Who is the Real Jesus?

The following article is a sermon excerpt from Tim Keller's sermon "Who is the Real Jesus?"
Enjoy!

“Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?" And Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me." (Matthew 11:2-6)


...you have to make sure you do not try to understand yourself before you understand Him ... Because over the years I have talked to many people who are trying to find out whether Jesus is real. Lots of people explore: Is Jesus real? Is Christianity for me?

And almost always, virtually always they go about it differently, because John the Baptist has a problem, He has a big problem. He is in prison. He is about to be killed. His life is hanging by a thread and yet when he goes to Jesus Christ he says nothing about his problem at all. He doesn’t say, “If you’re the One get me out of here. Then I will know.

Instead he says, “Are you the one?” he is utterly different than the thief (remember there were two thieves on the cross on both sides) and the first thief, the scornful thief (we call him in history. The one thief looked at Jesus Christ and said, “If you are the One, get us out of here, then we will know.” See it’s very simple. In other words, “prove you are the one by solving my problem.”

And over the years virtually everybody I have ever seen who comes to Jesus and approaches this question and wants to sort of look into Christianity, they always have a problem-centered approach to Jesus. They want to know whether Jesus is going to give me the power and support to live the way I want to live. Let me give you four common examples. Someone says:

1) I am thinking about becoming a Christian, or I am thinking about Christianity and want to know whether it is true, but I am struggling. I want to be a doctor and I don’t whether I will make it through med-school. Will Jesus help me get through med-school? Or

2) I am struggling because I have a bad marriage and am thinking of getting a divorce. What is the Christian view on divorce? Will I be supported?

3) I have a problem with self-esteem. I have a problem with guilt. I have been in a lot of abusive relationships. If I come to Jesus, will he make me fell good about myself?

4) I am gay, and I want to know that if when I come to Christianity, will I be supported or will I be condemned?

What is Jesus answer to those four questions? They are actually all the same. You know what his answer is? Not yes, not no. He says that they are the wrong first question because the reason the thief was wrong and John was right. The reason the thief says I want to know what you are going to do about my life before I give myself to you.

I want to know whether you are the messiah by the way in which you support me. In other words, the thief says, if you let me live the way I know I should live then I know you are the one … and John the Baptist just says, “Are you the one?”

And the reason that John is right and the thief is wrong, is not because John is more spiritual, but because he is more sensible. And that is this. The thief, and everybody who asks one of those four questions assumes they already know how their life should be lived, who they really are, and how the world out to go before they know whether he is the Author of life …

Whether He is the One your heart was built for. How in the world can you assume that you know who you are and what you need before you even know if you were created or were an accident? How can you know who you are and what you were made for before you know whether you can communicate with and know the creator of the universe?

John would never, ever say I know I need to be out of prison. Therefore, are you the one? Spring me. You know what John says? He is saying, if I am on my own of course I need to get out of prison, I mean that is the only way I will be happy. But if you’re the One whatever you ask of me will be a tiny thing compared to what you will give me.

Whatever sacrifice you ask of me will be nothing compared to the glory that will be mine. Whatever you decide is right for me will be consummately wise, utterly practical, perfectly right. John is not such a fool as to say how can I know what is right for me and wrong for me before I know whether this guy is the creator of the universe and the Lord of my life?

Let’s not be spiritual, lets’ be sensible. If Jesus is who He says he is, then you are someone utterly different than who you think you are now. And if he is not who He says he is, he can’t help you a bit. It makes no sense to say, if you are who you say you are, will you let me live my life the way I know I should live? It makes no sense at all.

Listen, one of the reasons why a lot of people have been searching for Jesus and have been inquiring about Jesus and have not got any answers, and they are still in doubt and still in confusion, is because if you think about it, the thief’s question is not a question, it’s an order.

It’s a threat. Look, when you come to Jesus with conditions when you come and say well I would be interested in believing in you, I would like to be a Christian maybe, but I want to know, will you spring me, will you help me, will you do this. In other words, I do not want to know if you want something different for me.

You are not asking for information, you are giving an order. Yeah, I will have a relationship with you as long as you do what I know needs to be done. And yet that makes no sense at all. Do you see? The reason a lot of people say I have been searching for Jesus but haven’t got many answers is … asking Him questions but not getting any answers, but you know what, the reason you are not getting any answers is because you are not really asking him a question.

You’re not asking for information. If you come with conditions then you don’t really want to know who he is. You don’t want to know. You’re not open. John’s question shows us you have to start by saying “Are you the One” and that is where everything starts because before I know that I can’t know anything else. “Are you the one?” it begins there.

Once I know that it will change my perspective on everything else. It will change my perspective on prison, it will change my perspective on marriage, it will change my perspective on sex, it will change my perspective on being a doctor. Everything will be changed. How in the world can I ask him a question with an assumption before I know the answer to the thing on which everything else hinges?

No, no, no. You come with conditions; you don’t really want to know. The first thing John shows us is that you cannot possibly understand yourself before you understand Him. You won’t be able to understand self before you understand him and therefore you mustn’t come with any conditions.

The Rebellion of Nudity and the Meaning of Clothing

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By John Piper April 24, 2008

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The first consequence of Adam’s and Eve’s sin mentioned in Genesis 3:7 is that “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”

Suddenly they are self-conscious about their bodies. Before their rebellion against God, there was no shame. “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25). Now there is shame. Why?

There is no reason to think that it’s because they suddenly became ugly. Their beauty wasn’t the focus in Genesis 2:25, and their ugliness is not the focus here in Genesis 3:7. Why then the shame? Because the foundation of covenant-keeping love collapsed. And with it the sweet, all-trusting security of marriage disappeared forever.

The foundation of covenant-keeping love between a man and a woman is the unbroken covenant between them and God—God governing them for their good and they enjoying him in that security and relying on him. When they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that covenant was broken and the foundation of their own covenant-keeping collapsed.

They experienced this immediately in the corruption of their own covenant love for each other. It happened in two ways. Both relate to the experience of shame. In the first case, the one viewing my nakedness is no longer trustworthy, so I am afraid I will be shamed. In the second, I myself am no longer at peace with God, but I feel guilty and defiled and unworthy—I deserve to be shamed.

In the first case, I am self-conscious of my body, and I feel vulnerable to shame because I know Eve has chosen to be independent from God. She has made herself central in the place of God. She is essentially now a selfish person. From this day forward, she will put herself first. She is no longer a servant. So she is not safe. And I feel vulnerable around her, because she is very likely to put me down for her own sake. So suddenly my nakedness is precarious. I don’t trust her any more to love me with pure covenant-keeping love. That’s one source of my shame.

The other source is that Adam himself, not just his spouse, has broken covenant with God. If she is rebellious and selfish, and therefore unsafe, so am I. But the way I experience it in myself is that I feel defiled and guilty and unworthy. That’s, in fact, what I am. Before the Fall, what was and what ought to have been were the same. But now, what is and what ought to be are not the same.

I ought to be humbly and gladly submissive to God. But I am not. This huge gap between what I am and what I ought to be colors everything about me—including how I feel about my body. So my wife might be the safest person in the world, but now my own sense of guilt and unworthiness makes me feel vulnerable. The simple, open nakedness of innocence now feels inconsistent with the guilty person that I am. I feel ashamed.

So the shame of nakedness arises from two sources, and both of them are owing to the collapse of the foundation of covenant love in our relationship with God. One is that Eve is no longer reliable to cherish me; she has become selfish and I feel vulnerable that she will put me down for her own selfish ends. The other is that I already know that I am guilty myself, and the nakedness of innocence contradicts my unworthiness—I am ashamed of it.

Genesis 3:7 says that they tried to cope with this new situation by making clothing: “They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Adam’s and Eve’s effort to clothe themselves was a sinful effort to conceal what had really happened. They tried to hide from God (Genesis 3:8). Their nakedness felt too revealing and too vulnerable. So they tried to close the gap between what they were and what they ought to be by covering what is, and presenting themselves in a new way.

So what does it mean that God clothed them with animal skins? Was he confirming their hypocrisy? Was he aiding and abetting their pretense? If they were naked and shame-free before the Fall, and if they put on clothes to minimize their shame after the Fall, then what is God doing by clothing them even better than they can clothe themselves? I think the answer is that he is giving a negative message and a positive message.

Negatively, he is saying, You are not what you were and you are not what you ought to be. The chasm between what you are and what you ought to be is huge. Covering yourself with clothing is a right response to this—not to conceal it, but to confess it. Henceforth, you shall wear clothing, not to conceal that you are not what you should be, but to confess that you are not what you should be.

One practical implication of this is that public nudity today is not a return to innocence but rebellion against moral reality. God ordains clothes to witness to the glory we have lost, and it is added rebellion to throw them off.

And for those who rebel in the other direction and make clothes themselves a means of power and prestige and attention getting, God’s answer is not a return to nudity but a return to simplicity (1 Timothy 2:9-10; 1 Peter 3:4-5). Clothes are not meant to make people think about what is under them. Clothes are meant to direct attention to what is not under them: merciful hands that serve others in the name of Christ, beautiful feet that carry the gospel where it is needed, and the brightness of a face that has beheld the glory of Jesus.

Now we have already crossed over to the more positive meaning of clothing that God had in his mind when he clothed Adam and Eve with animal skins. This was not only a witness to the glory we lost and a confession that we are not what we should be, but it is also a testimony that God himself would one day make us what we should be. God rejected their own self-clothing. Then he did it himself. He showed mercy with superior clothing.

Together with the other hopeful signs in the context (like the defeat of the serpent in Genesis 3:15), God’s mercy points to the day when he will solve the problem of our shame decisively and permanently. He will do it with the blood of his own Son (as there apparently was blood shed in the killing of the animals of the skins). And he will do it with the clothing of righteousness and the radiance of his glory (Galatians 3:27; Philippians 3:21).

Which means that our clothes are a witness both to our past and present failure and to our future glory. They testify to the chasm between what we are and what we should be. And they testify to God’s merciful intention to bridge that chasm through Jesus Christ and his death for our sins.

Young, Restless, Reformed. A review from a pumped-up Calvinist.

So I am reading this book and trying my best to try and put it down. Reading stories how people my age are swinging back to the reformed faith is exciting. I remember in college feeling like I was the only one that was a Calvinist. Now I am reading the ones that I was fighting between the years of 1997-2000 have been "born-again" in the reformed delivery room. They are finally hearing something with some meat.

I know that some of you reading this may get a little offended by the following statements: but those in their teens, 20's & 30's are flat-out sick of the church that preaches how to be moral. How to have a good marriage in 5 easy steps; a topical sermon (& pathetic one at that) on sex; a sprinkle of Scripture here and there; and finally a sermon that is 12-15 minutes long, is just not that good. It just doesn't grip us. These budding Calvinists see that Scripture has a lot more to offer... let me further that statement; God has a lot more to offer!
This book just re-energized my beliefs that true hope really comes from biblical theology that is reformed. It is the only way to approach Scripture. It is the only theology that puts God high on the throne and man at the foot of the cross.

And then my grandmother died. The book was put down for a few days as we buried that lovely saint of our Lord Jesus Christ. The beautiful lady (grandma) that taught me so much of what Christ-centered, the Sovereignty of God, and how gorgeous the Scriptures can be... had died. Why? Why had she died? Sin. And if she could communicate to us today she would say, "I was ordained to die on April 24th, 2008." She would also say that she was chosen to be one of Christ's sheep before the foundations of the world. She loved reformed theology and preached the truth until sin had killed her body. You see this grand theology can rejoice that my grandmother was predestined to eternal life while in the same breath affirm she was predestined to die of cancer. To me... the reformed faith brings great comfort. To know that her whole life was in the grip of an almighty hand, both good and bad, is extremely comforting. God is sovereign... GOD is Sovereign... GOD IS SOVEREIGN!

So this book just pushed me into laughter at the stories that were told, it also pushed me into adrenaline as stories of that are reaching so many by Calvinistic soteriology (theology of salvation). It also pushed me in awe of our God. Story after story of broken people lead to the Lord with God-centered, Christ-centered, and Spirit-centered teaching is inspiring.

The journalist, Collin Hansen took 2 years of traveling throughout the country interviewing pockets of Calvinistic theology that is rumbling like a soon-to-be California earthquake. It is ready to explode and I can't wait for our church to be apart of it. Hansen goes to Yale (it used to be a hot-bed for rich biblical theology) to Minneapolis with John Piper (you NEED to read his stuff) to Gaithersburg, Maryland where charismatics are becoming reformed! There are even pockets of hip-hop/rap theology that are beat-boxin to John Calvin.

I read of an account where a pastor in a large non-denominational church in California developed reformed convictions. His youth began asking to read Jonathan Edwards (a reformed giant during the 1st Great Awakening) and John Calvin (not the inventor of Calvinism... umm the inventor is God, but one who systematized it so brilliantly). This gave me chills as I remember one of our youth asking, "Can we study about limited atonement?" (Limited Atonement is the 3rd point in the 5 points of Calvinism) This movement is not a movement like ripped-jeans from Hollister that will soon be replaced, but a budding revival. This is what I am praying for anyway. This reformed movement can simply fade like a worn ball-cap, but I am very confident it may very well be the tip of an iceberg. Wouldn't that be amazing?

So I finished the books minutes before I started typing and I want to encourage you to snag this book. But before you do, you might want to grab some reformed theology. See what in the world we are talking about here. You might have no idea what reformed/Calvinistic/Augustinian theology is... and that's ok. What is not ok, is if that understanding remains static. I would be happy to help you get your hands on some solid books.

Reformed theology will give you a God you could never have imagined. A God that is so grand and awesome you will stand up in awe of His glory and also want to bow before His majesty. Make no bones about it... we serve an awesome God. Wouldn't it be incredible if we actually knew and understood how awesome He really is?
Young, Restless, Reformed is a must read. A+

Two Cheers for the Resurgence of Calvinism in Evangelicalism: A Wesleyan-Arminian Perspective

Below is an article by an Arminian (one who rejects the claims of Calvinism) and the positive remarks he makes regarding the resurgence of reformed theology. I have only put half of the article on here. If you would like to read the rest click here
ENJOY!

The rise of what is popularly termed “Calvinism” or “Reformed theology” among younger evangelicals is well known. Here are a few observations from a sympathetic (albeit quite unconvinced) observer.

I. Two Cheers

The first cheer: These “New Calvinists” care about theology. They really care. A lot. They understand that doctrine matters for the life of the soul – and for the life of the church. They read voraciously, they discuss passionately, and they write prolifically. They understand that there are important existential and pastoral implications, and they want to see a “pattern of sound doctrine” become deeply ingrained in their personal, familial, and ecclesial lives.

They have a strong commitment to the authority of Scripture, and they want to know God as he reveals himself – and not as we might like him to be. They take seriously, and defend energetically, such doctrines as substitutionary atonement and the classic Protestant account of justification. Moreover, (to understate things drastically) they care about the doctrine of divine sovereignty. Ours is a context in which these doctrines are considered unimportant – ours is also a context in which these doctrines sometimes are charged with being sub-biblical and even non-Christian. What’s not to like about seeing so many people care so much about theology? And what’s not to appreciate about seeing so many people completely committed to worshiping God as he graciously reveals himself to us?

These New Calvinists care about theology. A lot. More importantly, though, they care about God. They exhibit passion for God – they want to know his greatness and revel in his grace. Theology for them is anything but a parlor game; nor is it only a means to some supposedly greater end (as in: “well, people in our churches are dissatisfied with their level of understanding, so let’s market more depth”). Theology is important because it is all about God: knowing, worshiping, glorifying, and enjoying him.

This brings me to my second cheer: these New Calvinists care about holiness. To know God is to know that God is holy. The New Calvinists get that, and they want their lives to be in step with him. They are anything but content with a soteriology that reduces redemption to a cosmic I-pass or “get out of hell free” card. No, they know that God is holy, and they know that to walk with the Holy One is to be transformed. Thus they know that the doctrine of sanctification matters, and they pursue holiness vigorously. Some of them offer testimonies in which they describe their “discovery of divine sovereignty” in language similar to the way some Christians in the Wesleyan tradition refer to a “second definite work of grace” or “second crisis experience.” And all of this for good reason: they read the Puritans and (especially) Edwards. They know that holiness matters. They get it. And I, for one, appreciate it.