Let Me Tell You About The Jesus That I Have Come To Know And Love
Let Me Tell You About The Jesus That I Have Come To Know And Love
The Jesus that I serve is called “the Lord” in the New Testament. The reason that He is was given that title is because it was also HE who was called “the Lord” in the Old Testament. He who later became incarnate as Jesus was the one whom the Father had appointed to be His interface with the physical universe and its inhabitants from the very beginning. The Father appointed HIM to be our Creator:
“ALL things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even ONE thing came into being THAT has come into being. In Him was life (“ζωή” /”zōē”), and the life was the Light of mankind” (John 1:3-4). John’s way of expressing that indicates that HE never “came into being,” because ALL that has “come INTO being” came into being through HIM! Poor Arius should have meditated upon that passage more carefully than he did!
Even the nuclear power contained within the entire physical universe, with its countless star-filled galaxies, was derived from HIS unlimited power!
The Apostle Paul provides a wonderful summary about what He allowed to happen to himself when He became one of us:
“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but EMPTIED [“ἐκένωσεν”, “ekenōsen”]Himself by taking the form of a slave and being born in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:5-11).
Even in His “emptied” form, He could defy gravity (Matthew 14:22ff), make matter take new forms (John 2:1ff, 6:10ff), and force the winds to obey Him (Matthew 8:26). As an incarnated human, He manifested the same kind of power over the nature that HE had created when He had caused “the waters [to be] a wall to them on their right hand and on their left” in the exodus of Israel from Egypt! (Exodus 14:22).
And, just as Paul also testified above, after He was raised from death into a glorified body, “Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘ALL authority has been given to Me in heaven AND on earth’” (Matthew 28:18). All of the powers, the forces, the energies in the entire universe are now subject to HIM, in His glorified INCARNATE form.
So, let’s have no talk about Him having the limitations of a “first century Jew”! No matter what had occurred in that “emptying,” Jesus was fully aware that He had come from Heaven itself: “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven” (John 3:13). “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me” (John 6:38).
“Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM!’” (John 8:57). In this one statement, Jesus presents you and I with only one of two possible options: He is to either be utterly rejected for committing the ultimate blasphemy, by claiming to be the same one who had appeared to Moses at that “burning bush” (Exodus 3:1-13), OR, He is to be One whom you worship in the same way as the Father who sent Him. Furthermore, that claim also means – for one who accepts His veiled identity – that He is to be unconditionally obeyed in His New Testament utterances with the same “fear and trembling” that He was to be in the former covenant! The Jesus who spelled out that first covenant “law” to Moses was quite clear in the way that He spelled it out. It is both suicidal and insane to imagine that He spoke any less clearly when spelling out what His apostles, Paul and James called His “law of Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:21, Galatians 6:2, James 6:2).
Therefore, the Jesus that I serve never used the hyperbolic “poetic exaggeration” that is so often and casually attributed to Him even by so-called “Bible believers!” And if Jesus spoke with the same frightening clarity that He did with Moses, it is no wonder that Paul commands us to, “work out your own salvation with fear AND TREMBLING!” (Philippians 2:12), because it means that we are not permitted to treat His “Sermon on the Mount” as if its language was made of some kind of “rubber” that can be stretched into something other than what it clearly says:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you to NOT resist an evil person. But WHOEVER slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak ALSO. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away” (Matthew 5:38-42). Jesus and His apostles modeled HOW those commands were to be obeyed, and none of them were cowardly and passive in the presence of evil! Therefore, those commands are to be obeyed carefully, in the way that He and His apostles modeled them!
So, as His disciple, Jesus expects me to pray very regularly, “Lord, I pledge myself to not resist an evil person in the way that you and your converted and Spirit-filled modeled that command.” And then, when He provides the opportunity to “put my money where my mouth is” – which He certainly will! – I am to trust and fear Him enough to discover how I can minister to that “evil person” instead of punishing or fighting with them! He knows that we need to have His indwelling Pentecostal Spirit TRAIN us how to succeed in living out that non-violent, gentle, and good-willed way of life. So, if – as Peter did with Malchus (Luke 22:47-49, John 18:10-11, Matthew 26:52) – if we fail, we will need to let Him pierce us to the heart in the way that He did Peter for another failure (John 21:15ff), and restore us so that we may succeed in the NEXT opportunity He provides to “put our money where our mouth is”!
It is THAT kind of determination and THAT kind of submission to Him as “LORD” that is the BIBLICAL meaning of “discipleship”!
It was Lord Jesus who caused His Spirit-inspired literature of the New Covenant to be positionally ordered for us in the way that we now take for granted. They are positionally ordered in the same order in which His first disciples experienced their life with Him: They were first enlightened, shocked, and stretched by His teachings, demands, and promises in the Gospels. Then they shared in the same inner merging with the powerful Pentecostal Spirit that He had experienced when He was immersed on our behalf (Matthew 3:13-17); and they then perpetuated His own ministry to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey EVERYTHING I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19). And never, ever forget that the ministerial directions they gave and the problems they addressed in the subsequent Epistles (Romans through Jude) were given to disciples who had also ALREADY been exposed and immersed in the very same gospel contents and the same experiential immersion in the Pentecostal Spirit that they had known! All of those Christians being addressed in those Epistles were people who had already embraced the contents of the Sermon on the Mount in the same literal way that they had done AND who had experienced the same Pentecostal outpouring and “filling” that was described in the examples given in Acts 2 (the original 120 apostles and disciples) , 8 (the Samaritans discipled by Phillip), 10 (the Centurian Cornelius and household ministered by Peter), and 19 (the Ephesian disciples encountered by Paul). ALL of them were committed to embracing His demanding way of life, and ALL of them were Pentecostal!
In summary, His original disciples simply surrendered to His authority over them without conditions and without qualifications: that is why they called Him “Master.” And HE took over their training: sprinkling His teachings with work assignments, with challenging conversations, with life-changing conflicts and natural events. He was a combination of teacher, therapist, and supernatural drill instructor! And then, when they were ready, He returned to His Father in order to breathe out upon them and into them – spirit, soul, AND body – the very same Spirit that Had come upon Him and into Him when He was baptized, transforming them from human beings to super-naturalized human beings. And they then took over His shepherding work of doing for their new disciples what He had done for them!
The real Jesus, the Biblical Jesus, did not merely train His disciples to be obedient followers; He trained them – and will train us – to be supernaturally empowered followers! Do you think He was only exercising “poetic hyperbole” when He challenged those consecrated disciples:
“They need not go away; YOU give them something to eat” (Matthew 4:16; that “multiplication of the loaves and fish”).
“And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, ‘How did the fig tree wither away so soon?’ So Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not ONLY do what was done to the fig tree, but also if YOU say to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ it WILL be done. And whatever things YOU ask in prayer, believing, you will receive’” (Matthew 21:20-22). He who demands what seems impossible from us, also promises what seems unbelievable TO us, IF we place ourselves under His guidance, submission, and consecration in the same childlike way and degree in which they did.
And as we can expect for ourselves, even those future apostles had to learn to trust and obey His promises within a context of periodic failures. Think, for example, of their humiliation when that “epileptic” boy’s father brought his son to them: “So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him” (Matthew 17:16). They had to learn that their faith to supernaturally cast out some spirits was not sufficient for others: “However, THIS kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting” (17:21).
Yet, periodic failures notwithstanding, when we become determined to honor His COMMANDS in that childlike and literal way, then something “magic” starts to take place within us: we start to find ourselves able to expect and experience Him to fulfill His supernatural PROMISES in the same childlike way!
The Inventor and Engineer of gravity and nuclear energy, who is also Moses’s “I AM” also told them: “… for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and NOTHING will be impossible for you” (17:20). Is that “poetic hyperbole,” or is it an ironclad promise from someone who designed and successfully engineered every single cell and organ within the most complicate machine in the known universe – your own physical body‽
You will perhaps have noticed that the “you” that Jesus used in those passages quoted above was always in the PLURAL. He was not raising up “John Wayne” individualized workers of His promises, but creating a community of disciples who were very tightly and permanently knit together, out of whose corporate bond with Him the same mighty power that flowed from Him individually could flow from them corporately. That is why when He later raised up congregations through them, He always raised up TEAMS of leaders to rule over them (e.g., Acts 14:23, James 5:14). Among other reasons for doing that would be so that their supernatural power did not go to their heads when Satan started his seductive and flattering whispering into their ears! Therefore you should now see the correlation between our willingness to knit our egos, our decisions, and our possessions together with other disciples, and HIS willingness to entrust us with His heavenly and powerful promises!
This is the Jesus who has been fashioning me for over sixty-five years, starting at age 19 in 1960. In March of 1941, it was Jesus who somehow “breathed” me into a human body. But my parents did not know Him or love Him, and they did not teach me to know and love Him, not in the way that His holy mother Mary knew and loved Him. We went to church every Sunday, and yet somehow even THEY did not teach me to know or love Him. I did memorize a lot of stuff about Him. I also memorized the Pledge of Allegiance and the Boy Scout Law. And America and the Boy Scouts meant much more to me than He did. Jesus was just someone who was “UP there” with God in some vague and unchallenging way. I am convinced that it is the Christian Churches who are the chief obstacles against God’s desire to reveal the Jesus whose life-changing teachings, and counter-culture church society are so clearly described within the pages of the New Testament: it is occasionally done by them through outright twisting, but more often by having tamed Him and His doctrines, commands, and promises down to what can be achieved and “enjoyed” by organizations and individuals who just have no desire to undergo the cultural and personal crucifixion and resurrection that are “joined at the hip” to the real Jesus and HIS version of that “Good News”!
But Jesus STARTED to introduce Himself to me when I was 18 and a cadet at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, NY. Our Protestant Chaplain, Chaplain Danielson, was the first person I had ever known who seemed personally serious about God and Jesus. I started going to chapel rather regularly; but that did not get in the way of also regularly reading the “skin magazines” that we were kept supplied with from various sources! Everyone else I had known who was a “Christian” seemed to be able to mix their religion with various aspects of the “real world,” so I do not remember feeling any guilt about my particular version of that “mixture.”
He did not start calling me “out of” this mixed world in some sense until I was out at sea. The Academy assigns cadets to about four different ships during their second year. It is an intense year of both on-the-job training and completing the “sea project” from the Academy. Before learning the need to leave this fallen world, I guess I had to be shown what was IN this fallen world, and He sure gave me a crash course in “World 101” during that year; I saw:
- The crude and profane culture of shipboard crews, many of whom never got further away from their docked ship than the closest bar or brothel;
- Cultural cynicism and a promiscuity in Europe that I had never known;
- Crushing poverty in Haiti, and in the heretofore “Belgian” Congo, in black South Africa, and in Portuguese Mozambique;
- Violence and murderous hate in the Congo, whose native population had declared a bloody civil war upon their cruel white Belgian masters – and where the other cadet and I were almost murdered with machetes;
- The continuing cruel racial segregation in Dutch-ruled South Africa – known as “apartheid.”
Jesus seemed to decide that I had to be turned into a serious THINKING human being before beginning to reveal Himself to me as someone I deeply needed! Perhaps He also thought that it would be easier for me to learn what I needed to be delivered from “out there” before He could make me understand what I needed to be delivered from “in here” – within ME!
I won’t tell any more of my story. I just mentioned this much to encourage you that even though it is a wonderful advantage to grow up under the influence of loving, disciplined, Pentecostally Spirit-experienced parents and Churches, God is marvelously adept at dealing with that “rocky soil” that receives His seed so unfruitfully initially, but later needs to discover that his rocky heart has to be crushed back into a soil that CAN come to maturity and bear the good fruit of His seed!
“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such WERE some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus AND by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
It may take a “sodomite,” “thief,” “drunkard,” or church-attending-hater-of-his-stepfather “Christian” – as I eventually discovered that I was – it may take them somewhat longer to start bearing His Spirit’s fruit than it took for those original devout and law-disciplined Jews who became His disciples. But our God raises the physically AND spiritually dead, and delights to be able to become Father to prodigal sons! Hallelujah!!!
If I have been describing YOUR Jesus also, then I would very much like to meet you and get to know you!
Reed Merino, MDiv.
ReedMerino.com
“Blueprint for a Revolution: Building Upon ALL of the New Testament”
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