If we’re honest, we have to say that it is difficult to get it right, when we try to walk a mile in Jesus’ sandals. Jesus was and is God in the flesh, and no one got it right, when they followed him during his earthly ministry. Why do we believe we have GOD right today? Who has imagined he is able to speak for God? Who is called to do that today? Certainly, as Christians we’ve been called to represent God today, and folks all over the world have been commissioned from the beginning to image God in the things they say and do. It’s who we are, and who we’ve been created to be, and Christianity, if we’ve got it right, should be the folks who show others how that is done. Nevertheless, that is a very fine line, separating who we are, and who God is. We may be like him, but we are not him. We may speak his words, once he has spoken, but we don’t speak for him about everything imaginable. Only he’s able to do that, and “that” includes stuff about his identity.
Let me be clear. Jesus, while simply telling us what the Father is like, and behaving as the Father behaves (John 1:18), that wasn’t offering us a simple prescription to follow. God is not a simple task to image in our own lives, let alone tell others how to do it. It gets complicated, and, if we try to simplify God, you know, like God for Idiots, that kind of thing, we get it wrong, coming out of the gate. Nevertheless, the modern Church seems to believe it has God figured out. We may not admit it, not even to ourselves, but the fact that we are so dogmatic is a shout out to the world that THIS (whatever this is) is GOD. That’s idolatry.
Perhaps, we’re only seeking to provide an answer for folks who try to put Jesus in a box. You now, cut him down to size, someone we could all believe in. Reduce him into someone not so GOD-like! Therefore, in reply we put forth a GOD-figure even Jesus would be proud of! (NOT) Well, being the opposite of the skeptic, doesn’t make what we say or do correct. If it isn’t true, it’s idolatry. The REAL Jesus, if we really consider the text that tells us about him, is much “larger, more disturbing, more urgent than we—than the church!—had ever imagined.”
Who are the real reductionists? …the skeptics? …or the Church? If Jesus is much larger and more disturbing a figure and more urgent an IMAGE of the true God, than we have believed and presented to the world, who, then, are the real reductionists? Think about it this way. We say that Jesus is King, and the kingdoms of this world are ruled by him (Revelation 11:15-18). What should that look like? What has the Church said it would look like after Jesus’ proverbial return, which many Christians assume is near?
The “picture” that is painted for us, isn’t it of a king, who conquers all the kingdoms of the world, a great general who leads his people from victory to victory, a king who will never die? Isn’t that exactly what the Jews of the first century expected (John 12:34)? Were they elated or were they disappointed in Jesus’ death? Where was the real victory? …in the eternal king? …or was it in the death of Christ? Jesus isn’t a simple figure we can easily understand and put in a box, saying “THERE! That’s the Jesus I know!” No! That’s idolatry!
Jesus is not a king, like other kings we know. The kings we know are a corruption of the King in the heavens. In the beginning, God was King, but his rule (his royalty) was rejected in order to embrace a king like the nations (1Samuel 8:5-7), and the Church has imagined Jesus would be a king like human kings we’ve come to know in history, except that he would rule in righteousness, which usually means he’d enforce the Ten Commandments. If that is what Jesus would do, why didn’t God do that before he set up Saul as king? Didn’t the Lord tell Samuel that the people rejected him as King, and wanted a king like the nations? How did God rule as King of Israel? Was he the Great Enforcer of the Law? What are we missing?
God created mankind with freewill, and government that infringes upon free moral agency is not the government of God. Jesus is not the King of that government. What did Jesus tell his disciples (John 13:15), and how did he say they should treat others? Didn’t he say that the princes among the gentiles exercise dominion and great authority over the people, but his followers would not behave in a similar manner, but the great among his followers would be the greater servants of the people (Matthew 20:25-27)? Jesus tells us that he has not come to be served, but to serve (Matthew 20:28). So, if “he is the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), shouldn’t we think of his role as King to be something entirely different from what we see in the world? Jesus is the quintessential King, the King all others should be like, but are not. He is Almighty, yes, but Almighty, because the freewill of man isn’t a problem under his authority!
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