with the Father’s will. We must see (as was pointed out in Part One) that his miracles were accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit, not by virtue of some divine standing as the Son of God. When Jesus operated under the power of the Holy Spirit, he was showing us how it was done. That is, he was calling us to be like him in every way.

Simple passages like Luke 2:52 point to the fact that Jesus lived a very human life. Other, more enigmatic verses like Hebrews 5:8 seem to point to the fact that Jesus modeled obedience--an obedience he had won by suffering the same difficulties we face. Perhaps most challenging of all, verses like Matthew 10: 7-8 seem to indicate that he had higher expectations for his followers than we have today.

Throughout the 20th century, skeptics and scholars alike attacked the divinity of Jesus. In the academy Jesus’ identity was deconstructed and the gospel record was regarded with suspicion. The miracle accounts were explained away. We were asked to accept the idea that the miracles were not true in any concrete sense, but mythical illustrations of spiritual points.

The Evangelical church responded with a vigorous defense of the gospel record and of the truth regarding the divinity of our Lord. The world at large denied the divinity of Jesus in the 20th century, and the church held fast to the truth--Jesus is God come to earth. However, as we rose to his defense we fell prey to a subtle over-emphasis. The church stood firmly on the divinity of Jesus at the expense of asserting his humanity as well. While maintaining the miracle accounts in the gospels were true indeed, we lost sight of his teaching that his followers would do his works.

Some 21st century Christians vigorously defend the miracles of Jesus' day without recognizing his call to do the very same works in our day. Some 21st century Christians vigorously defend the holy and blameless life of Jesus twenty centuries ago without sharing the good news that, by the grace of God, we can live lives of substantial holiness today (see, for example Eph. 5:27 or I Thess 3:13).

To ignore the humanity of Jesus is to ignore his call to be like him in every respect. To over-emphasize his divinity is to give us an excuse to live powerless lives: lives powerless over sin or powerless over the sicknesses and the demonization so prevalent in our world today.

How did he become the man he was? The simple answer is he lived in the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit. The more difficult answer is that he calls us to live the same way.

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Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,

The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head,

The stars in the sky look down where he lay,

The little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay.

Don’t worry, it’s not Christmas time, but this carol raises an important question to anyone who wants to follow Jesus. The song celebrates the Incarnation, literally, the enfleshment of Jesus, when God Himself became man. It is a powerful carol because any parent remembers well the beauty and mystery of their child asleep in the crib. And everyone can relate to sleeping babies. But . . .

The cattle are lowing, the poor Baby wakes / The little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes . . .

Right here--at the words, “no crying he makes” the song begins to depart from our personal experience. Most mothers would begin to worry about a baby who never cries. What kind of baby was this Jesus? Did he ever cry? What kind of child was the boy Jesus, growing up year after year with Joseph and Mary?

Will you indulge me in some foolishness? This baby Jesus, who is God Incarnate: how did he receive the Magi when they came to worship? Did the infant in the manger invite them in and gesture for them to sit? Did he say, “Please, come in: you must be exhausted from your journey.” Did the newborn baby thank them for their thoughtful gifts?

Or imagine Jesus as a boy learning the family business at his father’s side: the sinless Son of God, perhaps six years old, driving a nail into a board for the very first time. Did he hold the hammer correctly? Did he drive the nail straight and true? Or was he like all children, and gain his skill through experience? When the perfect human being first held a saw and cut a piece of wood, did he cut the board correctly? And if he did not, what does this say of his divinity?

Behind these silly imaginations hide questions for anyone who would become like their Master. If Jesus is our example in both behavior and ministry, how did he become the man he was? If Jesus modeled ministry for us by healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead, by what power did he do these things? Indeed, the church has debated these questions for centuries. It is not merely the stuff of theological curiosity—because Jesus called us to be like him in every way.

If Jesus accomplished moral excellence and supernatural ministry exclusively through the privilege of his identity as the Son of God, how can he expect us to follow him? Any serious follower of Jesus should take time to ask: how did Jesus do the things he did? Was he sinless because he had some advantage over you or me? Did he heal the sick or multiply the bread and fish because he had some secret power not open to any of his followers? If Jesus did these things because he was the Boss’s son, isn’t it unfair for him to expect us to become like him?

Luke chapter 4 depicts the very beginning of Jesus ministry--the very first sermon recorded in that Gospel. It is short, and revealing:

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:  

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4: 16 - 21)  

Jesus selects the passage from Isaiah that begins plainly, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” I think Luke is trying to say that everything that follows in the life and ministry of Jesus flowed from the operation of the Holy Spirit in his life. Luke points out the role of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ baptism (3:22) and in the 40 days of testing in the wilderness (4:1 & 14). In Luke’s second work, the book of Acts, he quotes the Apostle Peter, who gives a one-sentence summary of the ministry of Jesus:

"You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached -- how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him." (Acts 10: 38-39)

Jesus did what he did by the power of the Holy Spirit, not by virtue of his unique identity as the Son of God. Make no mistake: Jesus is God Himself come to earth. His example for life and ministry, however, is through the Holy Spirit’s empowerment, and that same Spirit is available to his followers. What does that mean for us today?

(Be sure to come back Thursday for part two.)

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How long should a blog post be? Seth Godin sometimes writes only a few sentences. Other blog experts say 500 words, and others say 1,000. Still others say use video, pictures, and graphics every time. Nearly all of them agree there should be a unifying theme.

But what to do with cool stuff that takes only a few words, and defies categorization? That’s me, today—bringing you cool stuff, with no categories.

I know a guy . . .

Years ago we invited a pastor/musician to spend the weekend teaching at our church. One night, when there were only three or four people left in the building, the auditorium was flushed with the smell of roses. I thought I was crazy. I said nothing. Sunday afternoon, while driving his wife and him to the airport, the interior of the car began to smell of roses.

“Do you smell those roses?” I asked.

Our guest smiled a little and said, “Oh, that: years ago that began following me around and happening from time to time. The Lord told me it’s the fragrance of his presence, and he just likes to remind every once in a while me that he’s with me.”

Is there a category for that?

Fresh bread . . .

One week I preached on the story Jesus told about a guy who needed bread to give to an unexpected visitor. The guy knocked on his neighbor’s door late at night and asked for bread. After saying no, the neighbor got up and gave the man as much as he needed. The teaching point was that we could ask the Father for “bread” to give to others. A woman in our church had wanted to give an offering to missionary, but the woman and her family had no extra money—so in prayer she asked the Father for “bread” they could give to the missionary. The next day a man came to her door with a $200 check for her family because her husband had helped out at a private school so many times. It wasn’t payment; it was an unexpected thank-you gift. Then the man said, “and here is a loaf of bread my wife just baked: we thought your family would enjoy some fresh bread.”

Help is on the way . . .

And then there’s the time we made a visitor break down and cry at church. At the end of our services we have a “ministry time” where prayer partners will pray with you for any need. Just before the service ended one of the ministry guys pointed to a woman in the congregation. She was a visitor.

“I think the Lord wants you to know that help is on the way—does that makes sense?”

The woman began to cry.

“I think you’ve been caring for a family member and you’ve been alone in it. But Jesus wants you know he sees you and help is on the way.”

The woman lost it completely and began to sob. She also left without talking to anyone. As the pastor I thought, well, that’s a visitor we’ll never see again.

Later that week I got an email from the woman. “I wanted you to know that as soon as that man began speaking to me I knew exactly what the Lord was talking about. I was divorced over a year ago, and have been struggling to provide for my son. On Monday—the day after church—a check arrived from the state of Kentucky with the first child support I had seen since the divorce.”

But here’s the cool part for me: she continued, “I don’t think God created the check out of thin air. It surely was put in the mail the week before. But when that man told me ‘help was on the way,’ I was flooded with the assurance that God saw my need, loved me, and that my boy and I were going to be OK. I’ll never forget that feeling of God’s love.”

That’s pretty cool stuff, and I think there’s a category for that: the Father’s loving care.

Do you have any “Cool Stuff, No Category” stories? Why not share them here, in the comments of Students of Jesus?

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Only fools and lawyers argue over the law, and both are highly trained specialists. The rest of us should leave such work to the experts. Sometimes they unite in their work, giving us ordinances prohibiting the transport of ice cream cones in your pocket, or banning birds from flying over city landmarks.

I’d be content to leave the law to the fools and lawyers except for a troubling practice among religious people: they are in the habit of treating the Bible—especially the Old Testament—like a book of law. If there is anything worse than city ordinances against public singing before 8:00 in the morning it’s when religious people become religious fools and lawyers with respect to the Bible.

It’s understandable. The Old Testament sometimes calls itself “the Law” which is an unfortunate translation because life is more like a living room than a courtroom. Hebrew scholars, rabbis and Christian professors alike, would like us to know “Torah” can mean instruction, teaching, or even “the way.”

The Old Testament, that portion of the Bible we so often avoid, was the “Bible” that shaped Jesus’s spiritual formation. Jesus was nourished on the stories of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—and that’s just Genesis! Jesus chanted the Shema, memorized the ten words from Sinai, and paid close attention to the rituals of Leviticus. Jesus sang the Psalms, puzzled over the prophets, and marveled at the courage (and stupidity) of people portrayed in the Biblical narrative.

Jesus did not grow in wisdom and stature by memorizing the rules; he became a deep person by engaging the Old Testament with all his faculties: his mind, his heart, his imagination, his hopes, his questions, his fears, and his spirit.

Jesus knew his Bible as something beyond the scroll in the synagogue. It was all around him. He saw grass whither and fade, and then reflected on things that last forever; he saw the clumsy gait of an ox and saw the folly of following a prostitute to her house; when the thunder answered the lightning he heard the voice of God; he gleaned insight from industrious ants. The sweetness of honey tasted to him of his Father’s wisdom. When he wrestled with the poetry of Isaiah, Hosea, and the prophets the wisdom of God spoke to him through his parents’ marriage, the oil his mother used to cook, the tramping of soldiers through his home town, and the in-breaking of God’s mercy in each new sunrise. Jesus did not need some someone to bring the Bible alive, his world was alive with the Bible. He understood at a gut level that God’s word was living and active, and that everyday life teemed with the deep truth of the word of God.

Meanwhile, in our modern age, we think “Bible study” is the stuff of ancient languages and word origins. Like either lawyers or fools (you decide) we ponder over the meaning and application of cross-cultural studies or socio-psychological interpretations. We think Bible study is more like hard work and not at all like a feast. We march with grim determination through our “quiet times” and we wonder who will make the book of Job feel more like Jimmy Fallon.

The Bible—both Old and New Testaments—is the Father’s indispensible grace-gift to followers of Jesus. Our Lord has modeled every aspect of life for us. We can follow his example, including his loving embrace of the written word, which brings us to the Living Word.

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Jesus, shackled and beaten, stood before a Roman prefect named Pontius Pilate. He said simply, “Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” As with so many others before, Jesus had extended Pilate the offer to find an unimagined freedom. But, weary from the ways of the world and the petty politics of a small outpost of Rome, Pilate waved away the Lord’s offer with tired cynicism: “And what is truth?”

Let’s cut Pilate some slack. Our modern era is not so different from that day. Our world is filled with those who are willing to kill for an idea of truth, even though we are not sure what it means. That’s why ideas about the truth are not enough. We cannot discover truth through force or argument. We must meet the truth and walk with him.

Truth is both a pathway and person. Truth unfolds from relationship and the travels shared. Truth is not so much learned as discovered in the journey, and the journey’s guide makes all the difference. Although the road goes ever on, I’m encouraged to think it’s a journey worth the walk. My walk with the Lord of truth has included these stops along the way:

Nurture: Early childhood teaches us to order our world around our experience. These experiences become a kind of foundational truth for us, whether right or wrong. Later, God’s grace comes to either affirm or contradict these foundations. This is why raising children is a sacred trust from the Father: what children learn creates the ability to recognize the Way, Truth, and Life when we meet him later. What an awesome opportunity (and responsibility) rests with us as parents: we can position our children to know the truth.

Obedience: To understand something we must stand under it. This is why obedience is central to discipleship. Humble and simple acts of obedience position us to walk in the truth. Obedience aligns us with the nature of creation and the ways of the Creator. Obedience is going with the ultimate flow. It is alignment with the deep nature of things—a discovery of the truth. Obedience to will of God is midwife to the truth.

Discovery: Discovery is more than learning. If I am told the truth, I might possibly remember it. I will never forget the truth I discover. The Father reveals truth by leading us into discovery. He hides the Easter eggs, careful to leave them where we can find them. He glories in concealing some things; we become sons and daughters of the King as we search them out.

Love: Real love is the sure path to truth. But it is also dangerous because we think we know what love is—but do we? Discovering the meaning of love is a lifelong task, and a worthy one. To be on the side of love is to be on God’s side, because God is love. To love is to see and do things God’s way. It never fails.

Jesus: The truth came into world and lived among us: “The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us . . . full of grace and truth.” Later in this rich gospel Thomas asked a silly question (the answer had been right before him for three years): “Lord, how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” But there is a hidden danger in our Lord’s words: we all have a powerful tendency to re-create Jesus to our taste and preference: Jesus the Republican (or Democrat), Jesus the non-violent, Jesus the Socialist, Jesus the revolutionary—or Jesus in any form that simply affirms our own view of the world.

Searching for truth is a noble endeavor; finding truth is discovering he has been walking with us all along. On truth’s journey Jesus is both the path and destination: we must keep walking. Will we allow him to guide us toward unexpected places?

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