This Christmas, Which Jesus Will You Celebrate?
Khen Lim
Image source: ushispanicministry.com
Most people are contend with the image of Jesus the baby.
Christmas, for almost endless decades, have been centred on Jesus in the manger.
Be it postcards or Christmas greeting cards or whatever, this is the season
where the all-important diorama sets the stage for the Nativity scene.
Christmas, being the day Jesus was born, relates to the babe whom Mary gave
birth in the grotto. Very few people ever loose themselves from this scene to
think a little more about who this Jesus is beyond being a baby at birth. So
the question is, which Jesus will you celebrate this Christmas?
For too many people, Jesus has been
appropriated and misappropriated for
causes that are at best questionable. And in all of this confusion, it’s not
hard to understand why so many people struggle to know who this Jesus really
is. Beyond being a baby in the manger, who He is depends on the image that the
world is pushing down our throats.
The Apostle Paul teaches all of us that Christ was born to
reach out to us and to mould us into His likeness:
“For God knew His people in advance, and He chose them to become like
His Son, so that His Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”
(Rom 8:29, NLT)
Yet even Christians appear to want to shape Him according to
our whims. Instead of abiding by what we learn biblically, we like Christ to
conform to an image of our liking even if we aren’t aware of it. The ‘WWJD”
(‘What Would Jesus Do’) movement, for instance, appeals to our moral imperative
to act in accordance to our love for Jesus by asking what we believe Jesus
would have done if we were in His shoes. That isn’t too different from assuming
that because we know who Jesus is, we’d expect Him to do things in a way we
anticipate.
The problem with this approach is that we’re shoehorning Him,
shaping Jesus, the Triune God, into who we want Him to be and in the end, what
we all end up with, invariably, is a Jesus branded according to the image we
conjure in our heads. He becomes the very person that fits our narrative, our
personal agenda, our terms and conditions. Never mind what the Bible tells us,
this Jesus is, for all intents and purposes, the person we see staring back at
us from behind the mirror.
Here are some of the more common perceptions of who Jesus is
as far as what we gather from not just progressive culture but so-called modern
Christian circles:
1 The Liberal Jesus
Like everything in life, no pillar of society has been left
untainted by the globalist-liberal agenda that is proliferating everywhere in
the modern world. Nothing is sacred anymore…not even the image of Jesus. If you
cannot destroy Christianity, then distort Jesus!
Here is a Jesus whose image is a reengineered modern icon of
the liberal social agenda. In every left-wing attempt to hijack Him, the Son of
God is today the archetypal socialist because He loves all people. He is also a
communal collectivist in the Marxist mould and therefore, spurns capitalism.
And so typical of progressive contrarianism, Christ is not about personal
salvation by faith. We’ve all been hoodwinked, it seems. Instead Christ came to
even out wealth distribution and to speak the truth about the power of the
proletariat.
As clever as liberals are in trying to ‘own’ Jesus for their
own political expediencies, the Son of God is about the Good News. The Kingdom
of God is in fact good news for the meek whom Jesus says, will, in the end,
take all before them:
“God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth.”
(Mt 5:5, NLT)
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the Earth.” (Mt 5:5,
NIV)
Jesus’ Second Coming has nothing
to do with what the liberals have in mind. He will not be the stool pigeon
for the Marxist movement but instead, He will come to inaugurate a brand new
covenant with His people. He is the very definition of the End Times to come
because He will bring closure to the eschatology and defeat Satan at his own
game.
Everything that Jesus will set out to do is laid out in Scripture and no
attempts to hijack the promise of God to come will mean anything in the end.
What designs socialism may have in undermining Christ, Christmas and
Christianity will come to fruition. Just as it has subjected people to misery,
socialism itself will end cataclysmically for those who partake in it. It is nothing compared to what Jesus is about
and it begins with Christmas.
2 The Materialistic Jesus
Modern churches with the overtly strong promise of prosperity
embrace the materialistic Jesus. They own this image of Jesus lock, stock and
barrel. They define Him as the promise of great unending wealth. Jesus is up
front, up close and personal when it comes to lining our pockets so long as we
pay, pay and pay. Scripture verses are conveniently used to instil the strong
impression that only those who give will receive and if you don’t give, you’ll
invariably be hounded to.
Accordingly, Jesus brings abundant promises of a better
material life, better because He will deliver wealth and prosperity in ways
your neighbours will be jealous of. The material Jesus is today very popular in
much of the Western Christian culture but we also see this phenomenon thriving
in materialistic Singapore.
In all of these churches, Jesus’ image branding
talks nothing of God having any other persona besides love and richness. He is
love, indeed. And He promises we will prosper but the context is completely
bent out of biblical truth in order to fit a more worldly pursuit.
The material Jesus is the result of a worldly lifestyle that
has visited churches throughout the world and it uses Scripture to conveniently
hide behind. It is an insidious heresy in which God’s Word is abused and
deployed to prey on the spiritually weak with promises of material prosperity.
That’s how the world became resplendent with the likes of Creflo Dollar, Eddie
Long, Benny Hinn and others. The trouble with the prosperity church is that it
sends all the wrong messages to liberal critics who are already looking to
deconstruct and demean, if not destroy Christianity.
Those who truly know what Scripture says about prosperity
understands that the true Christ of the Bible doesn’t care one hoot about BMWs
or iPhones or Gulfstreams or the best addresses in the world. He couldn’t be
bothered whether we indulge in branded products.
In fact, He would be
disappointed if any of these things preoccupy us more than our love for Him.
Nowhere in the Bible did He promise such things neither does He place any importance on material things. If He
did, then what He says in the Gospel wouldn’t make any sense at all:
“Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moths and vermin
destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves
treasures in heaven where moths and vermin do not destroy and where thieves do
not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be
also.” (Mt 6:19-21, NLT)
On the other hand, the true Christ of Christmas promises to be
there whenever we are in a spot of bother. He promises that whatever it is that
we need to survive, we will have the means to without requiring odious amounts
of wealth. Enough will mean just that, enough.
Where and when we answer His
calling, Christ will pave the way so we may deliver to His glory. Doing that
doesn’t require a private jet. What we require, He will supply. And in all of
this, the Christ of Christmas offers us a far better ‘bargain’ with guaranteed
yields for our future than any short-term worldly quests for materialism.
3 The Commercial Jesus
We see this Jesus virtually everywhere but we ignorantly call
him ‘Santa Claus.’ You’ll find him not just looking the same but identically dressed
throughout the world. The red costume with fluffy white trimmings is as
universal as the regulation white beard.
He’s in shopping centres where kids
line up to tell him what they want for Christmas. He’s how fathers dress up on
Christmas Even to sneak into the living room to stash gifts under the Christmas
tree. He’s being sung about numerous times by almost every renowned singer
worldwide.
And he appears in commercials and print ads, in emails and
shopping catalogues, on stickers, flyers and menus. He’s in departmental store
window displays as well as new movies that are released every Christmas season.
And wherever you see special prices, discounts, limited offers and free gifts
during this season, his largesse is impossible to ignore. In short, you just
can’t miss him. But that’s the problem – some people really think he’s the
reason for the season and in that sense, he becomes the commercial Jesus.
In and amongst the gifts under the tree, the colour flickering
lights in the windows, the cards in the mailbox, the turkey dinners with family
and friends and the stockings hanging over the mantle place, shouts of ‘Merry
Christmas’ has nothing to do with the commercial Jesus.
Beneath all of these
lie the real Christ of Christmas who was born to bring great joy to our lives.
It is through Christ that God shows His immense love for each and every one of
us. Through Christ then come a time of healing and renewed strength and hope.
God sent His Son, Jesus, into our world to be born as man. His birth permanently changed the
world and set it in the direction of hope and optimism that even as the world
is cloaked in sin, there is now redemption in the person of Christ. This was no
ordinary baby. This was Christ, born as the prophets had foretold many hundreds
of years prior to that day.
The Gospel of Luke describes this moment in history best:
“So Joseph also went up
from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David,
because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register
with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born and she gave birth
to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because
there was no guestroom available for them.
“And there were
shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at
night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone
around them and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be
afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.
Today, in the town of David, a Saviour has been born to you; He is the Messiah,
the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths
and lying in a manger.’
“Suddenly a great
company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth, peace to those on whom His
favour rests.’
“When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said
to one another, ‘Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened,
which the Lord has told us about.’ So they hurried off and found Mary and
Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they
spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child and all who
heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up
all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Lk 2:4-19, NLT)
While Santa Claus, the commercial Jesus, lights up the
celebration with desirable material gifts, song and merriment, the real Christ
is the most compelling gift of them all. God brought mankind the greatest
Answer to how we are to be saved from eternal damnation and it all began with
the birth of Jesus as marked by Christmas.
4 The Historical Jesus
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Yes, secularists and so-called scholars believe that Jesus
existed. So we call him the historical Jesus as opposed to Jesus, the Son of
God. In other words, Jesus is reduced to simply, a good rabbi, someone who
taught morals as soundly as the enlightened Buddha or even the modern Bertrand
Russell.
Remember, while Proverbs 9:10 (NLT) tells us that, “fear of God is the
beginning of wisdom,” the unbelieving Russell hijacked and reinvented it to
become, “to conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” God is removed. The
effect is, in the end, Jesus is simply a nice guy who happened to have existed
two thousand years ago and someone whom many had recorded as part of history.
In other words, this is not the radical Jesus that the Gospels
talk about. And having the radicalism removed, He is nothing but a politically
safe – and correct – narrative that sits comfortably for those who can accept
His goodness without acknowledging His supernatural form.
This is the kind of
Jesus that the world is happier with because they don’t want to hear about the
Kingdom of God and they don’t to get hot and bothered with all that talk about
Him being the Son of God, the Messiah who will come the second time like a
thief in the night:
“But about that day or
hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son but only the
Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son
of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the Ark; and they
knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all
away.
“That is how it will be
at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be
taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will
be taken and the other left. Therefore, keep watch because you do not know on
what day your Lord will come.
“But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time
of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let
his house be broken into. So you also must be ready because the Son of Man will
come at an hour when you do not expect Him.” (Mt 24:36-44, NLT)
The historical Jesus makes little sense because he doesn’t
fulfil man’s longing for the deepest experience in humanity. Neither can he
ever gratify us with an answer to the problem of evil. He cannot offer us any
hope as to how we can overcome our shortcomings and he will never be able to
open the way for us to be reunited with God the Father.
The historical Jesus
may not even have been resurrected, which is why secularist media like National
Geographic insist on funding projects to uncover what they believe is Christ’s
burial place. By doing so, they hope to actually find the historical Jesus in
order to disprove the Christ of Christmas. Unlike the Apostle John’s
description of the empty tomb (Jn 20:1-10), modern man is determined to define
the historicity of Jesus and reject the Christ in Him.
5 The Gospel-Only Jesus
The modern liberal-leaning Christian tends to believe that
Jesus is fully and exclusively embodied in the red texts of the Gospels, which
renders the rest of the Bible irrelevant, unimportant and unremarkable. These
are progressive evangelicals who have essentially redefined the Word of God as
the quoted words of Jesus. This means they pay little to no attention at
everyone else featured in the Bible.
A Gospel-only Jesus debunks everything in the Old Testament
and by doing so, modern Christians don’t have to deal with an angry Father who
had to confront man’s single greatest sin – disobedience. In embracing only the
red texts of the New Testament, Christians have deliberately limited Christ to
what they want to hear and not what God tells them.
While they eschew the
Father’s vengeance, more importantly, they also refuse to come to terms with
the rest of the story. In other words, many today reject the killings and
deaths that often grace the stories of the Old Testament but they don’t want to
know why.
By rejecting one and accepting only the other Testament, they
embrace Christ the Son of God but not God the Father. If there is anything
sinister about all this, it is that in 144AD, the heretic Marcion spread his
teachings – called Marcionism – in which he rejected the Old Testament God of
the Hebrew Bible, the God of Israel, in preference for Jesus Christ, who he
insisted was not a Jewish Messiah but a spiritual entity.
Young Christians who
reject the Old Testament – or at least show a clear disinterest in it – could
well be lining themselves up for a comparison with Marcionism simply because
they cringe at the severity of a frightening God who seems to be in such sharp
contrast with a gentler and more forgiving Messiah whose talk of love is
overwhelmingly preferred.
Jesus in the New Testament is less imposing and controversial.
He is significantly more peaceful and comforting and show no sign of
vengefulness in the way the Father does in the Old Testament. Young Christians
seem to take a liking to Jesus’ dialogue in the Gospels mainly because it is
easier to understand and also because it affirms what they feel Christianity
should be. Unlike the Apostle Paul whose letters are at times difficult to
decipher, young Christians discover Jesus’ words to be more acceptable than
anything else in the Bible.
But here’s the problem – the Old and New Testaments are
threaded in such a fashion that they are inseparable. Instead, they are
intertwined in the sense that one affirms the other just as it itself is a
reflection of the other. In other words, the Jesus of the New Testament affirms
what the Old Testament says by declaring solidarity with it:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I
have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.” (Mt 5:17, NLT)
In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of the ‘unalterable Bible’
in the sense that it cannot be changed nor can it be selectively read:
“It is written in your own Scriptures that God said to certain leaders
of the people, ‘I say, you are gods!’ And you know that the Scriptures cannot
be altered.” (Jn 10:34-35, NLT)
Furthermore, rather than the Father’s law being abolished as
some might expect Him to do, He confirms that it will remain in its place until
which time, its intentions are met:
“I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not even the
smallest detail of God’s law will disappear until its purpose is achieved.”
(Mt 5:18)
Young Christians must understand that if we accept Jesus as
the Son of God and very much an integral part of the Holy Trinity, then we must
also embrace the notion that everything in the Bible – including the Old
Testament, including the epistles written by Paul, Peter and James and so on – are
just as inspired and just as important. We must acknowledge that every part of
the Bible is inspired by God and serves an integral purpose that is very much
the very Word of God. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be part of the Bible.
6 The Church-less Jesus
Christians who are burned out by church politics and legalism tend
to be disillusioned enough to want to stay away from people. They’ve had enough
of watching the bickering, the politicking or the pretensions and now they
believe they can make do without the fellowship while they keep their faith.
From this comes the onset of the church-less Jesus where they establish the
misconception that they can continue to worship sans the institutional church.
That way, they don’t have to tire themselves with dealing with
the church (or the people) itself. Before you know it, they surround themselves
with all sorts of excuses for not going to church. They don’t feel too well (but,
as it seems, always on a Sunday). Or they have friends coming to visit (not any
other day though). Or they have something urgent to do (though they’re free
every other day).
Alternatively they may attend church but they refuse to engage
themselves in any of the activities that require as many hands on deck as the
leaders and organisers can find. In a small church, involvement is often a particularly
critical issue but there are Christians who find greater importance in prioritising
their feelings before the need to fellowship.
Once the service is over, they
are not to be seen anywhere because they would often be the first to beat a
hasty retreat. In no uncertain terms, these are likely the same Christians who
would normally be impossible to find in church unless it’s Christmas Mass.
The Christ of Christmas never said there is an option where we
can follow Him and not be part of the church. Many of us may forget that it is
the very act of regeneration by faith that baptises us into the Body of Christ.
Christ loves the His bride – the church – and does not indicate anywhere in
Scripture that there is any other viable path where one can stray away from the
community of faith. This is because in fellowship, each of us can not only help
build one another up but to sharpen each other:
“So encourage each other
and build each other up just as you are already doing.” (1 Thess 5:11, NLT)
“As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.” (Prov 27:11,
NLT)
Only in fellowship can we challenge each and every one to love
and do good works in praise of Christ:
“Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good
works.” (Heb 10:24, NLT)
Lastly, perhaps, the Apostle John frames the importance of
fellowship among believers of Christ best here:
“This One who is life
itself was revealed to us and we have seen Him. And now we testify and proclaim
to you that He is the One who is eternal life. He was with the Father and then
He was revealed to us. We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen
and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with
the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that
you may fully share our joy.
“This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is
light and there is no darkness in Him at all. So we are lying if we say we have
fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not
practising the truth. But if we are living in the light, as God is in the
light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, His
Son, cleanses us from all sin.” (1 Jn 1:1-7, NLT)
Celebrate Real Sovereignty
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You can probably come up with more worldly images of the Jesus
people want to mould for themselves. For the six I have described here, none of
them define His true character and none of them offer us the real Christ of Christmas
that we bow in worship to. For the Christ of Christmas is the ever-sovereign
Son of God, the Messiah of and for the world and the One who will come and
bring closure to the sins of the world.
If we believe that Jesus is the light of the world (Lux Mundi), then let us embrace this and
all Christmases with joy, knowing that whether or not He was actually born on
this day December 25, our Christian purpose is to turn the eyes of all men to
Him and bow before the Creator and Christ. Truly the Light has come. Truly
Salvation is possible. And truly, the world is changed forever by His birth.
Each Christmas season presents itself a wonderful opportunity
for us to share the Good News with all our friends, neighbours and those in our
family who aren’t believers yet. Let us make right for the world to see that
men can be made righteous and seek peace with the Living God through faith in
His Son, Lord Jesus Christ. Let us, once and for all, relish the opportunity to
tell those who seek truth who the real Jesus is (Jn 14:6-7).
Have a Merry Christmas with your loved ones and see you in the
New Year.
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