Convictions: Jesus

 "On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand."

                                                                             --Edward Mote "My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less"

Yet it's amazing, how often we keep trying to stand on other ground.  We try to stand on the church, but it's Jesus that's the head of the church.  Then there's the Bible. Now that looks very stable--how firm a foundation is found in His excellent Word, right?  But it's Jesus who is our Rock, our Cornerstone.  The Bible exists for Jesus and not the other way around. The Bible has value because it testifies of Him.  The church has value because though I am a child of God, I'm not an only child.  To be a follower of Jesus is by definition to be part of a family, and that family is called the church.  These first three posts of my Convictions blog series are called Foundations where I reflected on the three aspects of our faith that we treat as foundational--the church, the Bible, and Jesus.  But in the end there is but one foundation and it's Jesus Christ our Lord.

Our faith is ultimately about a person--about Jesus, who is God with us. God who has come near and who we can relate to because He became one of us.  Jesus is the resolution to the thorniest problem that underlies all pain, suffering and death in this world--the problem of sin. Every philosophical struggle will ultimately be resolved through His sacrifice on the cross--his defeat of death and his eradication of sin.  Jesus also represents God's desire to be connected to us as He had always intended.  Jesus reveals in ways that we can understand who God really is and what His character is like.  This week's Sabbath School lesson says that the law of God reveals God's character and I had a hard time seeing that. But I think it's Jesus that reveals God's character, and shows us what God's law perfectly fulfilled looks like. 

You can't place too much emphasis on Jesus. And yet often times I find that we tend to underemphasize Him in favor of other things.  A "relationship with Jesus" seems soft, hazy, in line with harping on grace, love, and mercy--those less severe qualities in comparison to the sterner, clearer, harder virtues of obedience, righteousness, and the law.  But I think our preference for the those more "demanding"  virtues reveals our tendency towards idolatry, towards a faith that we manage and control. The thing about following Jesus is that He is in control, and we don't always know what He's going to do (ask His disciples!).  

 I think we'd prefer to take the playbook out of his hands, and just do what it says as best we can. It's easier to focus on tasks and check lists. It feels safer.  But that's idolatry.  

It's more appealing to have a vending machine God that spits out whatever we want. It feels more certain to believe that if I follow the formula I will get exactly what I want.   But that's idolatry. 

 It's more comfortable to demand that God "just tell me what to do so I can have eternal life" rather than be bothered with the complications of actually following Him.  But Jesus tells us that our faith is not about a to-do list. He does not offer us the option of a Jesus-free Christian package. 

My most fervent prayer for my children is very simple:  that they would know Jesus.  That's all.  I don't pray that they'll "stay in the church" because they could do that and still not know Jesus.  While, I do pray that they'll make decisions and live good lives, I still pray that would be the outgrowth of knowing Jesus.  Because they can make the "right" decisions and still not know Him. 

The only reason I'm a Christian is because of Jesus. It's His story that moves me, His message that convicts me.  And most importantly, it's His continual activity in my life that keeps me faithful.  It's that He's real to me, that I feel His presence every day, that His character inspires me to believe in what a good world can really be. This is why I believe.  I find a Christianity devoid of Jesus doesn't really have much to recommend it above any other religious belief.  We don't have the market cornered on a code of moral conduct.  We're not the only ones proffering an all-powerful, all-knowing God. We're not alone in providing a path out of suffering and death.  But we are the only ones who have Jesus. And He makes all the difference.

"For I resolved to know nothing.  . .except Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

                                                                        -1 Corinthians 2:2

*A note on the images I selected for this post. The portrait of Jesus was a tough one. Images of Jesus are so fraught.  I think there's a strong argument for taking the Muslim approach of refusing to depict God in visual form.  Many of the traditional pictures of Jesus are of a European man that is most likely inaccurate.  There are a host of Black Jesus options available too, but I have my doubts about Jesus being African either.  There a contemporary portrayals as well such as Jonathan Roumie's portrayal of Jesus in The Chosen, but while that might ring true to fans of the show, others will see a popular TV star not Christ.  My favorite portrait of Jesus can be found here, but I've noticed people find nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance in this portrait, nothing to attract us to him and they object to that.  (Did you see what I did there?)  So even though that picture might be perhaps the most Biblically accurate I didn't use that one.  In the end I settled on this drawing of ethnically vague Jesus as, if not ideal, at least satisfactory.

The last image is actually of Rich Mullins, one of my favorite Christian musicians.  He said he wanted to be simply be an arrow pointing up.  This is the heart of Christian faith in Jesus, to be arrow pointing to the uplifted Christ who draws everyone to Him.