Is Your Jesus Strong And Kind? Is He Meek And Majestic?

Jesus tombstone carving image intended to imply that Jesus image should be carved not on stone but our hearts

To some he is the gentle humble one. To others he the mighty King who will ride on a horse to war as he returns to rule. Does your mental image of Jesus lean only one way or the other? What kind of Jesus are you praying to?

Sometimes we remake Jesus in our own image. But if we want Jesus to save us, we must make sure we are coming to the REAL Jesus, not someone we have made up.

If we think of Jesus as only kind we will emphasise that he loves and accepts everyone, which is of course true. But we may forget that whilst Jesus does love all of us exactly the way we are, he loves us too much to leave us that way. We may well forget his holiness and hatred of sin. As a result perhaps we will compromise with sin in our own lives, and teach others that following Jesus doesn’t really matter.

If we focus on only love and acceptance we will forget that it is definitely possible to love someone whilst still disagreeing with them. And through a lack of courage and strength we might start to believe that it is loving NOT to tell people the gospel and warn them of God’s call to all of us to turn to Jesus.

If we think of Jesus as only kind we may well forget Jesus told us to obey everything he has commanded us.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)

Perhaps if we focus only on his kindness, gentleness and compassion will we seek God as weak and ineffectual and unable to help us when we are suffering. Will we become more afraid than ever as we imagine that God is powerless to help us? I have even heard some people say that they believe when suffering happens God is as surprised about it as we are!

So as always some Christians swing to the other end of the pendulum and only think of Jesus as strong. Immediately we will likely lose any sense of his compassion and kindness towards the weak. This can lead to huge problems psychologically as we forget that Jesus is constitutionally drawn towards those who know they are weak. It can lead to Christians feeling a pressure to pretend they are perfect because if not they are afraid they will be rejected by God and others.

Thinking of Jesus as only strong undermines any efforts towards helping the weak, who some professing Christians believe should help themselves and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It is this focus on the need to emulate Jesus’ strength that has led some American Christians to be such strong supported of Donald Trump who they perceive as a “strong leader” who will fight back against those they believe want to lead us astray from God’s ways. The muscular form of Christianity advocated by these evangelicals risks opening the doorway even to abuse as without an emphasis on the kindness of Jesus, is it any wonder those who claim to be his followers might not treat people with kindness themselves? We will only learn to be compassionate ourselves if we understand how compassionate Jesus is.

If we focus on the strength of Jesus only we might become terrified of him, might even start to hate or resent him, questioning why he is denying us the things we want or need. We might think of him as a remote, alien figure in the sky who loves to punish us, and doesn’t really love us at all.

If we focus only on the strength of Jesus we risk communicating harshly in such a way the World will continue to believe Christians are hateful.

We must believe in the one true God who revealed himself in Jesus to be both STRONG and KIND, Holy and Compassionate.

This idea also came up in a series of posts I intend to get back to very soon on how we theologically handle suffering. I proposed a spectrum that covers different views on this matter one end of which focuses solely on his strength and the other solely on his kindness. I explained this as follows:

At one end of the spectrum, we find a God who is all-powerful (which theologians call omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), and is in control of everything that happens (sovereign), making Him, according to some, to be the author of suffering. At the other end, we see a God who is described as not having any control or power, with an emphasis on His compassion and love.

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As we shall see more as we explore this spectrum together in future posts if we stress only the kindness of Jesus we risk telling those who suffer that God is sympathetic to them but cannot help them. If we stress only the strength of Jesus we risk being glib with them and leaving them with huge questions about why this all powerful God seems content to leave them suffering.

There is a wonderful simple worship song called Jesus, strong and Kind. It will help us focus on and come to the real Jesus. They chorus goes: