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JESUS TOUR QUESTIONS ARTICLES SERMONS SUBSCRIPTIONS ABOUT | ||
Groping for JesusIt is amazing to realize, even in today's post-Christian culture, how much Jesus remains in the public eye. Dallas Jenkins' The Chosen has grown from an under-the-radar phenomenon to an international sensation with three seasons available, a fourth season in the works, and seven seasons planned. Mel Gibson's 2004 box-office hit, The Passion of the Christ, will soon get a sequel, The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection, which may turn into two or even three movies. Filming begins in the spring. Even Martin Scorsese is said to be working on a movie based on Shusaku Endo's book, A Life of Jesus, which will also begin filming this year. And as spring approaches, we are guaranteed a round of older movies and documentaries on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, from re-airings of The Greatest Story Ever Told and other popular Jesus movies to His life story on Biography. People are getting a heavy dose of mankind's Savior in the media. But are we getting the truth? No. Some, like Pilate, might answer, "What is truth?" (John 18:38), skeptically implying either that truth is in the eye of the beholder or that it does not exist. This is where our postmodern, ultra-tolerant society has taken us. While most people clamor that they want to get to the truth or that they are searching for the truth, real truth-seekers are quite rare. Others are willing to make compromises along the way—predominantly with the prevailing cultural biases—but those who genuinely pursue the truth continue on their quest despite the costs and no matter where it leads. Over the past several decades, scholars have debated—sometimes heatedly—the "historical Jesus." Some have gone so far as to label Jesus as simply "an itinerant Jewish peasant," while others take varying positions from "Essene" to "Son of God." The real dividing line between scholars is their individual belief in the reliability of the Bible, particularly the New Testament. If they trust the biblical writers, they generally regard Him as a prophet, the Messiah, or even God in the flesh. However, if they feel the gospels are late-first-century propaganda to make Him seem something more than human, they consider Him to be an antiestablishment preacher, a Zealot martyr, some sort of Jewish mystic, or something altogether human. But the real Jesus is far too complex to label so narrowly. All of this is reminiscent of the three blind men trying to identify an elephant by touching only one of its body parts, and in the end, none of them gets it right! Jesus Himself says:
Most scholars will not avail themselves of the only authentic, accurate, and reliable truth about Jesus because they willfully reject His own testimony. Like the Pharisees, they say, "You bear witness of Yourself; Your witness is not true" (John 8:13), so they throw out the meat of the four gospels, relying instead upon what historians and archeologists have found out about Him from other sources. In terms of reliability, those sources are woefully inadequate compared to the richness of the biblical record. Jesus' reply to them is, "Even if I bear witness of Myself, My witness is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know [these things]. You judge according to the flesh" (verses 14-15). And there is the key to their problem: Their carnal minds do not allow them to consider anything beyond what their five senses and their earthbound logic can ascertain. To them, the Father's revelation of His Son in the gospel accounts cannot be trusted because they lack the ability to quantify it, experiment with it, or make any sense of it! In a word, they lack God's Holy Spirit. Paul writes in I Corinthians 2:11, 13-14:
In other words, a person cannot know and understand the truth about Jesus without the extra facility of mind provided by God's Spirit. To the carnal mind, He will always be an enigma, or at best, a one-dimensional stick figure. He will be a baby in a manger or the Nazarene in agony or a carpenter-turned-rabbi or a brilliant preacher or a kindly healer and miracle worker, but not all of them and more because the unaided human mind cannot grasp the depth and fullness of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Even with the Spirit of God guiding His elect into all truth (John 16:13), it takes a lifetime of walking by His side to get a true and somewhat complete picture of all He is. So, remember this the next time you see a "Jesus" movie or documentary: At best, it is only a pale shadow of the One who is all in all (Ephesians 1:23; Colossians 3:11). Richard T. Ritenbaugh |
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