The Christian
church year marries the Christmas season with looking forward to the end of the
world. It’s not just cuddly baby Jesus, but Jesus the eternal judge. And it
makes sense.
Christians around the world began one of the most important
seasons in the liturgical calendar this week: Advent. From the Latin word
“coming,” Advent marks four weeks of anticipating and preparing for the coming
of the savior of the world.
Of course,
Christmas marks not the powerful and earth-shaking return of the savior at the
eschaton. It is the quiet and seemingly inconsequential coming of a newborn
baby in an impoverished manger, born of lowly Mary in the nowhere town of
Bethlehem. Baby Jesus, meek and mild, we look upon this gentle child, as
Charles Wesley put it long
ago.
The infant
savior was indeed meek and mild, the Prince of Peace, and many assume that he
remained this way throughout his life. He did, to be sure, but he was not only this
way as he grew. In his adult years, he also demonstrated a decidedly less
gentle side that was just as much a part of Christ as his meekness and
mildness. It is important that we know and appreciate this fullness of Jesus,
his grace and his truth, his kindness and his severity, as we adequately
prepare for his coming each year.
Was the Temple-Smashing
a Fluke?
For most Christians, if you hear someone say, “Well, what about
Jesus turning over the tables of the money changers?” you likely know the topic
under discussion. It’s the stock response one gives to the assertion that Jesus
was always kind, understanding, and patient.
Yes, there
was that one time he got so angry that
the temple had been turned into a swap meet run by unsavory merchants and money
changers. He went off, fashioning a whip to clear the crowds and throwing the
furniture around. Angry Jesus.
We also know Jesus wasn’t all peace, love, and understanding with
the hypocritical religious leaders of the day who made the masses slaves to their
burdensome religious laws. In all other instances, though, he was gentle, meek
and mild. The rough side of Jesus is largely confined to these two instance in
most minds that consider the savior.
It is indeed wonderful truth that when we are caught in some sort
of besetting sin or want the sure promise of eternal joy, Jesus is who to go
to. His grace and plan for humanity is exponentially kinder and more hopeful
than Karma. But is there more to who Jesus is?
I wondered if it was only the money changers and Pharisees Christ
got hard-core with. So I read the four gospels straight through in two
sittings, putting aside previous conclusions from my own denominational
traditions, to simply see what kind of Christ emerged from the plain text. It
was an interesting and surprising exercise. I recommend it for believers and
non-believers alike.
Take the Blinders Off
and See Jesus as He Is
Two truths about Jesus seem to be at odds with the modern
Christian understanding and presentation of God’s son. First, the God-man,
unbound by time, held a decidedly ancient and unenlightened view of the world
by contemporary standards. Second, he did hurt others’ feelings and didn’t
apologize for it—and not just those of the religious fat cats of the day. Along
with the tender Lamb of God, we find a lion as well. We must admit to and
accept all of this if we want to know the whole divine person of Christ.
Let’s start
with the first. In this modern, scientific age, it’s silly to believe that the
devil, demons and hell exist. That’s old-school, and not the good kind.
Best-selling Christian preachers have
told us as much. But Jesus is unapologetically old-school. As we read the
gospels straight through, it cannot be missed that he talked quite often about
Satan, evil, and demonic possession. Doing exorcisms was all in a day’s work.
Jesus speaks of Satan and his legions of demons as actual beings that roam and
rule the earth, possessing and ravaging people relentlessly. His deliverance is
not real if demons are not real.
Jesus
dropped a bomb on a large group of everyday Jews, declaring they were not the children of Abraham,
but “of your father the devil.” Mistake No. 1 in winning friends and
influencing people is telling folks they are sons of the devil. Leaves a bad
taste.
Why did he
speak in these ways? Because he actually believed it.
Those who say they take Jesus seriously must as well. It’s why he gave his
disciples power over Satan and his minions. He knew they would face them just
as he did.
Jesus Believes in
Judgment
Jesus also
believes the old Sunday-school flannel board stories. He tells us that what
happened to Sodom and Gomorrah was literal and horrid. He uses those cities as
the illustration of severe judgment many
times throughout the gospels, including what would happen to the towns and
their citizens that didn’t welcome his disciples.
He believes
that Jonah actually lived three days in
the real belly of a real fish. He believes God created a real Adam and Eve and
that their son Cain truly murdered his
brother Abel. He believes Noah
and his ark are factual. He gives no hint these were merely instructive folk
tales. Jesus was not an enlightened modernist. In fact, he even doubled down on
some Old Testament laws (here and here, for instance).
Second, Jesus also believed in the reality of sin, its
seriousness, the need for repentance, and the punishment of a real hell.
Literally. Flames and great suffering. He talked about them regularly. The
reader can’t avoid it in the text. He didn’t speak of sin and hell conceptually
or metaphorically, but personalized this bad news to actual people, face to
face.
Jesus
advised them, if your eye or hand causes you to sin, pluck it out or cut it
off. This was more desirable than your whole body being tossed into eternal hell. He
actually uses the word. His dramatic advice on the first was figurative in
order to illustrate the real-life seriousness of the latter. I would have
chosen softer words, but I’m not him.
In parables,
Jesus likened some folks to weeds to whom he will “send
His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all causes of sin
and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace.” Just so
his listeners get the full weight of things, Jesus adds, “In that
place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Elsewhere,
he explains how the final judgment will work. One group who does his will is
welcomed into his kingdom. To the other, he says, “Depart from me, you
cursed, in the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” He says
that all those who do not make their home with Jesus will be gathered up like dead branches and
tossed into the burning fire.
Jesus
also warned the
crowds not to fear those who can kill the body, “but fear Him, who after He has
killed, has authority to cast into hell.” If we were Jesus’ tour manager, we
might be inclined to remind him honey attracts more bees than vinegar. He would
remind us he knows what he’s doing. He only does what his father does.
This May Be Why
Christmas Is Linked to the Apocalypse
With all the
talk of hell and damnation, Jesus is not shy in telling us he can be a harsh judge.
He came into the world to
judge and is eager (eager!) to cast fire upon the earth.
His father leaves it to his son to
execute judgment. Jesus is clear his judgment doesn’t turn out well for the
great majority.
Jesus is clear his judgment doesn’t turn
out well for the great majority.
There’s the
separation of the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the weeds, those who
are lifted to life and
those who “have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.” It wasn’t only the
hypocritical religious leaders of the day who received this message. Christ
warned some common folks that if they didn’t repent, they would all perish in unspeakable ways.
Later,
preaching to those in another town, he warned that few would be saved, that his
way is quite narrow and not many would pass through. Most will be cast out as
“workers of evil” into the place of eternal “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
A lot of teeth-gnashing talk.
Lastly, the scriptures conclude in the Apostle John’s “Revelation”
with an extremely distressing Jesus. Consider this reality. One day in the
gospels, John, the disciple Jesus loved dearly, was warmly reclining on the
savior’s chest at the Passover meal. At the cross, Jesus entrusted this same
John with the great honor of caring for his cherished mother.
But when
John encounters Jesus some years later in the “Revelation,” it wasn’t a happy
reunion. John fell as if dead before the Jesus whose eyes are fire. John
shook at his deafening voice, which was like the roar of many mighty waters.
The Lord’s face scalds the eye like the noon-day sun, and one can only look
away. From the Prince of Peace’s mouth came a massive and mighty sword with two
razor-sharp edges with which he will strike down the
nations.
His rule will be with an unforgiving iron rod. John is told of the
furious wrath of God. Revelation Jesus, the very same tender baby Jesus of the
manger, is fierce beyond description. Even John, with whom he shared the most
tender friendship, is thoroughly undone.
What Happens When Jesus
Shows Up
Jesus then puts this icing on the cake. We all want to be loved.
We want people to accept us. We want others to think that what we believe is
great. We want to attract, rather than repel. That is human nature.
Jesus tells us numerous times that we
will be hated by all nations merely by being identified by his name.
But Jesus
tells us numerous times that we will be hated by
all nations merely by being identified by his name, just as he is hated because
he tells us our works are evil. If offence must be given, we must make sure
that it’s the truth of God’s word, the reality of Christ’s cross, and the
necessary call to repentance that brings it, not our own dumb or arrogant
behavior.
Jesus indeed has distinct sides to him, but they all make up a
divine harmony. Hell-fire Jesus and Amazing-Grace Jesus are never at conflict
but illuminate the other. It is wrong to emphasize one over the other. There is
no Either/Or Jesus, only Both/And Jesus.
This is what
makes him a wonderful and attractive God, and why he has literally changed the
world and the course of mankind. His Good News is really good
because it overcomes really, really bad news. The former is mere
sentimentality without the latter. The latter is hopelessly cruel without the
former.
But we must
be honest. Name the last time you heard a sermon or read a book roundly
presenting Hellfire Jesus. Seriously. It’s likely you never have. We mostly get
Happy Jesus. Yet to preach only Happy Jesus is to do what A.W. Tozer warned
about in a strongly titled and worded essay, “I Call it Heresy”:
“To urge men and women to believe in a divided Christ is bad teaching for no
one can receive half of Christ.”
A Half Christ Is
Forgiveness Without Repentance
A Half
Christ is what the great H. Richard Niebuhr famously denounced in the
liberal theology of his day: “A God without wrath / brought men without sin /
into a Kingdom without judgment / through the ministrations of a Christ without
a cross.” Half Jesus brings what the great Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace, “the
deadly enemy of our Church.”
Christ’s grace is costly because our
collective sin was so great.
Cheap grace is “the justification of sin without the justification
of the repentant sinner.” “Grace alone does everything…” as Bonhoeffer
describes the cheapening of grace, “and so everything can remain as it was
before.” Cheap grace “therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God,
in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.”
This is simply not the Christ of scripture. Christ’s grace is
costly because our collective sin was so great, so damningly consequential that
it cost God what was most dear to him, his only son. He offers his costly grace
freely to all who seek his forgiveness for their transgressions, turn from
their sin and live to follow and love him with all their hearts.
That is indeed the very good news that overcomes desperately bad
news. It’s the unmistakable gospel of the one and only Jesus Christ, the one to
which his church must be absolutely faithful. Half Jesus is not who the world
is looking for. This is the one we prepare for in this Advent season. May it be
so.
Glenn T.
Stanton writes and speaks about family, gender, and art, is the director of
family formation studies at Focus on the Family, and is the author of eight
books including "The Ring Makes All the
Difference" (Moody, 2011) and "Loving My LGBT Neighbor"
(Moody, 2014). He blogs at glenntstanton.com.
