We’re going to continue with our study on the evidence for the life of Christ and the New Testament, but I want to share a little bit about what this study has done for me and my personal faith. I’m a history buff. I read tons of biographies and history books. I’ve read about everybody from George Mueller, to Thomas Jefferson, to Thomas Edison, to Adolf Hitler, to Napoleon, to Socrates, to George Patton, and on and on. As I study these people and their lives, I eventually get to know them. I feel like if I saw them on the street I would recognize them. If we conversed I would have questions to ask them. If they were speaking I would have a frame of reference to determine their words and ideas by. In essence, they become as real as if I had sat in a room with them for hours on end and asked them questions.
Even though I had read the Gospels many times, I had never looked upon them in the same way I’d looked at other historical records. I looked upon the Gospels as nothing more than sacred documents to my faith, and they are, but they’re also more. As a result I don’t think I had a complete knowledge of Jesus Christ. I didn’t necessarily feel the same way about Him as I did about Thomas Edison. In a way, I didn’t know His entire character. When I thought about Jesus, I thought about Him in terms of Almighty God.
Now, He is almighty God, but thinking about Him only in those terms negates much of the richness of what being a Christian is all about. Christianity is about a relationship with Jesus Christ. One of the things I understood, but did not physically apply to my life is that there is no relationship without a man. In other words, I had a great understanding of Almighty God, and I knew the mechanics of how He saved me, but I didn’t fully understand the importance of Jesus Christ in terms of applying my faith to my everyday life.
As I studied the evidence for Jesus Christ, it struck me that He was every bit as much of a man as Napoleon, yet I knew the man Napoleon much better than I knew the man Jesus Christ. So I began to read the Gospels with an emphasis on getting to know Jesus Christ the man, not the founder of my faith, not the Son of God, not the miracle worker, but as a man. What’s more, when I began to really look at Christ as a man, my relationship with Him became much more palpable and real.
Why is this important? Why can’t you have a fulfilling faith just being in awe of the almighty God and recognizing His omnipotent power and grace? Why can’t you just worship God the creator, I AM, the Alpha and Omega?
First, let’s take a look at life worshipping the Almighty God, and life worshipping the Almighty God while having a relationship, a real relationship, with Jesus Christ.
(Ecclesiastes 4:1-3) Now, this was written by the wisest man in the world. He had it all. Wealth, pleasure, power, incredible knowledge and vast wisdom. But what did his experiences teach him? (Ecclesiastes 2:14) Solomon had looked at life and realized that there was no savior. There was no relationship with God. His life was entirely meaningless and everything he had accomplished was meaningless. Life was futile, yet this is a man who worshipped God, built the temple, and led God’s people to their pinnacle. Yet he came to the conclusion that life was futile.
Let’s read Romans 14:16-18. The tone of this verse and the experience of the author are completely different from Solomon’s in Ecclesiastes. Both had contact with God, but while Solomon had come to the determination that it was better to never be born than to live a full life, Paul’s relationship to God brought peace, joy, and the understanding that he was pleasing to God. What was the difference?
To understand why Solomon was unfulfilled in all of his glory, and Paul was filled with joy and peace, we must understand the character of God and why a complete understanding of Jesus Christ’s role in our relationship to God is essential for joy, fulfillment and peace.
Let’s talk about the character of God. Complete this sentence with the first word that comes to your mind. God is _______. Typically we think God is love, and this is truth, but we must also understand that while God is the embodiment of love, this is not a complete picture of his character. God is also the embodiment of justice, and the two are not mutually exclusive. (Ezekiel 18:4) The idea that God is love is revolutionary. Pagan gods were gods of things. The Greeks and Romans had gods of love, peace, weather, etc. The Canaanites worshipped Baal, the god of fertility. God is not the God of love, God is love. God is not the God of Peace, God is peace. God is not the God of Justice, He is Justice. If God were to completely remove Himself from earth, there would be no love, peace, or justice on earth.
Remember when Moses asked who was speaking to him from the burning bush, God answered I AM. He didn’t say He did things, or He felt things, or He had certain authority. God doesn’t do good things. God is good things. Without God there is no good. And when we reject God, we actually reject goodness, because He is everything perfect. This is why our rejection of God is so heinous to Him. It says that we reject all that is good for all that is evil. We reject love for murder. We reject peace for war. We reject justice for crime. This is what we are saying when we reject God, because He is love, peace, and justice.
So we must understand this, that because of our fallen state, we are an abomination to God. He is perfect good and cannot abide evil. In other words, because God is just, it is absolutely impossible for Him to have relationship with us. He cannot abide our sin, and He cannot allow it to go unpunished.
So the next question becomes, what punishment does our fallen state deserve? The answer is death and separation from God. In fact, punishment is not even the most accurate word for it. Cause and effect or consequence is more accurate. Imagine it like this. You are a pianist, but you become convinced that you will be become a better musician without your fingers. As a result of this belief, you remove your fingers. Now obviously, you are no longer a pianist. You cannot play. You cannot experience the joy of creating music with the piano. You can hear the piano from afar, but you can no longer have interaction with the piano because you chose to remove yourself from it.
In the same way we are removed from community with God. He still gets as close as he can, but we can only view Him from afar. This is a punishment, but it is also the natural consequence of our fallen state. Let’s look at what relationship was like with God after the fall. (Exodus 19:11-25)
This is as close as we can get to playing the piano without our fingers. The presence of God is literally fatal to us because He is the embodiment of justice and sin is part of our nature. He can no more have relationship with us than dry wood can withstand fire. The fire cannot occupy the same space as the dry wood without destroying it. The very natures of the two are mutually exclusive. The fire does not choose to burn the dry wood. The fire consumes the wood because of what it is. In the same way, God destroys sin because He is perfection, justice, and holiness. Sin and God are mutually exclusive; therefore because of the very natures of man and God, we cannot inhabit His presence.
This circumstance is not pleasing to God. God loves His creation. John 3:16 affirmatively tells us this and names it as the purpose for Christ.
Now, we do not have the power to eliminate the stain of sin from our being, so we are cut off from relationship with God. We do not have the power to change what we are. So God must provide another means for relationship. There is only one logical way to reestablish this relationship. Read Philippians 2:7-9.
This is how we get from Exodus to Christianity. In essence, you have the piano saying to the fingerless pianist, you can no longer make music with me as you once did, so I’m going to change my nature so that you can play me. I’m going to make my keys wider so you can press them. It’s not going to be the same as it was, but the more you play me, the more perfect the music will become, and eventually, by continuing to have relationship with me, the music will be perfect again.
This is the role of Jesus Christ in our life. It’s not perfect, but because He became a man, we can have relationship with Him again. As we continue in our relationship with Jesus Christ, our perfection increases and our sin nature is reduced. The relationship with Jesus Christ changes who we are. Through our relationship we become more perfect until the day when we are completely perfected in Him.
This is why understanding who Christ the man is, is so important to a complete faith. This is how we have relationship with God. Unless we view Christ as a man, and relate to Him as such, we have no connection to God and Christianity just becomes a religion.
As a practical matter how might this work? How about this, God does not feel rejection like we do. When we reject God, it is an affront to His holiness and causes Him to seek justice. Jesus Christ feels the emotion of rejection in a way that we can relate to. When we reject Him, He feels the same emotions as we feel when a loved one rejects us. I don’t know about for you, but these impacts the way I think about sin. I empathize with it. I understand it. And it changes how I think about sin. It’s not just me doing a bad thing, it’s me looking at a man, like me, who was tortured and died for me, and then watching me spit on that sacrifice and reject Him. For me, this gives me much more motivation to avoid sin than offending a perfect being of justice that I cannot comprehend. I can relate.
Without this real relationship, you’re missing out on the Christian faith. So as we continue looking at the evidence for Christ, perhaps you’ll look on the Gospels in a new way. Read them with a fresh perspective. Read them as if you’re in a room with Jesus Christ, and asking Him questions about who He is as a man. Get to know His character, His passions, His hobbies, and His ideas. Learn about the culture and history that surrounded His life. As you begin to develop this relationship with Jesus Christ, I believe He will become more real to you, and motivate you to a greater life of holiness and passion for the lost.
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