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Is there any evidence for the amazing Christian assertion that the carpenter of Nazareth was the unique Son of God? This question is fundamental. We cannot dodge it. We must be honest. If Jesus was not God in human flesh, Christianity is exploded.
We must trust in him as our Saviour and submit to him as our Lord; and then go on to take our place as loyal members of the church and responsible citizens in the community. Such is basic Christianity—the theme of Stott’s book.
Christianity is not just a creed; it involves action.
The Right Approach
The Bible reveals a God who, long before it even occurs to man to turn to him, while man is still lost in darkness and sunk in sin, takes the initiative, rises from his throne, lays aside his glory, and stoops to seek until he finds him.
God took the initiative in creation, bringing the universe and its contents into existence: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” He has taken the initiative in revelation, making known to mankind both his nature and his will. He has taken the initiative in salvation, coming in Jesus Christ to set men and women free from their sins: “God… has visited and redeemed his people.”
God has spoken: Christianity is a religion of salvation, and there is nothing in the non-Christian religions to compare with this message of a God who loved, and came after, and died for, a world of lost sinners.
Man’s response: We must seek. God has sought us. He is still seeking us. We must seek him.
Jesus promised: “Seek and you will find”. If we do not seek, we shall never find. The shepherd searched until he found the lost sheep. The woman searched until she found her lost coin. We must seek humbly. If apathy is a hindrance to some, pride is an even greater and commoner hindrance to others. We must acknowledge that our minds, being finite, are incapable of discovering God by their own effort without his self-revelation.
Part One: Christ’s Person
The Claims of Christ
Essentially Christianity is Christ. The person and work of Christ are the rock upon which the Christian religion is built. The evidence to prove that Jesus was the Son of God is at least threefold. It concerns the claims he made, the character he displayed and his resurrection from the dead. No one argument is conclusive. But the three converging lines point unfalteringly to the same conclusion.
1. His Self-Centered Teaching
The most striking feature of the teaching of Jesus is that he was constantly talking about himself. Jesus said, “I am the truth; follow me.” The founder of none of the ethnic religions ever dared to say such a thing. The great question to which the first part of his teaching led was, “Who do you say that I am?”
Isaiah’s prophecy went on to say, “He has sent me to recover sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” He then broke the silence with the amazing words, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, “Isaiah was writing about me.”
In one more flash of breath-taking egocentricity, Jesus predicted: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” He knew that the cross would exert a moral magnetism on men and women.
The most remarkable feature of all this self-centered teaching is that it was uttered by one who insisted on humility in others.
2. His Direct Claims
Jesus clearly believed himself to be the Messiah the Old Testament predicted.
It is significant that the first recorded word of his public ministry was the word “fulfilled”, and his first sentence, “The time has been fulfilled; the kingdom of God has drawn near”.
John reports (20:26-29) that on the Sunday following Easter Day, incredulous Thomas was with the other disciples in the upper room when Jesus appeared. He invited Thomas to feel his wounds, and Thomas, overwhelmed with wonder, cried out, “My Lord and my God” Jesus accepted the designation. He rebuked Thomas for his unbelief, not for his worship.
3. His Indirect Claims
Jesus described himself as “the bread of life”, “the life” and “the resurrection and the life”. He likened his followers’ dependence on him to the sustenance derived from the vine by its branches. He offered a Samaritan woman “living water” and promised eternal life to the rich young ruler if he would come and follow Him.
“To judge the world” is perhaps the most fantastic of all his statements.
Imagine a minister addressing his congregation in these terms today: “Listen attentively to my words. Your eternal destiny depends on it. I shall return at the end of the world to judge you, and your fate will be settled according to your obedience to me.”
Conclusion
We cannot any longer regard Jesus as simply a great teacher if he was completely mistaken in one of the chief subjects of his teaching – himself. There is a certain disturbing “megalomania” about Jesus which many scholars have recognized. These claims in a mere man would be egoism carried even to imperial megalomania.
The Character of Christ
If Jesus of Nazareth was without sin, he was not just man as we know men. If he was sinless, he was distinct from us. He was supernatural.
We can summarize the evidence for the sinlessness of Christ under four headings.
- What Christ himself thought: On one or two occasions Jesus stated directly that he was without sin. By the very nature of his teaching, he placed himself in a moral category by himself. The more the Christian grows in Christlikeness, the more he perceives the vastness of the distance which still separates him from Christ. Jesus Christ, who lived more closely to God than anybody else has done, was free from all sense of sin.
- What Christ’s friends said: The disciples got on one another’s nerves. They quarreled. But they never found in Jesus the sins they found in themselves. Familiarity normally breeds contempt, but not in this case. Indeed, two of the chief witnesses to the sinlessness of Christ are Peter and John
- What Christ’s enemies conceded: Mark assembles four of their criticisms (in 2:1-3:6):
- Blasphemy: Jesus had forgiven a man’s sins. This was an invasion of divine territory. It was blasphemous arrogance, they said.
- Evil Associations: They were (they said) horrified by the fact that he fraternized with sinners and ate with publicans.
- Frivolous Religion: He did not fast like the Pharisees, or even like the disciples of John the Baptist.
- Sabbath-Breaking: They were incensed because he healed sick people on the sabbath day. And his disciples even walked through the cornfields on the sabbath, plucking, rubbing and eating corn, which the scribes and Pharisees forbade as tantamount to reaping and threshing. The centurion, having watched Jesus suffer and die, exclaimed, “Certainly this man was innocent!”
- What we can see for ourselves: The moral perfection which was quietly claimed by him, confidently asserted by his friends and reluctantly acknowledged by his enemies, is clearly exhibited in the Gospels. There is as much evidence for his humanity as for his divinity. He gets tired. He needs to sleep and eat and drink like other men. He experiences the human emotions of love and anger, joy and sorrow. He is fully human. Yet he is no mere man. Above all, he was unselfish. Nothing is more striking than this. It is this paradox which is so baffling, this combination of the self-centeredness of his teaching and the unself-centeredness of his behavior. In thought he put himself first; in deed last.
It is claimed (by him as well as by us) that he renounced the joys of heaven for the sorrows of earth, exchanging an eternal immunity to the approach of sin for painful contact with evil in this world.
As Paul wrote, “For Christ did not please himself.” This utter disregard of self in the service of God and man is what the Bible calls love. There is no self-interest in love. The essence of love is self-sacrifice. Jesus was sinless because he was selfless. Such selflessness is love. And God is love.
The Resurrection of Christ
The argument is not that his resurrection establishes his deity, but that it is consistent with it. His birth was natural, but his conception was supernatural. His death was natural, but his resurrection was supernatural. His miraculous conception and resurrection do not prove his deity, but they are congruous with it.
What is this evidence? An attempt may be made to summarize it by four statements.
- The body had gone: When certain women went to the tomb early on Easter Sunday morning, they were dumbfounded to discover that the body of the Lord had disappeared.
- The graveclothes were undisturbed: The graveclothes had not gone. It is John who lays particular emphasis on this fact, for he accompanied Peter on that dramatic early morning race to the tomb. The account he gives of this incident (20:1-10) bears the unmistakable marks of first-hand experience. The story suggests that it was not just the absence of the body, but the presence of the graveclothes and, in particular, their undisturbed condition.
- The Lord was seen: If the appearances had all taken place in one or two particularly sacred places, which had been hallowed by memories of Jesus, and their mood had been expectant, our suspicions might well be aroused. If we had only the story of the appearances in the upper room, we should have cause to doubt and question. An investigation of the ten appearances reveals an almost studied variety in the circumstances of person, place and mood in which they occurred. He was seen by individuals alone (Mary Magdalene, Peter and James), by small groups and by more than five hundred people together. He appeared in the garden of the tomb, near Jerusalem, in the upper room, on the road to Emmaus, by the lake of Galilee, on a Galilee mountain and on the Mount of Olives.
- The disciples were changed: Perhaps the transformation of the disciples of Jesus is the greatest evidence of all for the resurrection, because it is entirely artless. The death of their Master left them despondent, disillusioned, and near to despair. But in the Acts they emerge as men who hazard their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and who turn the world upside down. Two examples stand out. The first is Simon Peter. During the telling of the Passion story Peter has suffered a tragic eclipse. He has denied Christ three times. He has cursed and sworn as if he had never known the restraining influence of Jesus in his life. But when we turn over one or two pages in the Bible, we see him standing, perhaps on the steps outside the same upper room of the same house in Jerusalem, preaching so boldly and so powerfully to a vast crowd that three thousand people believe in Christ and are baptized. Simon Peter is a new man. Or take James, who later assumed a position of leadership in the Jerusalem church. He is one of “the brethren of the Lord”, who throughout the Gospels are represented as not believing in Jesus: “Even his brothers did not believe in him.” It was the resurrection which transformed Peter’s fear into courage, and James’ doubt into faith.
Part Two: Man’s Need
The Fact and the Nature of Sin
In order to appreciate the work that Jesus accomplished, we must understand who we are as well as who He was.
The universality of sin
Sin is not a convenient invention of parsons to keep them in their job; it is a fact of human experience.
“There is no man who does not sin,” says Solomon in an aside during his great prayer at the dedication of the Temple. “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins” adds the Preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes.
From the book of Isaiah: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way”, and “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment”.
John is, if anything, even more explicit when he declares that “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves”, and “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar”.
What is sin?
It is shortcoming, a lapse, a slip, a blunder. It is also characterized as the failure to hit a mark, as when shooting at a target. Yet another shows it to be an inward badness, a disposition which falls short of what is good. Positively, sin is transgression. One word makes sin the trespass of a boundary. Another reveals it as lawlessness, and another as an act which violates justice. Both these groups of words imply the existence of a moral standard.
The Ten Commandments
(check out my 2017 focus on The Ten Commandments)
1. You shall have no other gods before me. This is God’s demand for man’s exclusive worship. For us to keep this first commandment would be, as Jesus said, to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind; to make his will our guide and his glory our goal; to put him first in thought, word and deed; in business and leisure; in friendships and career; in the use of our money, time and talents; at work and at home. No man has ever kept this commandment except Jesus of Nazareth.
2. You shall not make for yourself a graven image. In the first God demands our exclusive worship, and in the second our sincere and spiritual worship.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. His holy name can be profaned by our loose language, and most of us could do worse than revise our vocabulary from time to time. But to take God’s name in vain is not just a matter of words, but also of thoughts and deeds. Whenever our behavior is inconsistent with our belief, or our practice contradicts our preaching, we take God’s name in vain.
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. To set one day in seven apart is not just a human arrangement or a social convenience. It is God’s plan. So, Sunday is a “holy” day, set apart for God. It is the Lord’s day, not our day. It is therefore to be spent in his way, not in ours, for his worship and service and not just for our selfish pleasure.
5. Honor your father and your mother. This fifth commandment still belongs to the first half of the law which concerns our duty to God. For our parents, at least while we are children, stand towards us in loco Dei: they represent God’s authority.
6. You shall not kill. This is not just a prohibition of murder. Jesus said that to be angry with someone without a cause, and to be insulting, are just as serious, while John draws the right conclusion when he writes, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer”.
7. You shall not commit adultery. Again, this commandment has a far wider application than just to unfaithfulness in marriage. Jesus made this clear when he said, “… everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”.
8. You shall not steal.
‘Thou shalt not kil’, but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive;
‘Thou shalt not steal’ – an empty feat
When it’s more lucrative to cheat.
By Arthur Hugh Clough
In order truly to abstain from killing, one must do all in one’s power to foster the health and preserve the life of others. To refrain from the act of adultery is insufficient. The commandment requires the right, healthy and honorable attitude of each sex towards the other. Similarly, to avoid stealing is no particular virtue if one is miserly or mean. Continue in honest labor until you found yourself in a position to give to those in need.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. The last five commandments express that respect for the rights of others which is implicit in true love. To break these commandments is to rob a man of the things most precious to him, his life (‘you shall not kill’), his home or honor (‘you shall not commit adultery’), his property (‘you shall not steal’), and now his reputation (‘you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor’). We can bear false witness by listening to unkind rumors as well as by passing them on, by making jokes at somebody else’s expense, by creating false impressions, by not correcting untrue statements, and by our silence as well as by our speech.
10. You shall not covet. It turns the decalogue from an outward legal code into an inward moral standard. The civil law cannot touch us for covetousness but only for theft. For covetousness belongs to the inner life. It lurks in the heart and the mind.
The Consequences of Sin
Alienation from God
The most terrible result of sin is that it cuts us off from God. That sin cuts us off from God was brought home dramatically in the Old Testament in the construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple.
Sin brings inevitable separation, and this separation is “death”, spiritual death, the severance of a person from God, the only source of true life. “The wages of sin is death.”
Bondage to self
Sin does not only estrange; it enslaves. If it alienates us from God, it also brings us into captivity.
Conflict with others
We are to love God first; and then we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. So, God’s order is that we put him first, others next, then self, last. Sin is the reversal of the order. It is to put ourselves first, our neighbor next, and God somewhere in the background.
Archbishop William Temple’s definition of original sin perfectly describes this truth: “I am the center of the world I see; where the horizon is depends on where I stand…. Education may make my self-centeredness less disastrous by widening my horizon of interest; so far it is like climbing a tower, which widens the horizon for physical vision, while leaving me still the center and standard of reference.” This basic self-centeredness affects all our behavior.
What man needs is a radical change of nature, what Professor H. M. Gwatkin has called “a change from self to unself”.
Part Three: Christ’s Work
The Death of Christ
The centrality of the cross
Old Testament religion was sacrificial from the beginning. Ever since Abel brought lambs from his flock and “the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering”, worshippers of Jehovah brought sacrifices to him.
The writers of the four Gospels devote a disproportionate amount of space to Christ’s last week and death in comparison to the rest of his life and ministry. Two-fifths of the first Gospel, three-fifths of the second, one-third of the third, and almost one-half of the fourth, are given to an account of the events between his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his triumphant ascension into heaven. It is particularly striking in the case of John, whose Gospel has sometimes been divided into two equal halves which have been entitled “The Book of the Signs” and “The Book of the Passion”.
The cross is the symbol of our faith. The Christian faith is “the faith of Christ crucified”.
The meaning of the cross
Christ died as our Example
As Peter advises, if Christian servants are ill-treated by pagan masters, let them be sure that they are not receiving a punishment which they deserve. Let them rather suffer for righteousness’ sake and welcome reproach for the name of Christ.
Perhaps nothing is more completely opposed to our natural instincts than this command not to resist, but to bear unjust suffering and overcome evil with good. Yet the cross bids us accept injury, love our enemies and leave the outcome to God.
Christ died as our Sinbearer
All this clear language of substitution, describing him as “stricken for the transgression of my people”, is summed up in the chapter in the two phrases with which we have been made familiar by Leviticus, “he shall bear their iniquities” and “he bore the sin of many”. When at last after centuries of preparation Jesus Christ himself arrived, John the Baptist greeted him publicly with the extraordinary words: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”
The Salvation of Christ
God is as much concerned with our present and future as with our past.
The spirit of Christ
When you read Peter’s first letter you cannot fail to notice its references to humility, and John’s letters are full of love. What made the difference? The Holy Spirit. Jesus taught them to be humble and loving; but neither quality appeared in their lives until the Holy Spirit entered their personality and began to change them from within. On the Day of Pentecost “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit”.
This then is what the New Testament teaches. When we put our trust in Jesus Christ and commit ourselves to him, the Holy Spirit enters us. He is sent by God “into our hearts”. He makes our bodies his temple.
If the Holy Spirit is allowed his way, the result will be “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”. These attractive virtues Paul names “the fruit of the Spirit”. Our human character is likened to an orchard which the Holy Spirit is cultivating.
The church of Christ
God’s plan is to reconcile us to each other as well as to himself. So, he does not save independent, unconnected individuals in isolation from one another; he is calling out a people for his own possession.
“There is one body and one Spirit”, emphasizes Paul. Even the outward, organizational divisions of the church, regrettable as they are, do not destroy its inward and spiritual unity. This is indissoluble, for it is “the unity of the Spirit” or “the fellowship of the Spirit”.
Part Four: Man’s Response
Counting the Cost
Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer. Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free. If he offered men his salvation, he also demanded their submission.
The call to follow Christ
To follow Christ is to renounce all lesser loyalties. In the days when he lived among men on earth, this meant a literal abandonment of home and work. Simon and Andrew “left their nets and followed him”. James and John “left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and followed him”. Matthew, who heard Christ’s call while he was “sitting at the tax office … left everything, and rose and followed him”.
First, there must be a renunciation of sin. This, in a word, is repentance. It is the first part of Christian conversion. Sometimes, true repentance has to include “restitution”. This means putting things right with other people, whom we may have injured. Zacchaeus, the dishonest tax-collector, more than repaid the money he had stolen from his clients and promised to give away half his capital to the poor to compensate (no doubt) for thefts he could not make good. We must follow his example.
Second, there must be a renunciation of self. In order to follow Christ, we must not only forsake isolated sins, but renounce the very principle of self-will which lies at the root of every act of sin. To follow Christ is to surrender to him the rights over our own lives.
Deny ourselves: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself.” The same verb is used of Peter’s denial of the Lord in the courtyard of the high priest’s palace. The next phrase Jesus used is to take up the cross: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Professor H. B. Swete in his commentary on Mark’s Gospel, to take up the cross is “to put oneself into the position of a condemned man on his way to execution”. In other words, the attitude to self which we are to adopt is that of crucifixion.
Renunciation of self is to lose our life: “Whoever loses his life … will save it.” The word for “life” here denotes neither our physical existence nor our soul, but our self. So, in order to follow Christ, we have to deny ourselves, to crucify ourselves, to lose ourselves.
Do not be in too great a hurry to discover God’s will for your life. If you are surrendered to it and waiting on God to disclose it, he will make it known to you in his own time. Christ certainly meant us to put him above material wealth just as we are to put him above family ties. We cannot serve God and mammon.
The call to confess Christ
We are commanded not only to follow Christ privately, but to confess him publicly.
Incentives
The first incentive is for our own sake. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life?
Jesus came into the world that we might “have life, and have it abundantly”, that his purpose is to enrich not to impoverish, and that his service is perfect freedom.
The second incentive for Christian commitment is for the sake of others. We should not submit to Christ only for what we get, but for what we can give. “Whoever loses his life for… the gospel’s sake, will save it.” “For the sake of the gospel” means “for the sake of proclaiming it to others”.
The greatest incentive of all, however, is for Christ’s sake. “Whoever loses his life for my sake … will save it.” This is why Christ’s appeal to us is so eloquent and so persuasive. He asks us to deny ourselves and follow him for his own sake.
Reaching a Decision
To believe certain facts about the person and work of Christ is a necessary preliminary, but true faith will translate such mental belief into a decisive act of trust. Intellectual conviction must lead to personal commitment.
But why does Jesus Christ want to come in? We know the answer already. He wants to be both our Savior and our Lord. Jesus Christ will also enter as our Lord and Master. The house of our lives will come under his management, and there is no sense in opening the door unless we are willing for this. As he steps across the threshold, we must hand him our whole bunch of keys, granting him free access into every room. A fourth-year Canadian student once wrote to me: “Instead of giving Christ a whole set of different keys to the many rooms of the house … I have given him a pass key to the whole lot.”
Are you a Christian? A real and committed Christian? Your answer depends on another question — not whether you go to church or not, believe the creed or not, or lead a decent life or not (important as all these are in their place), but rather this: which side of the door is Jesus Christ? Is he inside or outside? That is the crucial issue.
Being a Christian
Becoming a Christian is one thing; being a Christian is another.
Christian privileges
The Christian’s relationship to God as a child to his Father is not only intimate, but sure. So many people seem to do no more than hope for the best; it is possible to know for certain.
John states categorically that this was his purpose in writing his first letter; “I write this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.”
God speaks to our hearts. Listen to these statements. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit …” and “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.”
The outward witness of the Holy Spirit in Scripture is confirmed by the inward witness of the Holy Spirit in experience. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is one of the greatest privileges of God’s children.
Christian responsibilities
The great privilege of the child of God is relationship; his great responsibility is growth. Peter implied this when he wrote: “Like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation.”
There are two main spheres in which the Christian is meant to grow. The first is in understanding and the second in holiness. The New Testament writers speak of the development of our faith in God, our love for our fellow men and our likeness to Christ.
Our duty to God
It is important to preserve the balance between Bible reading and prayer, because through Scripture God speaks to us while through prayer, we speak to him. It is also wise to be systematic in our reading of the Bible.
Our duty to the church
The Christian life is not just a private affair of your own. If we are born again into God’s family, not only has he become our Father but every other believer in the world, whatever his nation or denomination, has become our brother or sister in Christ. One of the commonest names for Christians in the New Testament is “brethren”. This is a glorious truth.
Baptism is the way of entry into the visible Christian society.
Church or chapel attendance on Sundays is a definite Christian duty, and nearly every branch of the Christian church agrees that the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion is the central service, instituted by Christ and commemorating his death in fellowship with one another.
The Christian’s closest friends will probably be Christians and, above all, his life partner must be a Christian too.
Our duty to the world
The Christian church has a noble record of philanthropic work for the needy and neglected people of the world — the poor and hungry, the sick, the victims of oppression and discrimination, slaves, prisoners, orphans, refugees and dropouts.
There is another and particular responsibility which Christians have towards “the world”, as the Bible describes those outside Christ and his church: evangelism. To “evangelize” means literally to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. Although every Christian is not called to be a minister or a missionary, God does intend every Christian to be a witness to Jesus Christ. Such are the great privileges and responsibilities of the child of God.
This is the life of discipleship to which Jesus Christ calls us. He died and rose again that we might have newness of life. He has given us his Spirit so that we can live out this life in the world. Now he calls us to follow him, to give ourselves wholly and unreservedly to his service.