I recently had a joyful encounter with a young woman who was filled with all sort of questions about her faith. She shared that according to her way of seeing things, God exists and wants her to be good, God is there for her if she needs anything, and, since she tries her best to be a good person, she will go to heaven when she dies. Yet she remarked, that when I preached, I frequently talk about Jesus Christ as if he is somehow essential to the faith. What’s up with that, she wondered. How does Christ relate to God and why does Christ matter to her spiritual life? Good questions and I thought I might share a bit of our conversation.
Well Skylar, I applaud your attentiveness to my sermons and perhaps you can nudge your Dad the next time he starts drifting off. But seriously, Jesus is essential in our faith and there is much more to all of this than a god who simply wants you to be good and get your ticket punched to go to heaven because of it. So I am glad you have come to me with your questions and I will do my best to help you to a richer understanding of what it is we folks in the Christian faith profess.
Let’s start with you first question about how does Christ relate to God. Simply put, Jesus is God in the flesh, and I know that might strike you as difficult, but our scriptures tell us that God became flesh to dwell with us and rescue us and all of creation from the decay caused by sin. You can read the opening passage of John’s gospel where he speaks about the Word of God that was with God and was God, creating all things and that the Word “became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” There is a passage in Paul’s letter to the Colossians that also says this, so when you get a chance, take your Bible out and read what he has to say in the 1st chapter about God being pleased to dwell with us in the flesh. That’s who Jesus is, Skylar, God in the same flesh and bones that you are made of. We also refer to Jesus as the second person of the Trinity, and while that is equally significant, it’s a discussion we can have after we get through the concerns you have now.
Jesus, as I said, came into the world to rescue and restore the world and you and I from the sinful and broken state we are all in. It was work that only God is capable of doing and God did so by choosing to become human to die for our sins: atonement. “At-One-Ment” where we are washed clean and reconciled with God.
We don’t earn our way into heaven. We can’t, plain and simple. We are welcomed into heaven through the grace of God’s sacrifice in Jesus and we are assured of a presence in heaven with God by having faith in this work of Jesus as God and human. And because it is by faith and faith alone that this happens, it is vital that we get the object of our faith correct. The incarnate Jesus– incarnate means in the flesh- died on the cross, shedding his blood, for the forgiveness of our sins.
As humans, we need Jesus and we need him really badly. Without Jesus, we have no hope because we would never be able to come into the presence of God – that get to heaven thing – if weren’t for the work of Christ on the cross. Jesus’ humanity is the key. After he rose from the dead on Easter morning, Jesus eventually ascend to that place we call heaven where we believe him to sit at the right hand of God. The critical component of this is that Jesus can sit, face to face with God as a human being and clear the way for you and I to also stand in front of God one day. He is the one we pray to and we can be assured that God hears our prayers because Jesus is there. The book of Hebrews would be another important book for you to read about this, but it tells us that Jesus did not enter a sanctuary made of human hands, but into the sanctuary of the real deal, heaven, and he appears in the presence of God on our behalf.
Jesus is essential because he makes all the difference in our lives. He is the source of our hope and gives us the ability to face an ugly world with full confidence that he is working, even now to make things right – to restore all of creation to the beauty of the Garden of Eden and the oneness that we humans had with God at the very beginning. Jesus inaugurated God’s kingdom and we are now part of that and as members of his kingdom, we may live yet in this world, but we are called to be God’s representatives, his ambassadors, bringing his truth and light everywhere we go and in everything we do. We call it the church, the body of Christ, and we are part of that body. Jesus was anointed as God’s messiah when he was baptized and he has now anointed us with the same divine oil through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the gift we received at Pentecost. It’s why we are called Christians – the anointed ones. We go out into the world, powered by his Spirit, doing what we can as servants of Christ’s body, to love our neighbors the way Christ loves us and to share his truth and the promise of eternal life to all that accept him in faith. It’s kingdom work and that is what our salvation is for and all about. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
A Prodigal's Periodical 