“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people” (Matt 4:23).
Why didn’t Jesus go straight to the cross? What was the point in his hanging around for 30 years before even starting his ministry? What was he doing in that time? Because the Apostles’ Creed jumps from “born of the Virgin” to “suffered under Pontius Pilate” we “might be tempted to draw the false inference that what happened in between these two terminal events in the life of Jesus is unimportant for Christian belief.”1 The truth is this period is very important for Christian faith and practice, so I want to look at two things Jesus did during his mortal life.
The first and most important thing Jesus did in his earthly life was to live perfectly. Jesus literally dared his challengers to prove he had ever sinned (John 8:46). That would be insane for any other human being to do. We know, even if we don’t like to admit, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But Jesus never sinned. The apostles maintain that he was without sin (eg, 1Pet 2:22, 2Cor 5:21, Heb 4:15), something that was never claimed for Abraham, Moses, David, or any other revered figure.
This means that Jesus always did what he was supposed to and never did what he wasn’t supposed to. He loved God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. He loved his neighbor as himself. He never lied or stole, never lusted or hated. He fulfilled every letter of the Law of Moses, and he also lived out the spirit of it. Had he sinned, he would not have been an acceptable sacrifice (cf, 1Pet 1:19).
But he was certainly tempted to sin. We have the story of the wilderness temptation by Satan (eg, Matt 4:1-11), but he was tempted more than that. Hebrews says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (4:15).
People may say, “But he didn’t sin, so he doesn’t really understand temptation.” CS Lewis replies, “Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means....”2
Another common response is that Jesus didn’t sin only because he had the power of God. But he “emptied himself.” He had given up independent usage of his divine nature. So how did he refrain from sinning? By depending on the Holy Spirit. Jesus resisted temptation via the same means that is available to all Christians. The God who said, “Be holy for I am holy” (1Pet 1:16), showed us how it’s done. He desires that we follow his example, knowing that God “will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it” (1Cor 10:13). Of course, we will fail often. He knows we are wedded to a fallen nature; he “remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). The same grace that took him to the cross is with us when we sin now: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9), but he desires to see us growing in holiness for his name’s sake.
The second thing I want to discuss about Jesus’ earthly life was his proclaiming, and living, the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. The “Kingdom of God” is, very briefly, God setting everything right — including a broken creation, rebellious humans, and a world in which wickedness rules. Jesus came to say and to show that God was bringing an end to all of it. NT Wright says Jesus “was not a teacher who also healed; he was a prophet of the kingdom, first enacting and then explaining that kingdom. ... When Jesus announced the kingdom, the stories he told functioned like dramatic plays in search of actors.”3 Our Lord wants us to be those actors. He wants us to live out those teachings about the Kingdom of God.
“But everything hasn’t been put right!” True. But the process has started. It will be completed. We live in what theologians call the “already but not yet.” The kingdom is already here, but it is not what it will be. Right now Christ wants to show the world what the kingdom looks like through his Church. So he taught us to forgive, to take care of the poor, to defend the weak, and to speak the truth in love to a world that does not know God.
One day the process will be complete. Everything will be made new. “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Rev 21:4). But in that day, it will be too late for the lost to join in the Kingdom of God. So we are to live it out now, to show them what could be and to call them to repentance and to trust in Jesus.
For more on Christ and the Kingdom of God, see NT Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus.
1 I. Howard Marshall, A Guide to Christian Beliefs
2 CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
3 NT Wright, The Challenge of Jesus
Part of Christianity 101
No comments:
Post a Comment