Have you ever noticed how so many have attempted to transform Jesus into someone other than who He is? We seem intent to recreate Him in our own image with each passing generation (sometimes, multiple times within the span of a generation!). It’s tempting for us to sometimes think this trend began with the rise of theological liberalism during the Enlightenment, and it is certainly true that people like Schleiermacher, Schweitzer, and von Harnack (among more modern proponents such as Tillich, Bultmann, and Spong) sought to discover a “historical” Jesus who was stripped of such troublesome aspects of His nature as His claims of divinity, His miracles, and ultimately anything more than a few moral axioms. Yet to assign so late a date is to miss what even the first disciples tried to do in terms of recreating Jesus into something that was what they expected or what made them comfortable. The disciples’ mistaken notions of what and who Messiah was supposed to be caused them to come to false conclusions, ones Jesus constantly sought to correct in these men.
We look around today and see many Jesuses vying for the affections of people. There is what I call “hippy Jesus”: that effeminate, non-confrontational, accept-everyone-for-who-they-are-without-requiring-any-change Jesus. He’s soft, cuddly, and just wants to be everyone’s buddy. Then there is “angry Jesus,” the one who really, really doesn’t like you but is required by the Father to love you anyway. He does, but he’s not happy about it. This Jesus is constantly looking for any reason to punish you, and wouldn’t you know it, you provide him with ample cause. And let’s not forget about “ATM Jesus,” who is standing ready to give you your best life now, if you only have enough faith. This Jesus is your heavenly sugar-daddy, ready to unleash nothing but health and wealth to you here on earth because, after all, your comfort here is his primary concern.
It would be easy for us to chuckle at these caricatures of Jesus were it not for the many who are deceived into placing their faith in one of these (or some other variation). Yet what is even easier for each of us is to suppose that we don’t do any of this with our understanding of who Jesus is. We come to Scripture with our preconceived notions of what or who Jesus is supposed to be, and we do two things: 1) we rush to accept the texts that conform to this image, and 2) we rush to ignore those that don’t. We like the Jesus who goes after the religious leaders of His time for their hypocrisy, but as soon as He points out the same in us, we quickly turn the page of our Bible. We love to hear about how He has prepared a place for us in Heaven and that we are to be laying up treasures there, but we balk when He shows us how we are to recognize that every material possession and all our wealth here on earth belongs to God and how we are to be ready to give it all up for Him. When we read Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, we add more asterisks than the records of the “steroid era” of Major League Baseball so that we can say, “Whew! For a moment, I thought He was talking about me!” Brothers and sisters, as we study our Lord in His Word, there should be things about Him that make us uncomfortable, because those are the areas where we are least like Him. Rather than recreating Him in our image, may we be conformed to His. Just something to think about…
0 Comments