5. Jesus of Nazareth and the life of faith
I suppose it was inevitable that I would become a stamp collector when I was young. My father had begun collecting stamps in the 1930s (I still have his first stamp album). So I began to collect them as well. By the age of 13, I was well on the way to becoming an expert on the watermarks of British postage stamps issued during the reign of Edward VII. Curiously, nobody else I met at school seemed in the slightest bit interested in this topic. In fact, they all thought it was unspeakably dull and irrelevant. My best friend at school at the time used to shake his head in despair. ‘Why can’t you get interested in something worthwhile – like football?’
For many people, theology is like stamp collecting – interesting to some, but without any real relevance to the business of everyday human life. You stick theological theories into your stamp album, close the covers, and forget about them until the next time you open it. They make no difference to real life. They’re just things you collect, and look at occasionally.
Yet the New Testament doesn’t allow us to think in this way. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth are presented as transformative, changing the way we live. Our personal and social worlds are changed, and are meant to be changed, by Jesus.
Let’s give an example. One of our theological postage stamps might be the belief that Jesus is Lord. Jesus of Nazareth is the one who we trust, follow and obey. When the German churches refused to conform to Nazism in the 1930s, they took their stand on the lordship of Christ: ‘Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.’ Some object to any idea of lordship, seeing this as contrary to individual freedom. It’s not. It’s about choosing who we believe we can trust. It’s about choosing to commit ourselves to the care of the ‘Good Shepherd’, who journeys with us as we travel through life, supporting and sustaining us.
Let’s look at another key element in any understanding of Jesus of Nazareth – that he is our Saviour. We’ve already looked at how we can make sense of this theme, and how it fits into a ‘big picture’ of the identity and significance of Jesus. But what difference does it make? A lot. A favourite sermon illustration for salvation used in the Middle Ages drew its inspiration from passages such as Psalm 40.2: ‘[the Lord] drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock.’
The human predicament is likened to being trapped in a deep pit. We have fallen in, broken a leg, and are now unable to climb out. We are stuck in deep mud, and every time we try to get out, we sink deeper into the slime. Our hopes rest on someone climbing down into the pit and carrying us out. Or someone taking hold of our hand and pulling us out of the treacherous mud. Without a saviour, we are in a hopeless situation. But the coming of a saviour is about the hope of rescue. The New Testament declares first that there is a saviour, and second, that this long-awaited saviour is Jesus of Nazareth.
Why is Jesus of Nazareth central to the Christian faith?
One of the questions that perplexed me as I hovered around the borderlands of faith in the early 1970s was this. How could someone who lived two thousand years ago be of any relevance today? I was a scientist, and my reasoning went along these lines: if the answer’s right, (a) you don’t need to rely on the person who found it and (b) it doesn’t depend on the person who found it. The answer and the person who discovered it can be separated from each other.
After all, if Isaac Newton hadn’t discovered gravity back in the seventeenth century, someone else would have done so instead. If Copernicus hadn’t figured out that the earth went around the sun, another bright spark would have come to this conclusion sooner or later. Sure, Newton and Copernicus got there first. But if an idea is right, it has a life of its own.
Jesus of Nazareth had some good ideas. But were they dependent on him? The Christian emphasis on the centrality of Jesus didn’t make sense to me all those years ago. If Jesus was like Newton or Copernicus, he would simply have been the channel for ideas that could survive perfectly well without him. He was the medium for a message that was essentially independent of him.
Now as I later discovered, I was completely wrong about this. But I was wrong in an interesting way which helps cast light on the unique role that Jesus of Nazareth plays within the Christian faith. Given who Jesus is, his coming itself is immensely significant. It is not simply that he tells us something useful. The very act of coming to be with us is part of the message. ‘The Word became flesh and lived among us’ (John 1.14).
Imagine an ancient realm, ruled by a royal family that has little interest in its subjects other than as a useful source of income. Then a new king comes to power. He is different. He cares about his people and wants the best for them. He issues a royal proclamation of his compassion for his subjects, then leaves his palace and goes to live alongside them, sharing their joys, pain and sorrow. Do you see the point? What the king does is part of his message. He enters their situation as an expression of his commitment to his people; he dwells where they dwell.
It’s not a great analogy, but it helped me grasp the interconnectedness of the message and messenger in Jesus of Nazareth. This idea is found throughout the letters of the New Testament but perhaps most clearly in the first letter of John, which sets two statements beside each other as if they were two sides of the same coin: ‘God is love’ (1 John 4.8) and ‘God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him’ (1 John 4.9). The point being made is that God’s identity is expressed in God’s actions. What God does, mirrors and expresses who God is. ‘The Word became flesh’ is thus an intrinsic part of the good news of the gospel. Message and messenger are inseparable.
But there is more to it than this. As we saw in a previous chapter, Jesus of Nazareth is our Saviour – the one who makes possible the transformation of the human situation. But how does this transformation come about? Quite simply, it happens as our relationship with Christ deepens. The New Testament uses a range of images to help us make sense of this – such as Jesus inhabiting us, or the Spirit remoulding us after the likeness of Jesus. As we accept Jesus of Nazareth as our Lord, abide in him and suffer with him, so we begin on the journey to being glorified with him. For Jesus is not simply the foundation of our salvation; he is also its goal. The Christian hope of heaven is about being in the presence of the risen Christ.
In his sermon ‘The Weight of Glory’, preached at Oxford in June 1941, C. S. Lewis pointed out that there are different kinds of reward. One kind of reward ‘has no natural connection with the things you do to earn it, and is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things’. Yet Lewis argues that ‘proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.’ It is a powerful and illuminating conclusion, which Lewis illustrates with characteristic clarity. Imagine a young boy learning ancient Greek. His goal? To be able to read the works of the great classical writer Sophocles. (That young boy, by the way, was Lewis himself.) We could easily extend this: someone might long to play the piano really well so she could perform Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata; a young tennis player might be inspired to train day and night so that he could win Wimbledon.
In these examples, the point is simple: what is there to be gained is the natural outcome of what is being done. The prize is the consummation of the process, not something arbitrarily tacked on. The goal consummates the journey that led to it in the first place.
And that’s what we need to grasp about the Christian vision of salvation. Christ makes it possible for us to know him, to pray to him, to draw close to him in times of need and despair, and he will finally raise us up to where he now is. Redemption is a deepened and transfigured enriching of our present relationship with Jesus of Nazareth, by which what has been begun in this life is fulfilled and extended. As Lewis put it, Christians know that heaven is the ‘consummation of their earthly discipleship’.
In the light of this discussion, it’s easy to see why Jesus of Nazareth is not analogous to Isaac Newton or anyone else. Jesus of Nazareth is the source of our true knowledge, the foundation of our salvation, and the goal of our lives. There are three points that we should make here.
First, Jesus of Nazareth is the ground of our redemption, in that his death and resurrection throw open the door that leads to eternal life and salvation. These benefits can be obtained in no other way and through no other person. Meditating on the cross, as we have seen, is one of the ways of appreciating the costliness of the privileges we have been granted through Christ.
Second, Jesus is the guarantor of our redemption, in that his death and resurrection demonstrate the total reliability of the God who promises to see us through from death to eternal life. In Jesus, ‘every one of God’s promises is a “Yes”’ (2 Corinthians 1.20).
And third, Jesus of Nazareth is the final goal of our journey of faith. Where Christ has gone, we shall follow. He has been glorified, and we gladly and patiently await the promise of being clothed in his glory. This is why so many passages in the New Testament urge their readers to raise their eyes heavenward (Philippians 3.13–14; Hebrews 12.2), in order that we may regain a sense of wonder and anticipation of finally arriving at journey’s end, where Jesus awaits us with open arms.
This emphasis on the importance of Jesus naturally raises another question, to which we now turn. How do we connect up with him?
Connecting up: more reflections on the nature of faith
I’ve always been struck by a phrase I came across years ago in the writings of Richard Hooker (1554–1600), one of the great English theologians of the Elizabethan age: ‘Faith is the only hand which putteth on Christ.’ Hooker is here concerned more with what faith does, than with what it is. What is the function of faith? What is its effect? His answer is simple: to ‘put on Christ’. Hooker speaks of Jesus of Nazareth being like a splendid garment, which amply clothes us – both protecting us from the cold and hiding our shame. And what God provides, we are invited to receive and use.
Another favourite image from the Middle Ages was to think of believers – whether male or female – as being married to Jesus. This solemn, committed relationship highlighted the importance of mutual love and a covenanted bond between the believer and Christ. In any marriage, the bride and groom share everything that they possess. In the spiritual marriage between Jesus and the believer, the believer shares in the ‘benefits of Christ’ – namely, salvation, forgiveness and eternal life, the trophies won by Jesus through his obedience on the cross. Jesus receives our sin and shame – and takes them away from us. A living and loving relationship with Jesus is thus the framework which makes sense of the removal of our guilt, and our receiving of his righteousness.
In more contemporary terms, we can think of connecting up with Jesus of Nazareth as being like accepting an offer of forgiveness or friendship; receiving a gift; taking medicine; or becoming part of a bigger story. Let’s begin by thinking about forgiveness and friendship.
Imagine you have had a major falling out with a close friend. Harsh words have been said. The relationship is damaged. What’s to be done? You may offer your apologies though that doesn’t mean they will be accepted. But in reaching out, you are taking the initiative in trying to restore the relationship. Similarly God, from whom we have been estranged and alienated (Colossians 1.21–22), comes in search of us, offering to forgive us. At one level, faith is about admitting that we need this forgiveness, and accepting God’s offer.
Or think of presenting someone with a gift. Many of us put a lot of thought into gifts, believing they reflect our love or affection for the person we want to receive them. A friend of mine, knowing that I liked the writings of C. S. Lewis, once gave me a first edition of Surprised by Joy, Lewis’s autobiography. I was very touched. Why? Because it showed that he knew me, and wanted me to have something that I would really like. Accepting a gift is both about receiving a benefit and acknowledging the generosity and thoughtfulness of the giver. Martin Luther had no doubt of how precious the gift of salvation was: Jesus has obtained this, ‘not with silver nor gold, but with his own precious blood’, and he offers it to us, freely and lovingly.
In Jesus, God makes it possible for us to receive and possess forgiveness, reconciliation and the hope of eternal life – things that we could never achieve by ourselves, or ever afford to buy. We might think of faith as an empty, open hand, stretching out towards a gracious and giving God. Unless we accept and receive the gift that is offered, it will not benefit us.
Or we can consider linking up with Christ in medical terms. Remember my earlier analogy of a course of penicillin? Picture a bottle of penicillin tablets on a table in front of you, and then consider the possible attitudes you might have to it. You might read the label and think to yourself, ‘This could change the life of someone suffering from blood poisoning.’ But you’re perfectly healthy, so that’s completely by the way. It’s not relevant to you.
Now imagine that you have developed blood poisoning. Suddenly, the penicillin becomes rather more interesting. It could save your life. But it’s not going to help you if it stays in the bottle – you need to take it! Drugs only heal when they get into our bloodstream.
There’s a nice parallel here with faith. Theologians have often used medical models and analogies to express the transformative impact of the Christian gospel on individuals. Augustine of Hippo (358–430), for example, argued that God’s grace healed spiritual blindness and restored people to spiritual health. The Church, he suggested, could be thought of as a hospital – a place in which wounded and broken people might receive medication and care.
Faith is about allowing ourselves to be healed and transformed. Jesus does not heal us by external example but by internal transformation. His power to save does not lie in telling us what God is like but in becoming an incarnate personal presence within our lives. The bread of life must be eaten; the water which springs up to eternal life must be drunk; the healing salve of the gospel must be applied. The old African-American spiritual got this exactly right:
There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul.
Our souls will be healed if we take the balm, apply it and allow it to do its God-given and God-empowered work.
Finally, we can think of faith in terms of connecting up with a greater story. We might think of C. S. Lewis’s insight that faith involves our own stories becoming part of a bigger story, and being transformed as a result. We are embraced by God, and become part of the story of God. We are now part of something that gives meaning to our lives, and helps us work out what we are meant to be doing.
Now there is more that needs to be said about all of these approaches. For example, I have spoken loosely about ‘connecting up’ with Jesus of Nazareth. Yet the Christian doctrine of grace makes it clear that we don’t do this on our own. God helps us. Grace is the power Jesus of Nazareth gives us to make us like him. Some well-known images from John’s Gospel illustrate this point.
The ‘I am’ sayings and our relationship with Jesus of Nazareth
Every now and then, I come across something that makes me sit up and think. Many years ago now, I read these words in a book by the sixteenth-century writer Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560): ‘To know Christ is to know his benefits’. It was punchy and to the point. We cannot properly ‘know’ Jesus of Nazareth unless we’re also aware of the transformative impact he has on our lives. But what kind of difference does he make? And how does this come into effect?
We find some helpful pointers in the famous ‘I am’ sayings, one of the most distinctive features of John’s Gospel. There are seven such sayings, each with the same structure – for example, ‘I am the light of the world’ (8.12) and ‘I am the true vine’ (15.1). The statements echo the ‘I am’ language used by God in the Old Testament (Exodus 3.14), and use images that are deeply rooted in the history of Israel to clarify both the significance of Jesus himself, and his relationship to believers. Let’s look at three of these ‘I am’ statements, and see how they help us think about connecting with Jesus.
First, let us reflect on the words ‘I am the bread of life’ (John 6.35). Jesus speaks these words in the context of feeding a crowd with fish and bread. Human beings have deep physical needs – such as hunger. But they also have spiritual needs, and the verses following this saying use the images of eating and drinking as ways of thinking about faith. ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day’ (John 6.54). When I eat a piece of bread or drink a glass of water, its contents become part of me. They are assimilated into my body. Similarly, faith is about making Jesus of Nazareth part of me. There’s an obvious connection with the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper (which we shall consider in more detail in the final volume of this series).
Our second ‘I am’ saying speaks of Jesus in terms that echo Psalm 23. ‘I am the good shepherd’ (John 10.11). This beautiful image contrasts Jesus’s care for his flock with that of ‘hirelings’, who have no concern for it. ‘The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep’, whereas the hirelings run away the moment danger threatens. We get a powerful sense of Jesus’ love for and commitment to his people, and a hint that, without him, we are likely to get lost. The first generations of Christians saw Jesus the Good Shepherd as a source of strength and consolation in the face of hostility and persecution within the Roman Empire. Faith was about making a principled decision to entrust themselves to one they knew loved them, and had given his life for them. They had heard his voice call them by name, and there was no other they would follow.
The third saying we shall consider is this: ‘I am the true vine’ (John 15.1). The Old Testament often spoke of Israel as God’s vine, and this verse emphasizes the continuity between the Old and New Testaments, while highlighting Jesus’ role as the culmination of the Law and the Prophets. It invites us to think of believers as branches whose wellbeing and growth depend on being connected to the stock of the vine. If they become detached, they will cease to receive the nourishment they need for existence and will die. ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing’ (John 15.5). The image of ‘abiding’ has become deeply seared into the Christian imagination. Faith is about remaining securely attached to Jesus, relying on his strength and ability to sustain us.
For some Christian spiritual writers, such as Thomas à Kempis, attachment to Jesus demands detachment from the world. For most, however, it means that we are called to engage with the world, without sharing all its ideas and values. Christians are to be light and salt to the world, to act as ‘ambassadors’ for Jesus of Nazareth (2 Corinthians 5.20). The notion of being ‘in the world but not of the world’ expresses this critical attitude well, and we shall consider it more fully in our reflections on the Christian life in the final volume of this series.
Jesus and the shape of the Christian life
A colleague of mine lectures in ethics. One day, I asked him to tell me in a few words what ethics was all about. I needed a short sentence to add to a sermon I was preparing, and wanted to make sure that I said something sensible. ‘That’s easy,’ he said. ‘You can sum ethics up in just two little words: be good!’ I was not entirely convinced by this. ‘What do you mean by “good”?’ I asked him. He frowned. ‘That’s when it starts getting complicated,’ he replied. Why? Because ‘good’ is such a general and vague term. Just about everyone wants to do what’s right. The problem is that they can’t agree on what the word ‘good’ means.
Christianity has always held that God is the supreme good, and that our true destiny lies in trying to do what God wants. ‘Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us’ (Ephesians 5.1–2). Some atheists argue that this is about arbitrary submission to some kind of heavenly despot. It’s not. It’s like being in love with someone who is very fond of daffodils. When you visit, you give that person daffodils. Why? Because you care for the person, and you know that this will please him or her. At the heart of any good relationship is a desire to please those we love. Love for another is both a motivation and guide for how we behave.
So how do we know what God is like, and what God wants? In the end, the best Christian answer to this question is to say that Jesus of Nazareth shows us both what God is like, and what God wants from us. Jesus is not simply the basis of the redeemed life; he is also the model for that life. The heartbeat of the Christian life is a desire to be like Jesus of Nazareth. Knowing Jesus as our Lord motivates and animates us, making us want to serve him. As Oswald Sanders once put it, ‘God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him, He brings me into a relationship with Himself wherein I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him.’
Christian ethics is thus about being ‘Christ-like’. It’s about asking what Jesus of Nazareth might do in the situations in which we find ourselves. This basic idea is expressed in the famous ‘bidding prayer’, which opens the service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge every year by recalling the compassion of Jesus of Nazareth for the poor and dispossessed. ‘And because this of all things would rejoice his heart, let us at this time remember in his name the poor and the helpless, the cold, the hungry and the oppressed.’
Discipleship is about becoming more like Jesus of Nazareth, and ‘crucifying’ the Old Adam. Paul puts it like this: ‘I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2.19–20). Yet this new obedience and new way of life is not something that we can do by ourselves. The God who inspires us to want to do good also helps us to become good. We shall reflect on this in more depth when we consider some themes concerning the Christian life in the next volume in this series, particularly the place of the Holy Spirit in the life of faith.
Many find C. S. Lewis helpful at this point. In his Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis uses the figure of the noble lion Aslan to help his readers reflect on how Jesus of Nazareth inspires us to want to do good, and informs us about what that good might be. Gilbert Meilaender, one of America’s leading moral philosophers, once pointed out how the seven Chronicles of Narnia are more than ‘good stories’. They help us to ‘build character’ by providing us with examples from which we can learn, rather like an apprentice working with a master. Aslan is that master, and Lewis intended us to see him as a ‘Christ-figure’.
Lewis portrays Aslan as inspirational, enabling people to see and do things that otherwise would lie beyond their ability or inclination. A rich theology of divine grace nestles within the stories of Aslan’s encounters with people (such as Digory) and other inhabitants of Narnia (such as Puzzle, the donkey). Lewis here develops the rich and important idea that it is by contemplating Christ that we are enabled to identify and confront our sin, and resolve to try and become better people. Any attempt to be ‘good’ involves both breaking the power of sin and embracing the power of God. And both are to be found in Jesus of Nazareth.
Yet there is another respect in which Jesus of Nazareth shapes the Christian life – coping with suffering. In the history of the world, four main answers have been given to the question of suffering. Some hold that suffering is real, and is not going to go away. However, we can take comfort from the fact that life does not go on for ever. In the end, we will die, and once we are dead, suffering will end and we will finally have peace and relief from pain.
Others argue that suffering is an illusion. It is something imagined, not real. If we concentrate hard enough, the illusion will vanish. A third opinion recognizes that suffering is real, but argues that intelligent people ought to be able to rise above this.
The Christian has the fourth answer: God suffered in Christ. God knows what it is like to suffer. The letter to the Hebrews talks about Jesus being our ‘sympathetic high priest’ (Hebrews 4.15) – someone who suffers along with us. This is indeed a world of suffering; yet, because of who Jesus was and what he did, it can now lead to glory. We suffer in hope, having embraced our redeemer through faith.
Focusing on the suffering of Jesus of Nazareth on the cross helps us see suffering in a new way. As Paul points out, ‘the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us’ (Romans 8.18). If we suffer with Jesus, we shall one day be glorified with him. Instead of being faced with a hopeless end, we can embrace an endless hope.
Moving on
In this volume, we have looked at some aspects of the creeds’ statements about the identity and significance of Jesus of Nazareth. There is much more that needs to be said. We have only had space enough to look all too briefly at some of the great themes of the creeds, as they focus on the central figure of the Christian faith. In the next volume in this series, Spirit of the Living God, we shall move on to consider the ‘Spirit of Grace’. What do the creeds and the Christian faith have to say about the Holy Spirit, human nature and the Church?