C is for Christ

He lives! 

Christ came to bring deliverance, freedom, life abundant.  He claims to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6)  That’s difficult to grasp and can’t be completely understood, but it is worth taking the time to consider because if it is true, if He is who He claims to be, God incarnate, then what you do with Christ makes all the difference in your world. 

So let your eyes gaze upon Jesus.  I used to wonder what it meant to keep your eyes on the Lord.  I mean, isn’t being a good Christian about believing Jesus died for my sins and rose again to give me eternal life and then living the good moral life set forth in the Bible.  However, the longer I live the committed Christian life, the better I come to understand how its all about keeping my eyes on Christ.

Jesus Christ is central to the Christian faith.  Unlike other religions, Christianity can’t be separated from its founder, Jesus Christ.  Who He is and what you do with Jesus is what makes Christianity what it is.  You can’t take Christ out of Christianity and still have Christianity.  If you take other founders out of their religions, leaving only with their teachings, their religions could still function.  They are separate from what they taught.  Christ is integral to what He taught.  For the Christian, if Jesus isn’t who He says He was, the religion falls apart.  One could still live according to some of the moral principles He taught.  In fact a lot of people do just that without embracing Christ for who He claimed to be.  That isn’t Christianity though.  Christianity demands confronting Christ.

You see, as C.S. Lewis and other renowned thinkers have put it, Jesus was either liar, lunatic, or the real deal, God incarnate.  He can’t be just a good teacher, just a prophet, just a great guy.  He doesn’t leave that option open to us.  He claimed to be God.  He claimed to be the answer to man’s sin problem.  He made claims that don’t leave those other titles as possibilities.  What would you say to someone who claimed to be God if he wasn’t?   You see if Jesus wasn’t God, as He claimed to be, he was either deluded, or He knew He wasn’t God and He aimed to delude. 

As I spend time reading my Bible, praying, meditating on what I read, considering divergent thoughts and analysis, and conversing with skeptics, questioners, and those who have studied this in depth, as I consider the evidence for and against each of these propositions, deluded, deluder, truth, I am convinced of Jesus Christ’s authenticity as the Son of God.  His claims best fit the evidence and reality.  Christianity is not blind faith, but reasoned faith, yet faith none the less.  We can’t prove who Jesus Christ is, but we can, if we examine the evidence carefully, come to a reasoned conclusion to feed a confident faith.

Yes, Jesus was a great teacher.  He was a prophet and a good man.  He fulfilled many roles.  However, Jesus is so much more.  He was and is the Christ.  And if that is the case, does it make reasonable sense to ignore Him or treat Him as just one choice among many?  He doesn’t leave us that option either.  If His words are true and He says there is only one way to find the way to eternal life, shouldn’t we pay attention?  If He is God incarnate, then He has the answers to life’s big questions and other answers are just wrong.  If you have a disease that will kill you, you want the right medicine.  The wrong medicine won’t solve your problem.  Neither will the wrong belief solve a problem for which only Christ is the solution.

“Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession; He was faithful to [the Father] who appointed Him, as Moses also was in all His house.  For He has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by just so much as the builder of the house has more honor than the house. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.  Now Moses was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later; but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house—whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.”                                Hebrews 3:1-6  

If Jesus Christ is who He says He is, and the evidence certainly points in that direction, can you afford not to consider Him and what He had to say?  Consider Jesus Christ.  Even better, discover the delight:  the deliverance, the freedom, the life-abundant in knowing Him.

…“fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2