Baptism/Amazing Grace: A Conversation Over Lunch, Part 10

Why faith in Jesus?

I thought I was having lunch with a controversialists! You’re so orthodox as to be boring. There’s not much new here!

Sometimes the old, staid traditionalists actually get things right, and the clever, new, creative, original thinkers are just dead wrong. You know, it’s not like the church has been filled with idiots for the last 2,000 years. Our predecessors actually got most things right!

Sometimes the hardest change is to stick with the old, the boring, and the traditional. Yes, the lost are truly lost, the saved are truly saved, and we need to teach our neighbors about Jesus — just like you learned in Sunday school when you were a kid.

The biggest difference is that we now know much better methods, and we’ll talk methods in a bit. But I’m still in a theoretical mood.

Good, because I have a theoretical question. As you explain things, the great division between damnation and grace is faith in Jesus. Why? Why not love for your neighbor? Why not morality? Why not an honest heart? Why on earth faith that Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Messiah? I mean, that seems so arbitrary and — if you won’t think me a bigot — Jewish. Why something so peculiarly Jewish as being the Messiah?

God is both just and righteous. And he’s Love. And yet justice, righteousness, and love won’t get you a ticket to heaven — not by themselves. Only faith in Jesus will. Why?

Let me start by saying the obvious. God can make any rules he pleases. If he only wants to save freckled-faced, left-handed, pigeon-toed redheads, that would be his decision, and the rest of us would have no right to complain. We are only entitled to justice, and no one will receive less than justice.

Agreed. But is God really arbitrary? I mean, he has the right to be arbitrary — but is he?

And what about —

(Rom 12:2 NIV) Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Doesn’t that say that a mature Christian should be able to not only know God’s will but find it pleasing?

Yes, indeed, although we have no right to judge God. If we find God’s will displeasing, we’ve either misunderstood his will or else we’ve not grown up enough in the faith to truly appreciate its beauty.

So why faith in Jesus?

I don’t think the Bible ever comes out and defends faith as such. Paul certainly defends salvation by faith as preferable to salvation by works, but that hardly explains why faith in Jesus. It’s not the only imaginable alternative.

The image of God

Nonetheless, I think we can get a glimpse of the answer in several places. Let’s start with —

(Gen 1:26-27 ESV) 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”  27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

(Gen 5:3 ESV)  3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.

(Gen 9:6 ESV)  6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”

In the Septuagint (LXX), “image” translates the Greek word eikon (pronounced like “icon”).

We thus see one of the huge story arcs in Scripture. A plural God (“let us make”) makes plural man (“male and female”) in his plural image. Adam and Eve sin, thereby cracking the image of God.

Man remains in God’s image, and therefore is a creative being — including being able to create new life in their own image by bearing children. And being impressed with God’s image, man has value to God, and so murder is sin.

However, God original intentions remain true. He wants man to be restored to the image of God. Therefore, he sent himself — that part of the Trinity called the logos — to show us in human form the true image of God. We learn who God is and how to imitate God from Jesus.

(2Co 4:4 ESV)  4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

(Col 1:15 ESV) 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Jesus is the image of God. That is, Jesus is who we were supposed to be. God’s redemptive work in us is designed to return us to factory specs. We’re supposed to be like God — and that means we’re supposed to be like Jesus.

You see, “What would Jesus do?” is not merely a moral standard but the path to becoming what we were always meant to be. It’s living life truly, loving truly, knowing truly, being true.

Thus, it only makes sense for John to write —

(John 13:3-5 ESV) 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God,  4 rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist.  5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

Jesus, being fully aware of his image — of being God in the flesh — decided to do the most God-like thing imaginable: wash the feet of Judas Iscariot.

(Rom 8:29 ESV)  29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

(2Co 3:18 ESV)  18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

(Col 3:9-10 ESV) 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices  10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

The work of the Spirit within us is to help us become more and more like Jesus. The cosmic purpose of God is for us to become like Jesus. The ultimate point of it all is to become like God.

(Eph 5:1-2 ESV) Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.  2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Because we were always meant to be like God, we are called to imitate God! And we imitate God by loving others as Jesus sacrificed himself for us. To imitate God is to imitate Jesus is to love like Jesus is to sacrifice ourselves for others with no hope of receiving anything in return.

(Rom 12:1-2 ESV)  I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The world is broken. We can’t be like that. Rather, we set our eyes on Jesus, and by the power of Spirit, we let God transform our minds to think like God himself — that is, to think sacrificially.

It’s not so much learning to think like Augustine and Luther — not that theology is bad — but learning to think like a lamb on an altar.

Lois Tverberg, in her soon-to-be-released book Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewish Words of Jesus Can Change Your Life (I have a review copy, and you should be painfully jealous) explains that it takes a donkey (Gen 22:5) to carry enough wood to offer an animal sacrifice to God. Isaac carried his own wood to the top of the mountain. (Remind you of anyone?)

We need to do the same.

(Luk 9:23-24 ESV)  23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.  24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

Wooden crosses are heavy. And this passage is not speaking of those burdens we cannot help but carry — such as disease and painful relationships. This is speaking of crosses we choose to pick up because we love God so much we’re willing to climb to the top of the mountain with him, carrying the wood on which we’ll be sacrificed.

This is faith.