The Significance of Jesus
How does one begin to discuss the significance of Jesus Christ? One runs the risk of presumption, in the very least, let alone deficiency of description.
His Name amounts to everything from lip-service to religious musak. It makes some people nervous, others violent, still others sentimental; for some, His Name is Life.
We date history by His birth. An entire civilization has been labeled “Christian.” His mode of execution has come to adorn everything from cemeteries to ear-lobes.
His birth and resurrection remain watersheds of each calendar year.
Who was He? He was born Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph the carpenter and Mary, his young bride.
But at a deeper level, we ask: Who was He? He claimed to be the Son of God. He was recognized by the apostles as the Messiah in whom Old Testament prophecy found its fulfillment. He has been recognized by Christian theologians throughout the centuries as “very God of very God,” as well as “fully man and fully God.”
None can rival His reputation or following, though many have tried. Mohammed and His followers have largely utilized force, yet Christians outnumber Muslims by roughly one billion people today.
Marx theorized and Lenin instituted an abstract theory of economics through the use of brute force in order to create a society that, in part, expunged Jesus and His followers from its ranks. They caused horrific damage and failed miserably.
Secularists in Western Europe and America have challenged Jesus in courts, classrooms and conference halls. They have exchanged the hope of Christ’s Gospel for the societal debasement and despair so prevalent today in western culture.
There is hope though, where the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ glimmers or outright shines, accompanied by vestiges of civility, injections of grace and compassion, and substantive challenge to the prevailing relativism of our day.
Evangelical Protestant and Roman Catholic Christianity stand at the forefront of the battle on behalf of the unborn. Catholic adoption services and evangelical relief efforts provide a powerful defense of the worth of Christian calling and ethic.
And these are just examples! I highlight evangelicalism and Catholicism, for one of the besetting issues relating to Jesus is the division existent amongst His people.
Jesus knew and taught that the unity of His people would serve as a powerful witness to the truth of the Gospel and the glory of His Name. So what happened?
It isn’t what Jesus intended (I speak humanly). He made that clear in His final days on earth when He prayed to the Father:
“I pray for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:20-23).
Jesus never intended for His people to be divided. My limited experience of thirty-five years as a Christian has exposed me, amongst many fine things, to one of the darker tendencies amongst Christians, which is a proclivity towards divisiveness.
Many Roman Catholics believe that they belong to the only true Church. Many Pentecostals believe you aren’t a Christian if you don’t manifest the gift of tongues. Many Reformed theologians know they are right and you are wrong and there is no discussion. Many Fundamentalists viewed Billy Graham as Satan’s agent. Many Baptists believe they will have the penthouse suite in heaven.
Many Protestants believe that Roman Catholicism is in keeping with Antichrist. Few evangelicals have had much to say about Pentecostal evangelist Reinhold Bonnke - All he has done is lead 55 million Africans to faith in Jesus Christ!
My wife was approached by an elderly Roman Catholic woman who (with good intentions, no doubt!) told her that she was going to hell if she didn’t return to the Catholic Church. She naively expected me as a Baptist preacher to agree with her!
A Baptist Church and a Full Gospel Church stood opposite each other on the West Coast and effectively shook their finger at one another, each thinking the other was less spiritual, in large measure because of the way they dressed – The Baptists dressed up and the Full Gospel dressed down!
And we haven’t mentioned The Great Schism of A.D. 1054, when the Pope at Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated one another, with Orthodox and Catholic divide ever since. Few Protestants are even aware of this travesty.
(Are you nauseous yet?) What madness! This is NOT what Jesus had in mind.
I understand there are honest differences, sometimes so profound that communion is adversely effected; perhaps sometimes rightly so. But not like this, no! This is madness, and the Devil is having a field day. Let there be no mistake about it.
God is grieved. Thinking, believing, well-intentioned Christians should be likewise distressed. The prayer of our Lord must be our aspiration.
German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers this fine analysis of division within the Christian Church in his book, Life Together:
“The life or death of a Christian community is determined by whether it achieves sober wisdom on this point as soon as possible. In other words, life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society … but rather where it understands itself as being part of the one holy, catholic, Christian Church, where it shares actively and passively in the sufferings and struggles and promise of the whole Church. Every principle of selection and every separation connected with it that is not necessitated quite objectively by common work, local conditions, or family connections is of the greatest danger to a Christian community. When the way of intellectual or spiritual selection is taken the human element always insinuates itself and robs the fellowship of its spiritual power and effectiveness for the Church, drives it into sectarianism. The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door. We must … be very careful at this point.”
One can appreciate the differences. Protestants and Catholics are separated by issues of papal authority, scripture and tradition, faith and works, etc; fair enough.
But does a Christian, whatever secondary nomenclature is applied by way of identity (i.e. Baptist or Charismatic or Orthodox, etc.) have the right (even if he has the moxie!) to build walls of separation betwixt other Christians?
The Apostle Paul replied with a resounding “No!” when he found such distinctions being applied and applauded amongst the Corinthian believers:
“I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. My brothers, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?” (I Corinthians 1:10-13).
What exactly were those individuals teaching or doing that was so special? What variant of truth or methodology could offer an elevated expression of Christianity? Would Jesus have been impressed? Of whom would He have approved?
One finds a similar mindset amongst conference and concert groupies. Gifted speakers and singers have a faithful following of individuals who follow them all over the map, attending every available conference and concert. Why don’t they just faithfully participate in their local church?
Eyes and ears, hearts and minds are taken off of Jesus and cast upon some special doctrine, system or practice. Jesus is subordinated to an interpretation or method.
It is both pathetic and sacrilegious. Missiologist Lesslie Newbigin offers this contribution to the issue at hand in his book, The Household of God:
“When the Church faces out towards the world it knows that it only exists as the first-fruits and the instrument of that reconciling work of Christ, and that division within its own life is a violent contradiction of its own fundamental nature. His reconciling work is one, and we cannot be His ambassadors reconciling the world to God, if we have not ourselves been willing to be reconciled to one another. It is the result of this deep connection at the heart of the Gospel itself that churches which … had accepted their disunity as a matter of course, found that when they were placed in a missionary situation their disunity was an intolerable scandal.”
Jesus already observed (with prescience that only His divinity could divine!) that the unity of His people would translate into an effective witness and source of glory to God. Ah, if only His people could similarly grasp such fundamental truth!
We had three Baptist churches in my hometown. All were affiliated with the Conservative Baptist Association. All were in precipitous decline.
The prospect arose as far bask as thirty years ago that perhaps the three churches should band together. It was an idea that died a quick death. The question as to which church building would be maintained was one of the chief stumbling blocks.
Imagine that! A preference for the preferred admixture of brick and mortar was allowed to outweigh the eternal destiny of hearts and minds in the thinking of the respective congregations. Then again: Don’t even try to imagine it!
I have come to believe, though, that the whole approach to ecumenism has been, while laudable in intention, terribly flawed in execution. We have sought to find our common ground in the artificial imposition of differing ecclesiastical bodies.
We thought that we were bring about unity by bringing a Baptist church together with a Lutheran church together with a Methodist church and, if we were really far-reaching, a Protestant church with a Catholic church. It was a nice try!
And it must be remembered that ecumenism arose amidst a terrible chasm that existed between differing bodies of Christians. The world was marching forward into the future while marching further away from God; all the while Christians were burying their heads in the sand and reinforcing walls amongst one another.
True ecumenism is realized when persons who have been washed in the blood and filled with the Spirit of God recognize one another. Spirit speaks to Spirit, allowing Christians to discern Christ in one another.
Our fellowship has found common cause with several ministries to which we lend support both prayerful and financial. We recognize God’s hand upon them and Christ’s Spirit within them. It is a joy.
I have known the fellowship of His people and the Presence of Christ Himself while sharing time with Benedictine monks along the seacoast of New England and while worshiping amongst Pentecostals in southern Maine and Brooklyn, New York.
I discovered two giants of the pulpit amongst my fellow clerics when I came to my present ministry location over twenty years ago: One was an African-American Baptist pastor and the other a Roman Catholic priest of Polish descent. An African-American and a young Korean rank amongst my most esteemed partners.
My thinking has been shaped by an eclectic array of writers: Anglican evangelical John Stott, missionary to India Lesslie Newbigin (quoted above), renowned apologist C.S. Lewis, Chinese Pentecostal Watchman Nee, Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles, and Christian Missionary Alliance pastor A.W. Tozer to name just a few. I have found Christ powerfully present in all of them.
I don’t have to agree with each of them on every point. I know, too, that some reading this will take exception to one or other of the theological traditions, ecclesiastical frameworks or individuals referenced in earlier paragraphs.
John Wesley should be our guide in all of this. He asked both his Roman Catholic and his hyper-Calvinist friends, “If we cannot think alike, can we not love alike?”
There is no place in Scripture where we are given to understand that the definitive proof of one’s Christianity is an all-or-nothing assent to a particular series of propositions. Christians will have disagreements over these issues.
The issue remains one of fundamentals. What are the non-negotiable matters and what are the secondary issues regarding which debate is legitimately in play?
Jesus went on record that He will be looking for faith: “When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on earth?” Faith in Him is what truly matters.
What is the significance of Jesus, in the final analysis? He is our salvation. We are one in Him if we are washed in His blood and filled with His Spirit. We follow Him, whatever our differences, and would do well not to let such diminish His light.
We are exhorted to “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit” (Ephesians 4:3); therefore, let no man, theological distinctive, ecclesiastical apparatus or spiritual experience put asunder those whom God has joined together. Amen.
Bradley E. Lacey
July 23, 2010
6:25 PM 8/4/2010