For a Christian, it’s all about Jesus.

For the rest of the world, it’s actually also all about Jesus.

But there’s a difference.

D. W. Cleverley Ford was a British theologian and scholar in the mid-20th century. 

In “Preaching on the Crucifixion”, he perfectly describes the difference between the way the world and the church understand Jesus. He wrote:

“To present Jesus as primarily an example to us is devastating. If to be like Christ is to be the aim of my life, I give up the struggle in despair. Love my enemies? Never hit back when I am insulted? No despising of the incompetent, the ham-fisted and foolish? No complaining about privation or pain? Always ready with ‘a word in season’? What a hope! If Christ is simply my copybook then count me out.”

Do you catch what Ford is saying?

He rightly observes that the first human response to Jesus of Nazareth is to be intimidated by His demands for perfection combined with His accomplishment of the same.

Jesus sets an impossibly high standard, then achieves it.

Now first, we must presuppose that the Jesus we are dealing with is the Jesus of the Bible. 

There are some who are simply ignorant of Jesus. I’m not talking about them right now.

I’m saying that the world is filled with many people, Christians and otherwise, all of whom are familiar with the Jesus of the Bible.

And none of them can live up to His standards. Not one.

A Christian is someone who has been given faith in the reconciliation between that impossibly high standard and their failure to achieve it.

Everyone else looks at the impossibly high standard and says, like Cleverley Ford, “count me out.”

Low Jesus

One response to the Jesus of the Bible is to minimize the high standard He sets.

In the “sermon on the mount”, Jesus says, “everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment”. He also says, “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

The kicker, I suppose, is when He says that we should “be perfect” just like God in heaven!

It’s no wonder that people dismiss the high standards set by Jesus. They’re TOO HIGH.

Then, when Jesus tells His followers that “whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these”... what are we supposed to do with that?

Most likely all of those words will get dismissed entirely because they are simply too much for any human being to comprehend, let alone accomplish.

Once Jesus is diminished into little more than a teacher of love and acceptance and peace and good vibrations, He becomes manageable and palatable and believable and even attractive.

And He is no longer the Jesus of the Bible.

I suggest that the reason most people reduce Jesus in this way is because they only see Jesus as an example to be followed.

The real Jesus is much, much different than that.

High Jesus

Taken at His Word, Jesus is the Truth who rules all things.

Jesus fills the world with His presence and power.

In the words of Leonard Sweet, “Jesus is the life in the lifeblood, the living in the living water. He is the all in the all in all.” (The italics are Sweet’s)

The Heidelberg Catechism asks, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?”

I wish I could get enough time and attention from every person I meet to ask them this question and get their honest response.

The Heidelberg Catechism provides this answer: “That I belong, both body and soul and in life and in death, not to myself, but to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.”

Luther, in his Small Catechism, says something similar.

He writes, “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own…”

You could read that again in abbreviated form like this, “I believe that Jesus Christ… is my Lord, who has redeemed me… that I may be His own…”

“...that I may be His own…”

That, right there, is the difference between a diminished Jesus and the Jesus of the Bible, between low Jesus and high Jesus.

Christians derive our unique identity, not from commandments or religious services or just causes, but from our relationship with the Nazarene who redeemed us.

Christian faith is not commitment to a cause.

Christian faith is the conviction that, “I cannot by my own reason or strength…” do anything to please the God of the universe, but that instead Jesus Himself has taken full responsibility for my life - messy as it is - and through His suffering, death, and resurrection God is pleased with me!

Make sure you read that carefully. Yes, God is pleased with me, but only because Jesus has interposed Himself in a way that leaves me redeemed.

Your and My Jesus

I hope that Christians are having a lot of conversations about their faith with people who do not yet believe in Jesus as their redeemer.

If they aren’t, I imagine their guardian angels are bored silly!

However, Christians need to realize that the Jesus they are sharing may not be the Jesus their friend is hearing.

People who do not regularly participate in Christian worship think that worshiping Christians are following the example of Jesus… and they think that’s what worship is.

They think, for instance, that Holy Communion is like a commandment to be followed; as if it’s the performance of a ritual that “counts” as “good behavior” in God’s eyes.

But a sacrament isn’t an end in itself, it’s a means of communication between the living Jesus and the living believer; all of Christian worship is like that.

Communion is a particular moment during worship when the words of John 17 at the top of this article come to pass in the time and place occupied by the believer.

Every Christian is in full communion with Jesus, true God and true man.

Yes, that means we want to follow his lead, model our behavior after his, and reform our ways accordingly. Of course!

But beyond all of that (as if that impossibly high standard isn’t enough!) a Christian is someone who bears the very presence of Jesus into the world.

Since Jesus has taken full responsibility for me and my life, I now belong wholly to Him, to love and serve Him, and to seek the expansion of this holy communion to include whomever is within earshot of my voice.

That takes guts, people.

Or should we say that it takes a certain Spirit.

Yes. Let’s say it that way.

Think on these verses from the old Hymn “Savior, I Follow On”

Savior, I follow on,

Guided by Thee,

Seeing not yet the hand

That leadeth me.

Hushed be my heart and still,

Fear I no further ill,

Only to meet Thy will

My will shall be.

Often to Marah’s brink

Have I been brought;

Shrinking the cup to drink,

Help I have sought;

And with the prayer’s ascent

Jesus the branch hath rent,

Quickly relief hath sent,

Sweetening the draught.

Savior, I long to walk

Closer with Thee;

Led by Thy guiding hand,

Ever to be

Constantly near Thy side,

Quickened and purified,

Living for Him who died

Freely for me.