My stunning husband is reading this book all about Jesus. Last night he asked if he could read me a bit, and this is what he read:

One of the reasons why the twentieth-century Church has not been conformed to the image of Christ is because we … have false expectations of what the Messiah is like … Far too many Christians have a mental image of our Lord as a sort of sixties flower child … with long shoulder-length hair and a straggly beard, wearing a flowing white robe and leather sandals. Around his neck hangs a peace medallion, while His head is encircled with a soft blue halo … As strange as it may seem, our Lord is envisioned as an effeminate philosopher … Such people forget that Jesus totally dispelled that image when He told His disciples, Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34).

I have been thinking about this all day. The way that our perception of Who Jesus is, of Who God is, influences our response to Him. The thing is that it is one of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 that we shall not make for ourselves any carved image in the likeness of God and then bow down and serve it. I may be wrong in thinking this, but surely if we picture Jesus the way that we want to, if we picture God in a way that makes us feel comfortable, without any true engagement with Who He reveals Himself to be in the Bible, then we are making an image of Him that is false, and then serving that image.

It is so important to have a healthy understanding of God as loving and gracious (as He truly is), but for me, I have always welcomed an equally healthy understanding of His holiness and justice. I guess my thinking is if I overemphasise His lovingness and leave out His justice, I may never have realised my need of Jesus to pay the price for my sin so that I may have eternal life. If, on the other hand, I overemphasise His justice and leave out His awesome and great love, then I may be left scared of Him and wanting to avoid Him altogether. I feel like the Holy Spirit is quickening a verse to me right now which is “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17).

There are many facets to God’s personality and if we want to avoid a lopsided view of Who He is, then we must get to know Him through what the whole Bible has to say. Similarly with Jesus; from what I can see, where the stereotype exists it is because of a failure to simply read what the whole of the Gospels say about Him.

Jesus asked Peter straight out “But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15). If He asked this of you and me today, what would we say?”

Excerpt from ‘Leaving the Comfort Zone’ by Terry Crist