I want to share
some observations that may be helpful to some of us, and in the next post we’ll
return to MacDonald and Lewis.
Jesus Christ is Biblical
Christianity, and Biblical Christianity is Jesus Christ. There is cultural
Christianity, there is churchy Christianity, and then there is Jesus Christ as
He is revealed through the Scriptures. I think the Nicene Creed has no peer
when it comes to expressing the essence of the Bible. And may I gently say that
we are foolish children if we think creeds are unimportant – for we all have
creeds, written or unwritten; so why not honor a creed that was forged in the
fires of persecution, deep Biblical reflection and hard labor, and a passion
for the glory of God in Jesus Christ?
I can’t begin to
tell you of the many peoples I’ve met over the years, I say “peoples” because
I’m thinking of communities, whether churches or ethnic groups, or theological
traditions, or groups that almost defy definition such as the Jesus People and
many of the folks in the early Charismatic Movement. Nor can I hardly begin to share the many
authors I’ve read from various traditions, many long dead (in the natural) and
some still living. I owe many debts to the living and the dead – I am the
product of many wonderful sisters and brothers in Jesus Christ – including dear
friends over the years…again…some are now in the Presence of our Lord…some are
still on earth.
The women and
men I remember, the ones who have built into my life, the ones who have made a
difference, are those who have loved Jesus Christ and have transmitted that
love to me and others; for you can’t separate loving Jesus and loving others,
or truly loving others and loving Jesus. This is a love with clear articulation
and definition, it is not nebulous. The form it takes is the Crucified Christ,
it is cruciform; Paul writes that he determined to know nothing but Jesus
Christ and Him crucified – O friends, if we do not hear and see this message we
ought to run from what we do see and hear; as the disciples on the Mount, we
want to look up and see only Jesus.
I will be the
first to say that this makes life a bit difficult – not so much with respect to
the world, for the world is the world is the world. Rather, it makes life
difficult with respect to the professing church, for it seems that Jesus is
never enough for us. We want our best lives now. We want success. We want to be
esteemed by others. We want to accumulate things. We would much rather talk
about “church” than talk about Jesus. Just listen to what Christians talk about
and you will see what I mean.
This is a
mystery to me, this propensity we have to talk about everything and everyone
but Jesus. Why is this? If we truly know Him, then why don’t we talk about Him?
What good is it to be a good Presbyterian or Roman Catholic or Baptist or
Pentecostal if we don’t talk about Jesus? What good is it to be confirmed or
baptized or to be ordained if we don’t know Jesus? What good is beautiful worship
music or lively “praise” music if we don’t know Jesus? And frankly, a
“Christian” worldview, if there is such a thing, is worthless without knowing
Jesus Christ – for without knowing Jesus we can think we are something that we
are not.
This insistence
on Jesus Christ being Christianity makes life difficult with professing
Christians because we don’t like it – we have our own agendas; political,
nationalistic, economic, denominational. We also take subsidiary elements of
the Bible out of context and make them the main thing – we often go from one “spiritual”
religious “Biblical” fad to another, it is like having a membership in the “revelation
of the month club.”
And the thing
is, these “new” main things all look pretty good, they all appeal to our sense
of making things better for us and others – usually these things that distract
us from Jesus Christ are not bad things but good things. As the adage
goes, “The good is the enemy of the better, and the better is the enemy of the
best.” Let’s recall that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil looked good.
If we are not in love with Jesus we will not see this, we will not understand
it, we will not have an eye nor an ear for it.
The Nicene Creed
is not enough, the Bible is not enough, Mere Christianity is not enough – the
Person of Jesus Christ is not enough. It seems was always want to add something
to Jesus Christ.
But the men and
women who have spoken into my life have insisted that Jesus is indeed not only
enough, but that He is everything.
As with Lewis
and MacDonald, and as Murray with Law, I have known saintly men and women who
have radiated Jesus Christ and yet who have not always seen certain elements of
the Bible as clearly as we might desire. I have also known people, and I have
been one myself, who have had finely-turned doctrinal knowledge, but who have
not been gracious or loving or caring or forgiving or giving or sacrificial –
in short, who have not radiated Jesus Christ. As I look back over my life, I am
appalled at what I see in my past, for there was a time when at best I was a
Pharisee.
Someone once
said to me that right doctrine produces right living. That is not true. Jesus
Christ living in us produces righteous living – frankly, right doctrine without
Jesus Christ can be dry orthodoxy and it can be toxic in the self-righteousness
it can produce. Perhaps the most important doctrinal question is, “What do we
think about Jesus Christ?” Or perhaps, “How is our relationship with Jesus
Christ?” Then the next question is, “How is our relationship with His Body, His
Bride, His Temple, His Church?”
We can hardly
have a relationship with someone if we don’t communicate with them and they don’t
communicate with us. If we speak to God then of course we ought to expect that
God, our dear loving heavenly Father, will speak to us. Of course we ought to
expect that our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, who died and rose for us, who has
given us His very Nature, will speak to us. Of course we ought to life live in
and by the Holy Spirit, speaking to us holistically – whatever that may look
like in our respective lives, in our marriages and families, in our
congregations, our friendships.
And we ought to
expect that God will speak to us through the transcendent Body of Jesus Christ,
for we are members of one another. We ought to always be learning from one
another, growing with one another in Jesus Christ.
I owe debts to
so very many men and women in Jesus Christ, so many I have known in person, and
so many through history via books of their writings and their recorded words
and deeds. I owe a debt to William Law because I owe a tremendous debt to
Andrew Murray, and since Law built into Murray, I owe a debt to Law. I was
introduced to Murray just months after becoming a follower of Jesus, so for 58
years Andrew Murray has been a mentor to me in Jesus Christ…always pointing to
Jesus, always encouraging me to abide in Jesus, to rest in Him, and to live by
the Holy Spirit.
I owe a direct
debt to both MacDonald and Lewis, or I suppose I could say that I owe a double
debt to MacDonald. While I can’t recall when I first encountered Lewis, I also
can’t recall when I haven’t been reading Lewis. Considering that Lewis called
MacDonald his master, I obviously owe MacDonald a debt for I owe Lewis a debt.
But I owe
MacDonald another debt, a first debt, a debt incurred prior to encountering
Lewis; for when my mother read The Princess and the Goblin to me as a
child, the numinous reached into my soul and gave me a sense of the Other that
has continued to grow within me, in Christ, to this Day.
I am deeply
thankful that others in Christ have touched me and continued to point me to
Jesus, always to Jesus…from many traditions, from traditions within traditions,
from seemingly outside traditions (such as the Jesus People), from many ethnicities
and social and economic environments. I want to live as a Mere Christian, die
as a Mere Christian, and stand before our Lord Jesus as a Mere Christian. After
all, He has purchased me and I am His mere bondservant.
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