Sacrilege: Read an Excerpt

Here's a truth I want you to pause to consider for a moment: Jesus's ability to influence the hearts of man and woman, child and king, prostitute, peasant, and priest was greatly due to his sacrilegious ways of behaving, speaking, listening, loving, and living.

Rich outcasts would climb trees to see him, similar to the way glassy-eyed teenagers stare at LeBron James as he enters the arena. The poor, the hungry, the broken, and those left behind found hope in him the way young African Americans found hope in Jackie Robinson, Cassius Clay, Martin Luther King Jr., and President Barack Obama. Great leaders were afraid of him, but commoners felt safe to approach. The smartest of the day were challenged by his superior wit and wisdom, while the uneducated were promoted to the highest posts and chosen to represent him and share his message and life of good news.

Being Careful with Jesus

Writing a book about Jesus is not something to do haphazardly. While not much risk is involved in writing a poorly thought-out love song, you really don't want to create some goofy image of Jesus to fit your own whims or preferences. That's called idolatry, and it doesn't sit well with the real Jesus. You also don't want to project or infer too much beyond the biblical record, for that can lead people astray or even manipulate them into all sorts of trouble. I think of Ricky Bobby and Cal in Talladega Nights, sitting around the table processing their preference for Baby Jesus. Christians tend to prefer their own version of Jesus. If I say something like, "I see Jesus kinda like Lynyrd Skynyrd . . ." the theological police are going to ask for a few back-up texts, and I don't blame them.

Rest assured, I do not take this subject lightly. I know whatever I write about Jesus needs to match what the Bible says. Through the centuries others have written about Jesus as the payment for our sin, the sacrificial Lamb, Creator God, the judging King, holy man, prophet, heavenly Father—all good and right. My hope, though, is to present a biblical Jesus who models how to relate to normal, real people. How did he interact with men, women, and children? What can we learn from his example? And most importantly, how can we pattern our lives after his?

Hitting the Reset Button

Journey with me, then, back to the time of Christ. People were spiritual, just like today, and also confused, yes, just like today. The Jews had not heard from God through any prophets for more than three hundred years. In despair, they had settled back into systems of religion, the legalistic faith of the Old Testament law given to Moses. In a sense they had forgotten this huge, personal story that had unfolded between them and God, a story that was meant to bring blessing to the whole world, and now were just going through the motions of sin management and church (or synagogue, as they called it).

The non-Jewish subcultures of the Greeks and Romans believed in an impersonal force that hung in the clouds and somewhat directed human affairs. They called this higher power the Word or Logos.

In both cases, people held the view that God was distant. In the Jewish culture, they'd moved away from walking and talking in relationship with God into a system of rules and regulations. In Greek and Roman culture, they just saw God (or gods) as a distant power monger to be pleased and appeased.

It was this spiritually disoriented world that Jesus entered with a radical message and even more radical life. John writes, "So the Word became humanand made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness.And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son" (John 1:14 NLT).

The Message paraphrase says it this way: "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish."

And the NIV says it in the most literal way, "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."

Frankly, our world is just as spiritually disoriented as it was in the time of the first incarnation of Jesus. Just substitute "American Westernized Christianity" for "Jews who'd turned a relationship into rules" and our spiritual-but-not-religious population for the Greek and Roman philosophies, and everything old is here again. Incarnation means to "take on flesh." It's the most profound idea of the Christian faith—that the impersonal Word became personal, that theology and doctrine came in the form of fleshy humanity—and it was God's only way to cut through the bull of religion and nebulous spirituality so that we could get a handle on a truer image of God.

As I stated earlier, what you believe about who Jesus is will be the most important thing affecting who you become, what you do, and how much you experience the living God. As God incarnate becomes fleshy—"alive"—to you, you will likewise become more fleshy to the world.