Who is Jesus? Do not guess because a miss may be a mile.
Two men were sitting on a park bench enjoying a conversation. While discussing the life going on around them, the taller one asked the other if he knew a man named Dave Brown. The shorter one looked up and said, “Dave Brown? Well, I sure do! Great guy and I’ve known him for years. How do you know him?”
“Same here,” said the tall man. “Known him for years. And yeah, great guy. Can’t say that about most attorneys, but I can about him.”
“Wait,” said the shorter man. “Dave Brown is not an attorney. He’s retired from the power company. He’s a tall man, like you, right?”
“Hah, you got that all wrong. Dave’s not tall and I just came from his office. I’m talking about the Dave Brown from Atlanta.”
“Oh,” said the shorter man. “Wrong Dave. I was thinking of someone else entirely. Same name though.”
In this situation, both knew different people named Dave Brown. These things happen frequently. But what if the question was changed to “Do you know Jesus?” If they both describe a Jesus differently from the other, they can both be wrong, but they can’t both be right. Only one can be right. Is it possible to create and worship a false Jesus?
Asking “who is Jesus” is a critical question each member of humanity ought to ask. In fact, the way we answer it may well be the most important question we have ever fielded. If a question as simple as that may/might/maybe have eternal consequences, it is crazy not to ask it. A. W. Tozer once said that “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” While C. S. Lewis correctly pointed out the most important thing is what God thinks of us, Tozer’s statement is no less profound.
But what is truly crazy is creating our own Christ, untethered to sound doctrine. Tozer followed up on his prior statement by saying that “We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.” When that image of God becomes less and less true, some form of apostacy and idolatry is inevitable. It is remarkably easy to do. And doing so is quite dangerous.
Ask a person who Jesus is, and the answers are all over the place. According to a 2020 survey by Newsweek Magazine, 52% of Americans say Jesus is not God but was a great teacher. That is not much of a compliment; my history teacher in high school was also a great teacher. But he would be the first to say that he was no Jesus. Believing that Christ was only a great teacher is not Christianity. Plus, if Jesus was not God, he sure pulled a fast one on those people who walked with him and knew him best. They were slaughtered because they believed he was God. But after two thousand years, why do those Americans think they know better? They don’t.
In fact, if they are right, Jesus was either a fraudulent liar or he was insane. Those are our only choices. Simply put, if Jesus wasn’t God but if instead, he was just a persuasive teacher, then he was nothing short of an awful human being, responsible for the continuing deaths of millions of his followers. Those surveyed did not think their beliefs through. The possibility is high that they either do not much care or that they do not want the morality of Christ to apply to them. Just guessing.
Thinking nice, poorly thought-out sentiments of Jesus is not enough. It never has been. Remember, even the demons believe.
You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. James 2:19 (NLT)
And demons also came out of many, crying out and saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of God!” And He, rebuking them, did not allow them to speak, for they knew that He was the Christ. Luke 4:41 (NKJV)
Apparently, most Americans believe far less in Christ than demons do. Except for their abject hatred of Jesus, demons are quite orthodox in their beliefs.
But what of those who do believe the gospel but who are wrong in what they believe about the character of Christ? For instance, people have told me that Jesus does not judge people. Others say there is no hell. Others believe Jesus was wrong to believe in Old Testament stories. Others say Jesus condoned slavery. One “pastor” recently called Jesus a racist for how he interacted with the woman at the well.
The answer is tricky. But we know that there is a place where the falsehoods about the Jesus we believe amount to such a level of falsity that we truly do not know the real Christ. When that happens, we just believe in another man-made idol. And idols cannot save.
I suspect that no one maintains a perfect understanding of Jesus. The repentant thief on the cross clearly had no time to develop a solid systematic theology of God. Being a Hebrew, he probably had some childhood knowledge of the scriptures, but based on what we know of him, he was, at least recently before his crucifixion, busy being pirate-class evil. But assuming we have the time and ability, we are urged to get to know Christ precisely to make sure we know who he is. In Romans 12:2 we are called to “…not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
It is scripture only that renews our minds from our worldly thoughts and our mistaken beliefs of Christ. The problem is not new. The author of Hebrews had to admonish his readers for being lazy and stagnating in their knowledge and love for Christ.
“Concerning him we have much to say, and it is difficult to explain, since you have become poor listeners. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the actual words of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unacquainted with the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to distinguish between good and evil.” Hebrew 5:11-14 (NASB)
In Defectors, Kel the epicyon (giant dog), was much like the thief and before the final battle, he had to stay and learn more. Likewise, the Wolf Folk all believed that Jesus required their warrior style good works for salvation. In Kaiyo, Goliath had no understanding of the grace of Christ until he learned from Gracie. In Raphael, Annag and her son, Haydar, were called to Christ and all they knew was that Christ was wonderfully good. In Defectors, even a pack of killer wolves decided to leave their murderous life to follow Christ and learn more about him.
The problem is with those that learn little of Christ either on purpose or just through a lack of trying. Their understandings are based on a foundation of assumptions marred by personal preference and the influences of the world.
For instance, there are people who believe that they do not sin or that they are “good enough.” In this they are truly wrong, and some are, unfortunately, unwilling to consider anything to the contrary. A simple reading of scripture would help them to know better. Among a host of other passages, Romans says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” [Romans 3:23 (NKJV)] and “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [NKJV]. 1 John 1:10 (NIV) says to that “If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.”
But are those who believe such things wrong to such a degree that they are not saved?
Because of biblical illiteracy, we know that they cannot effectively understand the problem with sin, nor can they tell good from evil, nor will they know what the will of God is. But as for their salvation, that is not knowable. But if Jesus came to save the sinners, what need do they have for Jesus?
Moreover, they have made him to be a liar. For most of these people our hope is that they have just not thought this through yet, but that they will.
In the meantime, we hope that God’s grace will be sufficient. But there is no doubt that wrong beliefs are unnecessarily dangerous.
When beliefs collide, salvation, or at least the quality of it, may be affected. Few consider Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons as Christians because what they believe about Christ falls well out of orthodoxy. But what about the Christian who finds the stories in the Old Testament to be unbelievable? For instance, many have difficulty believing the story of Jonah despite biblical evidence that Jesus did indeed believe the story of Jonah. That is harder and it probably represents a lot of people who call themselves orthodox Christians. But the inescapable conclusion is either that scripture is wrong, that Jesus is a liar or that Jesus is just mistaken when he referred to Jonah in Matthew 12:40. But the real, holy, and divine Jesus cannot be a wrong or lying Jesus.
As for trusting scripture, many secular and scholarly studies affirm the general reliability of scripture to be true to the originals. But reliability is not necessarily believability. Fortunately, both Christ and Paul affirmed believability. In addition to other passages, Jesus said, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” John 5:46 (NASB)
Paul, understanding the inevitable questions about scripture, affirmed the believability of scripture by writing that “All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness;” 2 Timothy 3:16 (NASB)
If one cannot believe in the reliability of scripture or if one imagines false attributes about Christ, then the tendency is to make their Jesus a false idol created out of personal beliefs. Ignoring the obviousness of those conclusions, especially in the presence of (generally) easy access to scripture is not, and will not, be an excuse on the day of judgment.
So how should we live? At a minimum, we must start preparing ourselves for our savior by taking steps to know who Jesus is and thus renewing our minds. Eternity is at stake. Christ already knows all about us and he loves us still. Should we not try to learn who he is and learn to deny ourselves for him? From our worldly distractions and/or from our willful disbelief comes self-deceit and the enemy’s deceit rampaging through the world. Those are powerful forces, and both serve to separate us, to some degree, from the love of Christ.
And as for the self-made false idols we make through our false beliefs about the nature and character of Christ, such idols are no better than golden calves sitting on the shelf.