Week 32—Monday 1 Corinthians 15:13-19
Week 32—MONDAY
“NO DIFFERENCE . . . IF JESUS NEVER LIVED”
We are looking at those who bypass the Incarnation as the antichrists. Why does the non-Christian prefer that we preach principles and not the Person? It is simple: The Person demands decision and commitment—Follow me. The principles demand study and weighing, but no life commitment. Principles demand no more than mental assent, but Jesus, the Person, demands us as persons—the total person, not mental assent, but life decision and dedication. The difference is profound. Another Hindu said to me, “We are all interested in the universal Christ.” And when I asked him, “Not in the Incarnate Jesus?” he replied, “No, we are only interested in the universal Christ.” The reason was obvious: Into the universal Christ—the Christ, not rooted in history—they could put any content, even a Hindu content. But you cannot put any content you want into Jesus, the Incarnate, for he has put his own content, the content of his life and teaching lived out in history. He is in history, though now universal, and demands that we follow him in history, in our own day-by-day lives.
Bultmann has a large modern following. He told a friend of mine, head of a theological college, that “it would make no difference to my theology if Jesus never lived.” He has accepted the Word become word, but not the Word become flesh, so it is something other than the Christian gospel.
But if Jesus never lived, then his teaching had no historical backing, no illustrative content. Moreover, we have no idea of the truth of a proposition or idea until it is put under life to see what life will do to it. “In any battle of ideas the victory must go to those ideas which are guaranteed by the facts.” The ideas of the gospel are guaranteed by the fact of Jesus. Cut out that guarantee and your ideas have no guarantee. They are the Word become word.
O Jesus blessed One, you are the Guarantee to all that we hold. In you we hold steady, for in you “all things consist,” or hold together. You are the cement that holds life from flying apart at the seams under pressure. We thank you for yourself. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If Jesus never lived, then the words apart from Jesus have a human content in them.