CHRIST'S UNIQUE CLAIMS

Some of the most obvious considerations, when thinking about the supremacy of Christ, are the claims He made about Himself.  Other teachers said they were telling the truth.  Christ said, "I ... am the truth" (John 14:6).  Other teachers asked people to follow their teachings.  Christ asked people to follow Him.  More than twenty times in the Gospels Jesus spoke about the need to follow Him.  The other great leaders taught people to worship God… Jesus accepted the worship of Thomas (John 20:28).  Jesus made statements that clearly implied that He was God, and some of His hearers were so scandalized by these remarks that twice they wanted to stone Him for blasphemy (John 8:54-59; 10:30, 31).

Seven "I am" statements appear in John's Gospel, showing that Christ claimed to be the source of eternal life.  He said, "I am the bread of life" (6:35); "I am the light of the world" (8:12); "I am the gate" (10:7, 9); "I am the good shepherd" (10:11); "I am the resurrection and the life" (11:25); "I am the way and the truth and the life" (14:6); "I am the true vine" (15:1).  Leon Morris reminds us that "in each case the Greek form of 'I am' is emphatic."  Each saying includes the personal pronoun "I."  "There is no need to include the personal pronoun unless emphasis is required."  Morris concludes that to Jewish ears, the words I am "aroused associations of the divine."  These and other statements of Christ make us agree with J. T. Seamands' statement that the uniqueness of Christ "is not something we concede to Christ, but something He confronts us with." 

-- Ajith Fernando in “The Christian's Attitude Toward World Religions” 

#6382

THE PERSON OF JESUS

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind… The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  (John 1:1-4, 14 NIV)

So what is the main thing?

Jesus.

But it’s not Jesus as an idea or an ideal or a set of teachings or miracles or sayings or doctrine or theology or paradigm or practices or habits or disciplines or T-shirts. Just Jesus. The beautiful person of Jesus. I’m not talking about Jesus without the Father and the Spirit, but without Jesus, we have no idea of the Father or the Spirit. Yes, I'm talking about New Testament Jesus; Jesus of Nazareth -- the Word from before the beginning of the Bible, who is its inspiration and author, its fire and fulfillment, and to whom every page points -- the Word made flesh. Jesus, our God.

Courage is not the absence of fear, discouragement, or despair. Courage is the presence of Jesus. Jesus is all the courage of God in a human person. The main thing, my friends, is the right here, right now presence of the person of Jesus. It is not so much about practicing the presence. It is about presencing the person of Jesus.

Father, thank You for sending us Jesus, without whom we would have no idea of You. And thank You for sending us the Spirit, who makes Jesus known to us and brings Him closer than our breath. How thankful we are to know you. Come, Holy Spirit, and help us to lift our hearts to Jesus, to set our minds on Jesus, to fix our eyes on Jesus, to focus our gaze on Jesus. He is our courage, and to be with Him is to be encouraged. Orient all the things into the thing of knowing Jesus, of presencing the person of Jesus -- for our good, for others’ gain, for Your glory. In Jesus’s name, amen. 

-- Excerpted from “Wake-Up Call” with J. D. Walt

#6312

ONLY THROUGH FAITH

“My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.”  (Galatians 2:20-21 NLT)

Trying to get right with God by keeping a bunch of religious rules is a formula for frustration and failure. First problem, whose rules? Such requirements vary from religion to religion, person to person, and generation to generation. What if you’re working from the wrong list? Second problem, how do we define what it mean to “keep” those rules? Do we have to follow them perfectly? Or are we allowed a reasonable number of mistakes and missteps? And what is considered “reasonable”? The gospel of Christ eliminates all this confusion by stating categorically that no one but Christ is good enough. Only through faith in Him, only by relying on His efforts on our behalf, do we qualify for heaven.

Father, we are not made right with You by human efforts, and we do not stay right with You by works. Remaining “in Your good graces” means counting on Christ alone to live in us. Amen. 

– Max Lucado in “Life Lessons: Galatians – Free in Christ”

#5124

THE NARROW WAY

Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).

Was Jesus narrow-minded? Well, in a sense He was. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount He said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).

If Jesus was right about this, then He was being appropriately narrow-minded. He was being like parents who are narrow enough to insist that their children walk on the sidewalk and not in the street, or a doctor who limits his prescriptions to medicine that will actually help people rather than [a placebo that would do nothing or a poison that would harm them], or the airline pilot who restricts his landing options to that narrow path to life called a runway, rather than trying to put the airplane down in a cornfield.

You see, we really want narrow approaches -- as long as they are based on truth and point us in the direction that’s best for us.

Jesus gave us every reason to believe He was telling the truth, and that He loves us enough to lead us toward forgiveness, life and an eternity with Him.

As the apostle Peter said: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).  C. S. Lewis put it this way: "One road leads home and a thousand roads lead into the wilderness." 

-- Lee Strobel in “The Case for Christianity Answer Book”

#5049

JESUS ONLY IS OUR MESSAGE

“And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”  (1 Corinthians 2:1-2 NIV)
 
Jesus only is our message,
Jesus all our theme shall be;
We will lift up Jesus ever,
Jesus only will we see.
 
Jesus only is our Savior,
All our guilt He bore away,
He, our righteousness forever,
All our strength from day to day.
 
Jesus is our Sanctifier,
Saving us from self and sin,
And with all His Spirit’s fullness,
Filling all our hearts within.
 
Jesus only is our Healer,
All our sicknesses He bare,
And His risen life and fullness,
All His members still may share.
 
Jesus only is our Power,
He the gift of Pentecost;
Jesus, breathe Thy pow’r upon us,
Fill us with the Holy Ghost.
 
And for Jesus we are waiting,
List’ning for the Advent Call;
But ’twill still be Jesus only,
Jesus ever, all in all.
         
-- Albert Benjamin Simpson (1843-1919)

#5044