Friday, August 5, 2011

John the Baptist: A Lesson in Political Correctness

As I opened my eSword to research for this series I was slightly shocked by what I found. See, my plan is to chronologically catalog the teachings of Jesus in short, bite-sized portions, and so you can imagine my surprise when I opened to what I mistakenly assumed were His first recorded words as an adult and found that they addressed the very class of religious people which started the original discussion in the first place!

Unfortunately, I had mistaken the words of John the Baptist for Jesus' words (I guess I wasn't looking for the red!) What I thought was the very first address from Jesus, as He began His short earthly ministry, was directed at religious hypocrisy; specifically the Sadducees and Pharisees, who were quite good at living pristine, pious lives outwardly while completely missing the point inwardly.

I'm not going to attempt a full commentary here or even quote the passages, but please read them on your own for a better understanding of my write-up. The events of what I though was Jesus' first public address can be found in Matthew 3:7-10 and Luke 3:7-14 (just click them). I just want to briefly boil down the situation in question and present the essence of what John meant to teach through the encounter. That goes for all future entries addressing the teachings of Jesus as well. But first a quick observation.


The first thing I think anyone will notice when reading this passage is the perceived harshness and severity of John's message to the religious masses. In contrast to the lovable, cuddly "Buddy Christ" found in modern pop-culture who just wants to hug everyone and doesn't want anyone to be offended, the guy who seems to be everyone's "homeboy", the real Jesus wasn't afraid to offend, which we will explore in a future installment. But as we see here, neither was John. PC was not in his vocabulary. It's almost as if John meant to alienate some...


So, the emphasis here is that of warning. John brought to the attention of the religious folk that there is a coming judgment, and that unless there was a serious change that they would be facing it in the not-too-distant future. The change wasn't necessarily an outward one, although it would show on the outside. John told them to "produce fruit consistent with repentance". This fruit would later be elaborated on by Paul. It is called LOVE.

These religious people were counting on their Jewish heritage, their blood relation to the patriarch, Abraham. Like a sledgehammer applied to a watermelon (thank you, Ghallagher, for the imagery), John demolished that dependence and brought to light the brutal truth that their relation to Abraham meant absolutely nothing, in terms of securing a right standing before God and escaping His wrath. That and 30 pieces of silver could buy you a slave, a potter's field, or the life of a Messiah...


John went on to say that the ax was already laid at the root. We're going to skip the national and eschatological ramifications of this for the moment and simply tackle the personal application:


Religious people, beware.

The fruit of the Spirit, which is consistent with repentance, is love. Love manifests itself in the form of joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. If these are not apparent in your life, though you attend church 7 days a week, hand out Gospel tracts everywhere you go, tithe 80%, support missionaries in the 3rd World, or even organize children's theater productions, you are not in that place of right-standing before God that you think you are.

In closing, it is important to clarify that right-standing with God does not come from having love and patience and joy and peace. According to the Bible love, which shows itself in all of the aforementioned ways, emanates from the Spirit within. That is not to say that someone without the Spirit cannot love, or even have all of its manifestations in spades... I guess the bottom line is best summed up by John, from His 1st epistle:

If you do not love you do not know God, because God is Love.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is Marc
Could it be that perhapse there is a little more to it than outwardly obvious? I mean if it is possible for those without the spirit to bear the fruit of salvation and from their relationship with Jesus, as I feel mine is, could it be that God is more concerned with the fruit you bear than if you believe, belong to the right religeon and such? I mean if I were God that is all I would be concerned with.

James said...

Marc, if you don't mind I am going to copy the conversation from Facebook to here, just to streamline the conversation.

James said...

Bobby said:

Not saying that it is or isn't, but wouldn't it blow the mind of Christianity to find that those who are saved are those who live the things Jesus taught rather than those who profess to do so? I wonder how many Christians would play the character of Jonah who was mad at God for not destroying Ninevah...if they found that God didn't care what you thought about him, so long as you lived a life that served others. Just a thought...

-and-

But don't get me wrong...we will get into what he taught. I'm not just implying that everyone is "saved".

James said...

Marc, I would agree that there is definitely more to it than current evangelical theology has apprehended. Obviously, I am a church-going Christian, so I am further in the direction of orthodoxy than you may be… but the fact remains that I cannot and do not accept everything theologians and councils throughout the centuries have settled on, which makes me closer to you than the average Christian. For example, I am not a believer in "namism."

Namism is what we call people who rigidly (and heartlessly) hold to the belief that someone must hear the name of Jesus to be saved. We talked about this briefly the other day. Now, I still believe the Christian Gospel, so I don't believe that a devout Muslim, following the teachings of Muhammad to a T, gets to be saved because he is sincere. I chose Islam purposefully. See, according to the Qur'an fighting and killing is necessary for a devout Muslim (Surah 2:191, 2:193, 2:216, 4:89, 8:39, 9:5, et al). It doesn't make sense that someone is saved for murdering when in other religions you are damned for the same action. This is also a subject for a different time I guess…

My point was that namism, which is almost universally believed within evangelicalism, is not necessarily a biblical concept. This isn't necessarily because people understand it completely and accept it, but more because they are uneducated about it and fall in with the crowd. Ignorance and apathy are the main intellectual crimes, in my opinion, on every side of the religious and philosophical debate. Not knowing and not caring to know.

I really wish I could download this entire book called "Eternity In Their Hearts" into your brains so that we could be tracking together on my thought processes. But the basic idea is that people are saved the same way from the start of history until the end. The Name of Jesus, the way I understand it, is not a necessary ingredient, although it is still only through His sacrifice that people can be saved. I'll leave that topic for another time as well.

Each of the issues we touch on here is worthy of years of study and discussion, so I have to stop trying to hit every one.

As far as what you two are proposing, maybe not proposing but nonchalantly mentioning :P I think that there's enough in the Bible about repentance and faith in God as a prerequisite to salvation for me to rule out salvation by works. Plus, salvation by works is what every other religion teaches, and it’s incredibly sloppy, soteriologically speaking. I mean, how much must you love, give, care, remain patient, etc., before you can have assurance that you are in? So, I guess I'll just finish this comment with a couple of questions:

Bobby, how much would you have to serve others in order to secure God's favor? What if you just have that disposition where you enjoy helping others? Salvation would be much easier for you than for someone else who doesn't kill people or rob banks, but who finds serving others difficult. On top of that, this is vague path to follow to be saved. It would be almost like most of the people saved would still have no idea why.

Marc, while I like the sound of Bobby's, I am much more inclined to be swayed by your scenario, but again, this is an extremely vague way to be saved. I like the initial thought of it, and your idea as well Bobby. They are attractive to me at first, but it occurs to me that in both of these situations it would be a lot harder to be saved, and salvation would be much less common, than in my understanding, which is also not entirely in line with current evangelical understanding (I'll talk to you guys by private message concerning my views on salvation if you wish).

So, while I don't believe that someone must hear the Name of Christ in order to be saved, I do believe that that the path to salvation is much more clear and easily understood than hoping that I'm serving or loving enough.

Thoughts?

K. Dietz said...

Great post James. Very observant. It's interesting to me that evangelicals are all about "The Gospel," but we rarely stop to consider that Jesus preached the Gospel (Mark 1.15--Speaking of Jesus' first words...) So it's imperative that we take good long looks at what Jesus actually taught. Because if our message is different than His message, we aren't really preaching the Gospel, are we?

Couldn't help but glance over the above conversation, and here's my .02...

What did Jesus teach? "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 7.21) It seems Jesus would absolutely agree with what is being "nonchalantly mentioned" here. :)

However, in my understanding, passages like Romans 3.21-30 clearly teach an imputed righteousness for those who believe, or "claim" the blood of Christ. This doesn't narrow down the group who will be redeemed; it broadens it. The worst of sinners (read: Paul) can now be reconciled to God through the atonement made at Calvary.

On the other hand, tough passages like Heb 11.6 seem to teach that one must place their faith in the God of Israel in order to "please Him/come to Him." While I don't think that is a case for namism, it surely is a case against Unitarian Universalism (the idea that all good folks who believe in something will be saved.) Perhaps it comes down to a question of the authority of Scripture, but if if we accept the Canon as the infallible Word of God, we must wrestle with hard truths like this one.

What is most difficult to me is finding common ground between the two doctrines (having faith and doing the will of God) without compromising one for the other.

TattooedWarrior said...

I just wanted to point out that the actual verses you have quoted here aren't Jesus giving a message, it's John the Baptist talking. Jesus actual comes and interrupts this exchange so that he can be baptized and "fulfill all righteousness." John was the one warning the religious elites at this point. I just think that Mark 1 maybe a better place to start based upon the topic title, especially since Mark was very likely the first of the gospels written. This isn't Jesus' harsh message, it's John's. Jesus first message was that the kingdom of God was at hand and had arrived.

James said...

Warrior, you're absolutely right. If I said it was a test of your observational skills would you believe me? :P

Seriously, that's an embarrassing rookie mistake. I'm going to make this a standalone blog on John's message to the religious people, and then re-write part one with words Jesus actually said.

Thanks for pointing that out!

james

James said...

Ok, Warrior, I have edited this blog to be accurate and will be posting the real number 1 soon. Thank you, once again for catching my mistake.

Blessings,

james