JESUS AND CHRISTIANITY

#1 · February 5, 2008, 10:43 am

Quote from Forum Archives on February 5, 2008, 10:43 am
Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>
JESUS AND CHRISTIANITY

February 3, 2008

Text: Matthew 5:17-20

This Wednesday, we begin the season of Lent. Lent is the five week period prior to Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter Sunday and is used by the historical Church as a regular opportunity to reflect upon and prepare for remembering the sacrifice of the Son of God and the glorious, joyful triumph of sin and death in the resurrection. It is frequently a time in which Christians can confront the stark, dark reality of sin, Gods complete rejection of sin, and Gods complete victory over sin. It is a time in which Christians can both mourn the cost for defeating sin and rejoice in the overwhelming love that God has for us by defeating sin.

Lent is also a time, unfortunately, for certain individuals and organizations to assault the Biblical truth of Jesus. Even though there is no major media production such as The DaVinci Code this year, there will no doubt still be the annual pronouncements of the Jesus Seminar published in one of the news magazines and featured on news discussion programs. The Jesus Seminar was founded in 1985 for the expressed purpose of deciding what Jesus really said and did. Its founder, Robert W. Funk, expressed his purpose in the first seminar: Those of us who work with that hypothetical middle [between creation and the end of all things] Jesus of Nazareth are hard pressed to concoct any form of coherence that will unite beginning, middle, and end in some grand new fiction that will meet all the requirements of narrative. To put the matter bluntly, we are having as much trouble with the middle the messiah as we are with the terminal points. What we need is a new fiction that takes as its starting point the central event in the Judeo-Christian drama and reconciles that middle with a new story that reaches beyond old beginnings and endings. In sum, we need a new narrative of Jesus, a new gospel, if you will, that places Jesus differently in the grand scheme, the epic story.

In Funk's new gospel, Jesus doesn't fare so well. At another time, Robert Funk said this about Jesus: We should give Jesus a demotion. It is no longer credible to think of Jesus as divine. Jesus' divinity goes together with the old theistic way of thinking about God. The plot early Christians invented for a divine redeemer figure is as archaic as the mythology in which it is framed. A Jesus who drops down out of heaven, performs some magical act that frees human beings from the power of sin, rises from the dead, and returns to heaven is simply no longer credible. The notion that he will return at the end of time and sit in cosmic judgment is equally incredible. We must find a new plot for a more credible Jesus.

(-- from http://www.markdroberts.com/htmfiles/resources/unmaskingthejesus.htm)

It might seem strange to you that I would title a sermon Jesus and Christianity, for Christianity exists only because of Jesus. Jesus, we rightly believe, is Christianity. But, in the context of our so-called modern world, the Jesus that is being lifted up today is one that is lifted out of Biblical, historical, orthodox Christianity. In a recent article, Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes of the conflict between Christianity and Jesusanity. Now, that was a new term to me, but it fits. Darrell Bock and Daniel Wallace apply the term in their book Dethroning Jesus, where they write that Jesusanity is a coined term for the alternative story about Jesus. Along with Dr. Mohler, these authors argue that popular culture is on a quest to unseat the Biblical Christ. One can readily see the validity of their accusations when superimposed over the pronouncements of the Jesus Seminar think-tank that I spoke of earlier.

In their alternative story, Jesus is reduced to a prophet or teacher of religious wisdom. He points the way to God and leads people into a journey with God, but those pursuing Jesusanity never confess Jesus as God. To do so would acknowledge an absolute truth in which Jesus is irreconcilable with other spiritualities. So in Jesusanity, the deity of Christ is denied. (http://www.albertmohler.com/blog.php)

In stark distinction to such deconstruction of Biblical truth and orthodox Christianity, Jesus declares his own divinity. He declares in John 10:30 that I and the Father are one. At his own trial before the Sanhedrin, the high priest put it before Jesus bluntly: Tell us if you are the Christ, the son of God. Just as bluntly, Jesus replied, Yes, it is as you say. (Matthew 26:63-64). In our text from Matthew 5, Jesus declared, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

No one else would dare make such a claim except for the Son of God. It is a claim that is completely impossible for any human to keep. Think of just a few of the tiny promises you have made to God over the course of your life. Have you kept them all? I havent. I have broken promises to God, and I have broken Gods commands. I am completely unqualified to fulfill Matthew 5:17. So are you. So is everyone else living or who has lived. Only Jesus fully human and fully divine has been able to make and fulfill this claim. We must, then, face the reality that there are only two choices facing us: either Jesus fulfilled his words, or he failed to fulfill them. If he failed to fulfill them, then he uttered a falsehood told a lie in which case he indeed is not divine, for God cannot lie. But if Jesus failed to fulfill his words, and is therefore a liar, then he cannot be a good prophet or teacher. He cannot be one who we should follow in our journey with God, for a liar will lead us astray. If Jesus is a liar, then we should turn on our backs on him and leave him be because he will do us not good. To deny the deity of Christ and then to prop him up as a good prophet or teacher, as the members of the Jesus Seminar and postmodern Jesusanitans do, is complete and utter folly.

The remaining choice is that Jesus fulfilled his words. If that is the case, then we must accept that Jesus not only claimed equality with the Father deity but that he was equal to the Father. In other words, Jesus is the Son of God, a term used in that period to describe the Savior. Did Jesus fulfill Matthew 5:17? Every New Testament witness says that Jesus fulfilled the Law. In fact, the only way that Jesus trial could proceed before the Sanhedrin was by their use of false witnesses. Otherwise, there was no basis for the trial, for Jesus never broke one Law of God. Since Jesus is the Son of God, meaning fully divine, then what does that mean to us?

For one thing, it means that there is no alternative story about Jesus. Jesus is Lord and Savior as the Bible presents him. Jesus is Lord and Savior as orthodox Christianity has confessed him over the centuries. Jesus is not a way to walk with God; he is the way to God. It is his blood that covers our sins, not a fanciful ideology of a good prophet or teacher.

It also means that since Matthew 5:17 is true, then Matthew 5:20 is likewise fulfilled, For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. Taken out of its proper Biblical context, this verse sounds like we are meant to enter the kingdom of heaven only through the path of works righteousness. Making this application, however, ignores the first point: the deity of Christ. Jesus demands that his followers be more righteous than the most pious people in his day. How do we meet such a demand, especially considering that Jesus retained his strongest rebukes for that same group whenever he pointed out their failures?

The only way available to us to achieve such a standard is to believe that Jesus fulfilled the Law and to also believe that Jesus suffered and died in our place because we broke the Law. Jesus was saying that his listeners needed a different kind of righteousness altogether, not just a more intense version of the Pharisees righteousness. The righteousness of the Christian, therefore, is love and obedience, not the Pharisees righteousness of legal compliance. Admittedly, these can often look the same, but they become quite divergent in the long run. The Pharisees attitudes frequently betrayed them in the presence of Jesus. The righteousness of the Christian, then, must come from what God does in us, not what we can do by ourselves; it must be God-centered, not self-centered; it must be based on reverence for God, not approval from people; and it must go beyond keeping the law to loving God who gave the law. The righteousness that Jesus calls for is in full keeping with the truth of Biblical testimony and the Biblically-derived orthodox doctrines of historical Christianity.

There is no alternative story about Jesus. There is no new narrative about Jesus. There is no difference between Jesus and Biblical Christianity as some are trying to claim. Jesusanity fits the contemporary mind and the contemporary mood, but it cannot save. Only Jesus can save, because only Jesus is the living Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior. Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

PO Box 515

170 W. Broadway

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

www.bhfirstbaptist.com
-- To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: abesermons-unsubscribe@welovegod.org   

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

February 3, 2008

Text: Matthew 5:17-20

This Wednesday, we begin the season of Lent. Lent is the five week period prior to Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter Sunday and is used by the historical Church as a regular opportunity to reflect upon and prepare for remembering the sacrifice of the Son of God and the glorious, joyful triumph of sin and death in the resurrection. It is frequently a time in which Christians can confront the stark, dark reality of sin, Gods complete rejection of sin, and Gods complete victory over sin. It is a time in which Christians can both mourn the cost for defeating sin and rejoice in the overwhelming love that God has for us by defeating sin.

Lent is also a time, unfortunately, for certain individuals and organizations to assault the Biblical truth of Jesus. Even though there is no major media production such as The DaVinci Code this year, there will no doubt still be the annual pronouncements of the Jesus Seminar published in one of the news magazines and featured on news discussion programs. The Jesus Seminar was founded in 1985 for the expressed purpose of deciding what Jesus really said and did. Its founder, Robert W. Funk, expressed his purpose in the first seminar: Those of us who work with that hypothetical middle [between creation and the end of all things] Jesus of Nazareth are hard pressed to concoct any form of coherence that will unite beginning, middle, and end in some grand new fiction that will meet all the requirements of narrative. To put the matter bluntly, we are having as much trouble with the middle the messiah as we are with the terminal points. What we need is a new fiction that takes as its starting point the central event in the Judeo-Christian drama and reconciles that middle with a new story that reaches beyond old beginnings and endings. In sum, we need a new narrative of Jesus, a new gospel, if you will, that places Jesus differently in the grand scheme, the epic story.

In Funk's new gospel, Jesus doesn't fare so well. At another time, Robert Funk said this about Jesus: We should give Jesus a demotion. It is no longer credible to think of Jesus as divine. Jesus' divinity goes together with the old theistic way of thinking about God. The plot early Christians invented for a divine redeemer figure is as archaic as the mythology in which it is framed. A Jesus who drops down out of heaven, performs some magical act that frees human beings from the power of sin, rises from the dead, and returns to heaven is simply no longer credible. The notion that he will return at the end of time and sit in cosmic judgment is equally incredible. We must find a new plot for a more credible Jesus.

(-- from http://www.markdroberts.com/htmfiles/resources/unmaskingthejesus.htm)

It might seem strange to you that I would title a sermon Jesus and Christianity, for Christianity exists only because of Jesus. Jesus, we rightly believe, is Christianity. But, in the context of our so-called modern world, the Jesus that is being lifted up today is one that is lifted out of Biblical, historical, orthodox Christianity. In a recent article, Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes of the conflict between Christianity and Jesusanity. Now, that was a new term to me, but it fits. Darrell Bock and Daniel Wallace apply the term in their book Dethroning Jesus, where they write that Jesusanity is a coined term for the alternative story about Jesus. Along with Dr. Mohler, these authors argue that popular culture is on a quest to unseat the Biblical Christ. One can readily see the validity of their accusations when superimposed over the pronouncements of the Jesus Seminar think-tank that I spoke of earlier.

In their alternative story, Jesus is reduced to a prophet or teacher of religious wisdom. He points the way to God and leads people into a journey with God, but those pursuing Jesusanity never confess Jesus as God. To do so would acknowledge an absolute truth in which Jesus is irreconcilable with other spiritualities. So in Jesusanity, the deity of Christ is denied. (http://www.albertmohler.com/blog.php)

In stark distinction to such deconstruction of Biblical truth and orthodox Christianity, Jesus declares his own divinity. He declares in John 10:30 that I and the Father are one. At his own trial before the Sanhedrin, the high priest put it before Jesus bluntly: Tell us if you are the Christ, the son of God. Just as bluntly, Jesus replied, Yes, it is as you say. (Matthew 26:63-64). In our text from Matthew 5, Jesus declared, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

No one else would dare make such a claim except for the Son of God. It is a claim that is completely impossible for any human to keep. Think of just a few of the tiny promises you have made to God over the course of your life. Have you kept them all? I havent. I have broken promises to God, and I have broken Gods commands. I am completely unqualified to fulfill Matthew 5:17. So are you. So is everyone else living or who has lived. Only Jesus fully human and fully divine has been able to make and fulfill this claim. We must, then, face the reality that there are only two choices facing us: either Jesus fulfilled his words, or he failed to fulfill them. If he failed to fulfill them, then he uttered a falsehood told a lie in which case he indeed is not divine, for God cannot lie. But if Jesus failed to fulfill his words, and is therefore a liar, then he cannot be a good prophet or teacher. He cannot be one who we should follow in our journey with God, for a liar will lead us astray. If Jesus is a liar, then we should turn on our backs on him and leave him be because he will do us not good. To deny the deity of Christ and then to prop him up as a good prophet or teacher, as the members of the Jesus Seminar and postmodern Jesusanitans do, is complete and utter folly.

The remaining choice is that Jesus fulfilled his words. If that is the case, then we must accept that Jesus not only claimed equality with the Father deity but that he was equal to the Father. In other words, Jesus is the Son of God, a term used in that period to describe the Savior. Did Jesus fulfill Matthew 5:17? Every New Testament witness says that Jesus fulfilled the Law. In fact, the only way that Jesus trial could proceed before the Sanhedrin was by their use of false witnesses. Otherwise, there was no basis for the trial, for Jesus never broke one Law of God. Since Jesus is the Son of God, meaning fully divine, then what does that mean to us?

For one thing, it means that there is no alternative story about Jesus. Jesus is Lord and Savior as the Bible presents him. Jesus is Lord and Savior as orthodox Christianity has confessed him over the centuries. Jesus is not a way to walk with God; he is the way to God. It is his blood that covers our sins, not a fanciful ideology of a good prophet or teacher.

It also means that since Matthew 5:17 is true, then Matthew 5:20 is likewise fulfilled, For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. Taken out of its proper Biblical context, this verse sounds like we are meant to enter the kingdom of heaven only through the path of works righteousness. Making this application, however, ignores the first point: the deity of Christ. Jesus demands that his followers be more righteous than the most pious people in his day. How do we meet such a demand, especially considering that Jesus retained his strongest rebukes for that same group whenever he pointed out their failures?

The only way available to us to achieve such a standard is to believe that Jesus fulfilled the Law and to also believe that Jesus suffered and died in our place because we broke the Law. Jesus was saying that his listeners needed a different kind of righteousness altogether, not just a more intense version of the Pharisees righteousness. The righteousness of the Christian, therefore, is love and obedience, not the Pharisees righteousness of legal compliance. Admittedly, these can often look the same, but they become quite divergent in the long run. The Pharisees attitudes frequently betrayed them in the presence of Jesus. The righteousness of the Christian, then, must come from what God does in us, not what we can do by ourselves; it must be God-centered, not self-centered; it must be based on reverence for God, not approval from people; and it must go beyond keeping the law to loving God who gave the law. The righteousness that Jesus calls for is in full keeping with the truth of Biblical testimony and the Biblically-derived orthodox doctrines of historical Christianity.

There is no alternative story about Jesus. There is no new narrative about Jesus. There is no difference between Jesus and Biblical Christianity as some are trying to claim. Jesusanity fits the contemporary mind and the contemporary mood, but it cannot save. Only Jesus can save, because only Jesus is the living Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior. Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

PO Box 515

170 W. Broadway

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

http://www.bhfirstbaptist.com

-- To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: abesermons-unsubscribe@welovegod.org