Who is Jesus and What is His Message?

WHO IS JESUS

and

WHAT IS HIS MESSAGE?

So let us begin once again. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No man can come to the Father but through Him. That is the gospel. That is the foundation of our faith. But so often we have molded that truth to accommodate our lives and disenfranchise the lives of others. What would you say to this scenario?

A man murders ten people. Another man murders fifty people. The man who murdered ten gets saved by faith in Jesus, but he now claims that the man who murdered fifty is a major league sinner who God really hates. The saved man cannot stop murdering altogether but now the man who murdered ten now only murders one at a time, but he claims that unless the one who murdered fifty stops murdering altogether he cannot be saved. You see, his view of redemption carries with it a quantitative essence concerning murder. He contends that certain murders or a certain quantity of murders are special cases with God as it pertains to the gospel of redemption.

Now redemption is either free through faith or it has some works caveats. And the gay issue has been adopted by the evangelical church as the major issue. Forget about all the sinners who come to faith in Jesus who still cling to unforgiveness, greed, lust, addictions, nationalism, and an impressive array of all sorts of sins. But if they have same sex attractions they are funneled off into a different redemptive room where they will be interrogated fully concerning their variety of sin and what they plan to do about it.

A major part of this view has to do with a misrepresentation of repentance. It is widely assumed that unless a sinner forsakes his sin, and in particular certain unseemly sins, that he cannot come to Christ. This theology equates repentance with forsaking and that is a classic and self righteous perspective. How many sins and which sins must be completely forsaken before salvation is legitimate or even made available? I have dealt with the issue of repentance HERE.

 

What then is the pristine and uncompromised essence of salvation? It is exclusively through Jesus Christ without one single shred of human works. No, not one. Most “orthodox” believers would agree that feeding the poor or clothing the naked or ministering to the earthly needs of people regardless of how noble are not a part of salvation and the gift of eternal life. But some of those same people would require someone to forsake, or completely stop, certain sins before that sinner can be saved or at least after he has been saved to be fully vetted as a authentic believer. That again has subtly and surreptitiously carried the works of man into the equation.

The Lord knows those that are His and only the Lord knows with complete certainty. But do not believe that your experience is at odds with the salvation experience of others. All of us have fallen far short of what we could be and surely of what we should be. All of us have sinned in thought, word, and deed even after we were converted and even on our most spiritual day. This is not a license to sin, but it is an illumination of God’s grace. But by culling out a certain sin which has never tempted us and holding that sin as the gold standard of true repentance by insisting it must be completely overcome is measurably self righteous.

Paul tells us that we are not to sin so that grace can more abound, but neither does Paul claim to be sinless. And somewhere between those two pillars is the experience of a true pilgrim of Jesus Christ. This redemption issue is a matter of the heart and it belongs to God. There are fruits, but in all of us there are many, many fruits which should be there but are not. The group called Exodus probably had good intentions, however they came across a very strange phenomenon. The same sex attractions that they attempted to eradicate would not stay eradicated. And much of the church will not accept a person as a true believer who continues to have them.

If true redemption eradicates all same sex attractions than why does it not eradicate the attractions for the scantily clad woman or the attractions for greed or the attraction toward self righteousness? We should all walk in holiness, but since even the most surrendered among us still sin we all need God's grace before and after conversion. If a person stands up and claims Jesus was not God, or that only through their church can people be saved, or some other unbiblical doctrine than we can assume that person does not know Christ. But it is quite another thing to measure a person’s conversion with a ruler that that we so often do not apply to ourselves.

I have never met a Christian who lives in the west who has not been infected by the culture and therefore sins by omission and by commission. Just observing the way we spend and borrow and save money is observably unbiblical, and yet no one questions our salvation. Committed believers buy cars and homes which are way above their actual needs. Our closets are full of clothes we do not need or even wear. We purchase things just because of the changing styles the world has laid down. We watch television as an addiction and yet the prayer chambers are almost empty. Believers by the millions speak hateful words about political figures they despise and also about Muslims and yet these same believers affirm themselves because they are for traditional marriage.

The church is full of men and women who are divorced and remarried and who are openly welcomed into the fold. Preachers play many hours of golf each week and most do not spend that amount of time in prayer and yet no one questions their conversion. How many saved men look at pornography each week including preachers? My point being if you conclude that anyone who is committing sins on a regular basis cannot be saved then there are no saved sinners at all. But the church has turned a blind eye to its own sins and now plays pin the tail on the gay sinner. The local church has borrowed millions from the heathen banks and pays horrific and obscene amounts of interest to the same world which lends to abortion clinics and gay enterprises, and the church feels no hypocrisy about itself. And yet we all sing worship songs and consider ourselves saved to the uttermost. But we can affirm each other by demanding gay people come completely in line and begin to feel different sex attractions and never waver.

We as believers must first take personal inventories as to how the grace of God has and continues to work in our lives. This utopian view of our own spirituality is a mirage and is based largely upon our heterosexual credentials as well as our national patriotism. How shallow can it get? But we have consistently spiraled into a self righteous collection of Americans who spout out our brand of morality, and while rejecting gay people because of their sin we are copulating with the money system of our fallen culture.

In the end we are faced with a question and indeed a quest that should have long ago been discovered and implemented within the hearts and lives of those who believe in and strive to follow the Son of man and of God. Who is Jesus, what was His mission, and what does He call His followers to? Oh but would you not think those questions would be not only clearly laid out in our statements of faith, but also observably manifested in our lives? Yes we can cling to the legalistic demands that breed self righteousness and a clique mentality. Yes we can state our case for moral issues and a desire for a fallen culture to become less fallen. Yes we can display our doctrinal credentials which give Scriptural clarity about the divinity of Christ Jesus.

But even after all those truths and moral pronouncements, we are still left with a colossal vacuum which if not filled renders our faith one of words and not deeds. Hold your breath for a moment and incline your ears. Listen as the constant static and drone of exhaled wind is manipulated and sent out as a steady stream of words. Words, words, and more words. Men and women are addicted to talk shows and form opinions based largely upon what their favorite talk show hosts say and make them think.

But this is not the company which is walking in His steps. What has been created in these times is a shadow, a ghost, and a pitiful projection of some kind of religion which uses His name but which bears no resemblance to He Who walked the pages of the gospel narratives. This is not Jesus. This is man masquerading as someone called Jesus. But if we truly wish to spread His message of redemption then we will have to become less obsessed with the sins of men and more obsessed with the souls of men.

Robert McCheyne, that faithful Scottish preacher, shared this story of servant hood and ministering the good news to sinners. About the beginning of the 1800’s there were many lepers in the continent of Africa. It was a miserable disease and most contagious. There were many camps to which lepers must go and live and be removed from society.
One day a missionary from England happened to be on a hilltop in South Africa, and as he glanced over the wall that surrounded the leper camp he saw two lepers plowing a filed. One had lost his hands to this horrible and painful disease while the other had lost his feet. The one without hands was carrying the one without feet, and they would stop at each pre-dug hole in the field. The one with hands, riding on the other’s back, would drop a seed into the hole while the other would cover it with dirt by his foot. The missionary was undone. Who could, who would go and be a gospel servant for such as these?
Two young boys, Moravian missionaries, heard about the situation. They began to pray, and both boys felt the leading of the Spirit to go into the leper village and be Jesus to these pitiful souls. They knew the consequences. Once a person enters such a village they were forbidden to come out again. It was a death sentence. But both boys did not hesitate since they were both convinced by the Spirit that this was to be the filed to which they were called.
Those two boys willingly and humbly forsook their entire lives and went to preach to and love these people. And through their example the Spirit drew others that hoped they may soon join them. That my friends is servant hood. That is the faith once delivered to the saints. That is Jesus.

My friends, if we ever hope to find and serve the Savior we profess we will have to walk into the leper colony that surrounds us and forsaking all that we have and all that we are, we must reach out to them with the love of Jesus. Regardless of the sin or the sinner, the gospel must come forth through our lips and lives without respect to our reputation or even our very lives. Jesus didn’t just love sinners of all genres. He died for them. It is time for the church to die once again through His wounds and walking out of His tomb we must carry the flame of redemption to every creature, even to the uttermost parts of the world. If you are worried about the decline of the culture than you can go to the voting booth. But if you are concerned with the eternal destiny of those within the culture than you must go to the empty tomb and receive His power.

The redemption of Jesus when spoken and lived carries with it the power of the universe which can secure eternal life for the vilest sinners among us. The Spirit awaits our crucifixion so that His crucifixion can go forth.