Knowing Jesus, and making Him known
I can remember many years ago being at Greenbelt (a Christian music festival). I must have been about 19. Nik and I got to know a large group of goths who went there every year. There must have been about 30 of us walking around, clad in black, causing very proper Christians to tut! Anyway, I remember a young girl, probably 14 or 15, called Mary. She brought her atheist boyfriend to me and said “convince him”. What a challenge!
We argued and debated long into the night. We covered redemption, freedom, justification, atonement, causality, arguments for God’s existence (everyone I could think of – I even used the proper names for them to sound extra convincing). We argued about science, suffering, judgemental Christians, freewill versus determinism – it was exhausting and at the end, he was no closer to Jesus! I felt pretty down about this, I used everything I had, except, I didn’t introduce him to Jesus, I tried to defend God and this religion thing. Jesus was actually what he was looking for, I gave him theology!
I sometimes still cringe when I remember that moment. I learnt an interesting lesson that night.
Two weekends ago, I met up with a fairly new friend for coffee. We chatted a bit and my friend asked about my faith – this time, I decided to introduce her to Jesus. I told her my story and how Jesus had changed my life. We’re now going to Alpha together next Tuesday. She wants to know more.
Sometimes, the message and person of Jesus gets lost in the structures of perceived Christianity. Real Christianity is about Him.
Explaining the doctrines and rules of Christianity, the established religion, can be really confusing and for many who are searching for hope in a broken existence, such explanations are actually unhelpful. Don’t mishear me here, I love theology and the details of Christian doctrine, the kids at my school frequently mention my love of such things is bordering on geeky! However, I am becoming more convinced that Jesus is the message of hope I have to share – he changed my life and that story is more interesting and more compelling to my friends than my views on the ontological argument for God’s existence!
This morning, I want to explore this idea of knowing Jesus and making Him known. Who was He? What difference does knowing Jesus make in our lives? How can we make Him known to others?
Bill Hybels tells a story in his book “how to be a contagious Christian” of a time he and his wife were put on the “evangelism hot spot”. He was on holiday with his wife and invited to a very nice boat party. They quickly realised they were the only Christians there and whilst explaining his profession (church pastor) he did not push his faith on to them. When leaving, foot half on, half off the boat, a guest says to him:
“Say Bill, before you leave can you answer a question? I’ve always wanted to ask a Christian what it means to be one. Could you tell all of us?" – the boat goes quiet and all turn, pina coladas in hand and wait for his reply.
“Religion,” he said “is spelled D-O, it’s about what you do to work and gain God’s favour. The problem is you can never be sure you’ve done enough. Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E. He lived the perfect life we could never live and He died on the cross to pay the penalty for the wrongs we’ve done. To become a real Christian is to humbly accept what He has done for us and put ourselves under Christ’s leadership. Then He adopts us into His family and begins to change us from the inside out.”
I like how he moves our attention from Religion to Jesus, from “do” to “done”. This is the true message of Christianity – the person of Jesus.
His summary of what Jesus has done for us is pretty heavy going, and to be honest, I’m not convinced he managed to say all of that off the top of his head, but I like how he says ‘Jesus did what we could never do for ourselves”. There is a sense there that we need Jesus, that knowing Him changes us.
I love reading the Gospel stories where Jesus is teaching His disciples. Those 12 men were so dramatically changed by knowing Jesus. One disciple, John, became a close friend to Jesus and it is part of his writings that I want to look at this morning. Not from his Gospel, but from a letter he wrote, probably to a church in Ephesus in about 85-90AD, about 50-55 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
The beginning of his letter speaks of Jesus as the Word of Life, Jesus as one sent from God and that fellowship with Him brings joy - That sounds intriguing and exciting - statements that we will unpack in a moment. It is written in a way that communicates John’s passionate joy at what Jesus did in his life – in just the first 5 verses we get the sense that “God is light and Jesus is the way”.
Let’s read the verses: 1 John is quite tricky to find. It’s towards the back of the New Testament after 2 Peter. We are reading 1 John chapter 1 verses 1-5.
1 John 1:1-5 (NIV)
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.
We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
John is delivering this message of “done in Jesus” and is sharing his joy at the effect Jesus had on the lives of people who believed in Him.
John is emphasising all he has seen and heard; he wants people to know what happened, that the message is true and that he would know, he was there!
John, typically believed to also be the author of the John’s Gospel and the book of Revelation, was one of Jesus’ closest friends, In John’s Gospel it is believed he is the “beloved disciple” that is mysteriously referred to throughout the stories of Jesus, in many stories, John is shown to be one of the “inner three” disciples (Peter, James and John) who get to see first hand so many amazing moments in Jesus’ ministry – the raising of Jairus’ daughter from the dead, the transfiguration when Jesus met with Moses and Elijah and the walk to Gethsemane. John is making it clear that he has known Jesus – not just met him, but known him and now towards the end of his life, John is passionately sharing what it means to follow Jesus, his point – It is done in Jesus.
John is highlighting what God has done in sending Jesus, His Son, and offering him up as a sacrifice for sin. Jesus is described as the ‘word of Life’ We get the sense that the “word of Life” – Jesus, is causing the darkness of this world to pass away. John was there, he saw it, he is passing on the message of hope to the church in Ephesus. Some of the people there had some incorrect ideas about who Jesus was and what he did. John is addressing the issue head on by testifying that Jesus, the Word of life, appeared to them.
There are two interesting assertions in this text:
1) Jesus has eternally existed with the Father
"From the beginning" means, Jesus was there when creation began. He is eternal. He had no beginning. He will have no ending. He is not part of creation. In the beginning he is the source of creation. All life comes from him.
In chapter 5: 11 John writes “God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son”
In John’s Gospel, he wrote
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (John 1:1-3)
The Jesus we follow is God. He has existed without beginning from all eternity – that’s quite a lot to get your head around, yet it is important because some people think He was just a moral or good man. John is saying He is much, much more than that.
2) Jesus is God Christ was made manifest in the flesh – God became human.
This is the point John is driving home. He’s saying “This Jesus, we saw him, we touched him, we knew him – he was God”
Verse 2 makes this plain: "The life was made manifest." That is, the eternal Christ became visible. He appeared on earth, he reveals God’s love for us by becoming human and allowing Himself to die as a perfect sacrifice.
This can be a stumbling block for some – if Jesus is more than just a man, if he is God then his words cannot be anything other than truth and therefore we must make a choice whether to believe them or not.
So to reflect for a moment on one of my aims this morning, who was Jesus? He was God, made flesh, on earth, He literally is the Good News that we need in our lives.
Carl Medearis is the author of a very interesting book called “Speaking of Jesus.” In it, he says this:
“The Gospel (meaning Good News) is not a what. It is not a how. The Gospel is a who. The Gospel is literally the good news of Jesus. Jesus is the Gospel.”
He goes on to say:
“The Gospel is not a debate or a list of things to believe. The gospel is a person. Jesus Christ is the gospel. He is the truth. He is the point. He embodies all of the salvation/redemption/forgiveness/freedom stuff Himself, and because He is a personality, He does not require doctrinal mastery to connect with an individual”
So, it’s all about Jesus. Not about us; we should reflect the heart of Jesus to people. Speak naturally of Him and what He has done for us. If you can’t discuss the deeper doctrines, that’s actually okay, just speak of Him. One of my favourite stories in Mark’s Gospel is when Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James and John and they see Moses and Elijah, 2 people who died many years before. Peter, in all his awe does not respond theologically by fully understanding what is happening instead, he asks if he should put up some tents. He went on to be one of the most influential Christian writers of all time. That always encourages me!
I was researching the reasons people give for not believing in God, amongst them were many that reflected people’s experience of Christianity:
- Christians care more about rules than people
- Christianity is about judgement
I found this fascinating because Jesus is the contradiction of each of these.
Rules, whilst beneficial, were not the focus of Jesus’ ministry – just take a look at the people he ate his dinner with – they were outcasts, tax collectors, the women he allowed to sit at his feet, their reputations were a little shaky, the people he healed on the Sabbath day when he ought to have been doing nothing. Jesus is about people. He brings light to those who have not managed to keep the rules.
Christianity as a religion may come across as judgemental, but take a look at the people Jesus chatted to at water wells – women living chaotic unhappy lives, the outcasts to whose houses he visited for dinner, the people he called to be his disciples. Jesus is about people. He brings light to those whom society judges unworthy.
Christianity as a ‘religion’ can sometimes be unattractive, however, as John points out – knowing Jesus is about joy. In 1 John, we see a disciple who is so excited by what he has seen and heard that he overflows with joy in the telling of it. Even in old age, he must have been an old man when he wrote this, his excitement at the Good news, the Gospel of Jesus overflows. Hear the verse again, from the Message translation:
1 John 1:1-5 (Message)
From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in - we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we're telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us.
We saw it, we heard it, and now we're telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Our motive for writing is simply We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!
This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there's not a trace of darkness in him.
'Our joy will be complete', 'your joy will double our joy' – whichever translation you read, the sense of excitement when someone hears and accepts the truth of the person of Jesus is evident.
If we’re honest do those of us who follow Jesus have some friends we look at and think – easy convert, and others – waaaay too complicated – They would have to change so much to become a Christian; how would they stop their immoral living and become a better person?!?! Their behaviour must change if they are to belong, right?
However, maybe ‘behaving’ like a Christian is not the first step, maybe that changing step is part of an on-going relationship with Jesus. People need to know Jesus and have a relationship with Him, not a relationship with a rule book.
When Nik and I were dating, we attended a charismatic catholic prayer group. It was full of lots of different types of Christians, but run by passionate, God loving Catholics. We went along and loved the worship, it blew us away. When the talk began, we (Nik and my friends) all left and went outside, usually for a smoke – we weren’t that enamoured by the talky bit! I assumed that they would disapprove of us because we smoked and were goths.
However, rather than try to bring me to God by challenging me to act more holy, some of the leaders came outside and sat with us. They chatted to us, they made us feel welcome. They did what Jesus would do. It still makes me smile to realise that one of my friends went on to find Jesus in a powerful way and now publishes worship songs that are sung all over the world. Those leaders shared the Good News of Jesus with us that we could be included. If they had made me behave like them first, I would never have gone back!
They shared the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus- this is exactly what the author John does in his letter.
Sharing our faith can feel awkward at times, sort of clunky. A bit shoe-horned into a conversation, sometimes we might feel guilty if we don’t justify Jesus and defend this thing called Christianity. People may question our motives – do we just want more people in the building? I love John’s motivation for sharing the Good News of Jesus – that those who receive it will experience fellowship with God, and joy. This is what Christianity is about.
Sharing our faith is much easier when we realise that it’s not about us having all the answers or having to defend and justify “Christianity”.
It’s about being real about the man who changes lives. This Jesus is attractive, this Jesus is not religion – he’s relational, he’s life changing, he’s hope for the future, he’s the light in a dark world, he’s deep, deep joy that sustains through life’s uncertainties, he’s fun!
Want to know more? How about Alpha? How about exploring Jesus more?
Those of us who know Jesus have an opportunity to share this joy with those around us – now that’s exciting!
If you don’t know this Jesus who changes lives, brings hope to darkness, gives purpose and offers forgiveness, then why not give Him a chance today?
Maggie Gee, 09/10/2011