Yesterday we blogged about the new Barna poll that found that 66% of Americans, including one-third of non-Christians, say they have made a “personal commitment to follow Jesus.”
Maybe I was too harsh in minimizing the significance of those words. The poll at least demonstrates that Jesus is a compelling figure, even for non-believers. His mercy, His wisdom, His actions, and above all His personality as presented in the Gospels are so appealing, hardly anyone criticizes Him.
Merely human founders of religions or belief systems–Muhammed, Buddha, Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche–are fair game for critics, but opponents of the Christian religion hesitate to disagree with Him. Instead, they try to co-opt Him to their way of thinking, claiming that He has been misinterpreted by the church.
Mark the Evangelist captures well the impression Jesus makes: “They were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes,” that is, merely human writers (Mark 1:22). This is because He really does have authority. He is God in the flesh.
This universally-beloved and respected figure is the God that Christians worship. We do not worship a philosophical abstraction nor a deity who looks down upon the world from on high, views of God that have little traction for people today. Rather, we believe that the Second Person of the Trinity, in the words of the Nicene Creed, “came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man.”
God became Incarnate as Jesus Christ precisely so that we could know God in His fullness:
“No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18).
“If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him” (John 14:7).
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
So why, when we Christians consider God and speak of God to non-believers, don’t we more explicitly relate Him to Jesus?
When I was a teenager, I felt the appeal of Jesus. But though I had attended church and Sunday school in my mainline Protestant church all my life, I had never so much as heard of the doctrine of the Incarnation. I first came across it when reading C. S. Lewis. He discusses it in Mere Christianity, culminating in his argument that a man who said what Jesus said about himself must either be a liar, a lunatic, or who He said He is; namely, the Son of God. “You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.”
Jesus is God? I found that entrancing. Exhilarating. That changed everything about how I viewed God. Why hadn’t I ever heard that before?
I had to talk about this to someone. I went to a youth minister, fresh out of seminary, that I felt connected to. God became flesh? He became one of us? He’s not just a being beyond the universe, but He became a human being? To save us? I was really excited.
The minister replied, “Well, we really don’t emphasize that anymore.”
Deflated, I searched elsewhere. I read more Lewis and was learning about “mere Christianity,” those teachings that, he said, all Christians have always believed. But I was having trouble finding it in the Christianity of the 1960s, even in the supposed Bible Belt that was Oklahoma where I grew up. I had some good friends who were Baptists, who prevailed upon me to go to their revivals and church camp. But I didn’t hear anything about the deity of Christ there either. I’m sure they and the preachers I was hearing believed in that as a doctrine, but they never said anything about it! Why not?
I knew Catholics believed it, but the priests I talked to and the masses I visited were all preoccupied with Vatican II and had the same vibe as the liberal Protestants I wanted to get away from.
After many years of twists and turns and growing up, my wife and I eventually became Lutherans.
Here at last, in this emphatically not ecumenical tradition, I finally found what Lewis described as “mere Christianity,” with Lutherans holding both to elements associated with the Catholics (sacraments, liturgy, the church year) and to elements associated with the Protestants (the Bible, the Gospel, preaching).
There was indeed more talk of the Incarnation. And then I read Luther, who taught that we dare not think about God apart from His incarnation in Jesus.
From Luther’s Commentary on Galatians (my bolds):
But true Christian theology, as I often warn you, does not present God to us in His majesty, as Moses and other teachings do, but Christ born of the Virgin as our Mediator and High Priest. Therefore when we are embattled against the Law, sin, and death in the presence of God, nothing is more dangerous than to stray into heaven with our idle speculations, there to investigate God in His incomprehensible power, wisdom, and majesty, to ask how He created the world and how He governs it. . . .
For as in His own nature God is immense, incomprehensible, and infinite, so to man’s nature He is intolerable. . . .Therefore if you want to be safe and out of danger to your conscience and your salvation, put a check on your speculative spirit. . Therefore begin where Christ began—in the Virgin’s womb, in the manger, and at His mother’s breasts. For this purpose He came down, was born, lived among men, suffered, was crucified, and died, so that in every possible way He might present Himself to our sight. He wanted us to fix the gaze of our hearts upon Himself and thus to prevent us from clambering into heaven and speculating about the Divine Majesty. . . .
Therefore when you consider the doctrine of justification and wonder how or where or in what condition to find a God who justifies or accepts sinners, then you must know that there is no other God than this Man Jesus Christ. Take hold of Him; cling to Him with all your heart, and spurn all speculation about the Divine Majesty; for whoever investigates the majesty of God will be consumed by His glory. . . . We must look at no other God than this incarnate and human God.
From Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians: Chapters 1–4, trans. Jaroslav Pelikan, Luther’s Works (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1963), 26: 28–29.
Let me quote myself, from that new chapter on Christology I added to the third edition of Spirituality of the Cross, which also goes into more detail about my spiritual pilgrimage:
For many people, God is, as Luther says, “intolerable.” They cannot tolerate God. They are afraid of Him as a monster or they despise Him as a weak fantasy. Usually, if you do not believe something exists—say, ghosts or UFOs—you pay them no mind. But many atheists are angry at the God they claim does not exist, expressing bitterness over His harsh morality and condemning Him for allowing all of the suffering in the world. To be sure, as Luther said, apart from Christ, God appears to be “angry and terrible.” But His incarnation in Jesus presents God in a completely different light: We see Him as gracious, forgiving, and saving. Far from looking down from a distance on a world of evil and suffering, God the Son enters it, taking the sins and griefs of the world into Himself. . . .
Luther emphasizes that the Incarnation must change our very conception of God: “There is no other God than this Man Jesus Christ,” than this “human God.”
Illustration: Head of Christ by Rembrandt – Objekt in der Onlinesammlung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin: 870659Fotograf: Christoph Schmidt, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=120373050
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