EASTER MYTHS & MISCHIEF: Which Jesus Do You Think Is Real?
Easter Sunday, April 9, is two weeks away. Lots of people that day will sit in church pews they won’t see again until Christmas. Tons of the men and women they share those pews with will be there because they believe Jesus was resurrected from the grave three days after the crucifixion.
Dawn on Easter morning. The rock has been rolled away and the tomb is empty.
Millions more folks won’t even think about going to an Easter service. But whether they realize it or not, Easter is all about Jesus Christ and it poses the single most important question any human being can ever be asked (and every one of us will be asked) – Who do you say Jesus is?
The vast majority of Americans these days are in one or the other of two schools of thought on what is the right answer to that question. Christians believe the Resurrection is an historical fact and that Jesus is exactly who He said He is, the God-Man who saves those who accept Him as the resurrected Lord and Savior.
But legions of Americans are of another view, namely, that, while Jesus was a wonderful teacher and perhaps the most moral example anybody could ever follow, all that resurrection stuff is just a fairy tale, a myth of the imagination, a mirage of supernaturalism.
Which group has the correct answer? A century ago, J. Gresham Machen, then a professor of theology at Princeton Seminary, wrote these words about the immense significance of the competing answers:
“Reject the miracles and you have in Jesus the fairest flower of humanity who made such an impression upon His followers that after His death they could not believe that He had perished but experienced hallucinations in which they thought they saw Him risen from the dead …
“… accept the miracles, and you have a Savior who came voluntarily into this world for our salvation, suffered for our sins upon the Cross, rose again from the dead by the power of God, and ever lives to make intercession for us. The difference between those two views is the difference between two totally diverse religions.”
Put another way, if you think Jesus is merely a great moral example, you aren’t following the Jesus of the Gospels or Christianity and you might want to check out Romans 10:9. If your view is that Jesus is who He claimed to be, odds are you already know that verse.
Enjoyed this.
Real Jesus: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me….[W]hatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.“ — Matthew 25:35-40
Real Jesus: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.“ — Matthew 22:37-39