Why Jesus Would Have Appalled You
Flash, the red-suited guy with incredible speed? Or maybe Superman, in the red and blue body suit with super-human strength and almost total invincibility. What about Mr. Incredible, the Herculean villain fighter or Wonder Woman, the goddess who comes down to help earth? Some love Spiderman because in his street clothes he's just a high school nerd, but when he slips into his spider gear, he's a web-shooting champion.
Batman is my favorite superhero, because Batman is the only superhero without superpowers. He is the classic underdog who takes down villains by sheer intelligence,
muscle, and strategy.
But I doubt many would pick Batman to save the world. If they did, we'd be in big trouble. As fearful as his bat mask may be and as cool as his no-gun policy may come across, he just doesn't have the invincibility and super strength of other heroes.
But God did something very similar when He picked somebody to save this world from sin. He chose the last kind of guy you and I would have selected, let alone paused to consider.
Why Jesus Would Have Appalled You
Someone will say, "I'd expect Him to pick the Son of God, and that's exactly what He did!" Yes, but for a moment transport your mind to the land of Israel, 2,000 years ago. You can be Greek, Roman, or Jew, it doesn't matter. If you lived in that day, from a human perspective, most of us would be shocked—even appalled—that God would use this man to be our Savior. Why? Here are at least eleven reasons:
1. He was a bastard child.
The supposed fruit of a sex affair, no one knew who the real Daddy was. When Mary got pregnant before her marriage to Joseph how many people were going to buy this line: "I never had sex with anybody before marriage—not even Joseph. An angel showed up one day in my living room and said, 'You're going to get pregnant by the Holy Spirit.' Nine months later out came this child. He's God's Son" (Mat 1:23-25). With the exception of Mary's relative, Elizabeth and her family, and a few close family members and friends, the people would have scorned her as an adulteress and if she told them what really happened they'd call her crazy. To the Jews, it was a crime punishable by stoning (John 8:4-5). Mary had the stroke of the scarlet letter, and Jesus was the product of this abominable act. Not exactly an applause- inducing entrance into the world for the One who is supposed to save people from their sins.
2. He grew up in Ghettosville.
Think of a slum town in your area and imagine the Savior growing up there. Nazareth was the Ghettosville of the day, the place you would never send your child to school or go on walks in the evening without a bodyguard. When Philip told Nathaniel that the Messiah was Jesus of Nazareth, Nathaniel's incredulous reaction was, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:45-46).
3. He was a carpenter.
Of all occupations He chose, he picked one that involves making things. (I guess He couldn't kick the habit). There's nothing inherently demeaning about being a carpenter, but if you’re going to save the world, wouldn’t politics or law be a closer shot to success? (Mat 13:55).
4. He was not qualified to teach.
Measured by the academic standards of the day, Jesus was not qualified to stand up and preach, for He did not receive the required rabbinical training (John 7:15). Thus, he received the title more by practice than by academic achievements (Mat 7:28-29; Mat 13:55; Mat 26:25; Mark 9:5; Luke 4:32).
5. He was a blasphemer.
At least that's what the religious leaders said (Matt 9:3). If I claimed to be God, you'd burn this article—at least I hope you would. Anyone claiming to be God is either mentally deranged or a sad liar. Either way, the Jews could not receive His claims to Godhood neutrally. So they called Him a
blasphemer and beat him with their fists (Mark 14:61-65).
6. He was a Satanist.
Again, the spiritual leaders spewed their poison and accused Him of being possessed by Satan (Mat 12:24). If all the spiritual leaders in your town are calling someone a Satanist, it'd take more than guts to endorse his ministry.
7. His own siblings rejected Him.
Of all the disqualifying factors, this had to be one of the most debilitating from a human perspective. No one is a more credible reference for your character than someone who grew up with you. And if Jesus' own siblings who grew up sitting at the same breakfast table and playing outside with Him, were saying, "He's not the Messiah," who was left to vouch for Him?
(John 7:5).
8. He hung out with the wrong people.
Jesus spent time with people who made a living off of having sex with strangers (Luke 7:36-50). Jesus ate bread and drank wine with tax officials who used the muscle of Rome to cheat the poor out of their own money (Luke 5:29-32). If you were a leper, deaf and dumb, blind, or afflicted by any disease, the Jews would not just see you as physically unclean, but spiritually dirty. They didn't separate the physical from the spiritual like we do. And these polluted people were the kind Jesus touched (Matt 8:14-15; 9:28-29; Mark 7:32-35; Luke 22:50-51).1
9. He was convicted as a criminal.
Criminals and Messiah's don't mix. They belong on opposite ends of the ranks of society. You wouldn't trust a criminal with your newborn child, let alone, ask him to save the world (Matt 27:26).
10. He was a late bloomer.
Jesus' teaching career did not even begin until the late age of 30 and then got cut short by death only three and a half years later (Luke 3:23). That's over a decade of missed time. People don't stick with a company for three years and expect that to bring them up the corporate ladder. Real leaders don't try to start a worldwide movement in only three years and then leave it to a motley crew of eleven men to carry it on.
11. He died on a tree.
If all the odds against Him during His life weren't bad enough, His death would surely end His mission hopelessly. Deuteronomy 21:22-23 says, "If a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God)." Jesus did not die in a bed. He did not pass away in a hospital surrounded by devoted relatives, or in the town square as an honorable martyr. He died on a tree, outside the city, alone. It would have been better to die by decapitation like Paul, or by clubbing like James, but no, Jesus died the most cursed death of all: crucifixion. And this tree was not two pieces of smoothly sanded 2x4's, varnished and polished, but gnarly, knotty, splintery pieces of tree trunks with the branches hacked off. And if that wasn't enough…
● Jesus came from perfect, painless, pleasure-filled unity with God in heaven to a
world of crime, deception, cheating, adultery, lying, murder, hatred, disease, pain,
and death (Phil 2:7-8).
● And then, He went from a human life on earth to a gruesome death so smeared in your and my sins, that to look upon Him was to look at a mass of rancid sin (2 Cor 5:21). It was so sickening that God Himself had to turn His face away. We can't fathom how painful this must have been for Jesus. For all eternity the Son enjoyed the warmth and sweetness of fellowship with God His Father, and now for the first time, the Father must turn away—and not just turn away, but unleash the full vent of His wrath against sin upon His own Son (Rom 5:9; 1 John 2:2). It must have ripped His heart out of His chest. From a human perspective, Jesus would be a bad candidate for anything. No wonder people called Him a freak, and anyone who followed Him a freak. How on earth could someone so low be used to do anything?
I know the default answer. "He's God! Of course He could do this!"
Before You Label Me a Heretic
It is our sinful nature that overemphasizes Jesus' manhood at the expense of His glory, and in this case, that inflates Jesus' godhood at the expense of His genuine sufferings and hurts. Jesus' godhood did not cancel, dilute, or slightly diminish His struggles. We subtly believe that Jesus' Godhood some how made it easier for Him to endure temptation and suffering, as if every now and then, He dipped into His godhood to help Him get through it. But that belief is an illusion. When Peter sliced off the ear of the high priest's slave, Jesus told him to sheathe the sword, reminding Him that at the snap of His fingers the Father would put twelve legions of angels at Christ's disposal (Matt 26:53). But Jesus refused to tap in.
Jesus never once used His deity to make life easier on earth, otherwise, how could the author of Hebrews say in honesty, “We do not have a hight priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15).
Jesus had no more resources for honoring His Father than you and I have. Before you label me a heretic, consider that Jesus had to obey the same Father and rely on the same Spirit that you and I must obey and rely on. Yes He was God. But that did not make His life on earth easier. In fact, it only made it harder, for He knew the hearts of men (John 2:24-25), and yet He still loved them in spite of the foul filth and rot He saw. He knew that His own disciple would deny Him and yet He still endured with Peter to the end—even when all His disciples ran from Him at His arrest. He knew Judas would sell Him over to His enemies for some silver coins, yet He did not treat Judas with one ounce less of compassion and faithfulness as He did the other disciples.
So how did God use this man, despised of men, intimate with pain, and murdered like a criminal? Because He obeyed. If any one thing demonstrated Jesus' qualification for being the Savior of the world, it was HIs obedience. And this was something He had to learn.
Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered (Heb 5:8).
Obedience Killed Him
Jesus? Jesus the Son of God had to learn obedience? The first time I read this verse I rubbed my eyes and read it again. Any parent on planet earth knows that children need to learn obedience. But that's becomes children are inherently sinful. How could the spotless Son of God need to learn to obey if He's morally perfect already?
This conflict comes from our faulty thinking that the opposite of learning obedience is disobedience. But this is not always true. Yes, Jesus was sinless. He never sinned in all His life. But being the
Son of God in perfect bliss for all eternity, He never knew what it was like to have to say "no" to temptation. He never experienced the bitterness of hunger, the strength of God in torture, or the sting of resisting Satan's temptations for forty days straight. Before He entered earth, He didn't know what it was like to forgive His brother for stealing His toy, to submit to His mother and finish His soup that He didn't want to eat, to smash His finger with a hammer and resist shouting a curse word, or to turn his eyes away from a beautiful woman He was tempted to lust after.
In short, there were two positions of authority over Christ whom He had to learn to obey. First He had to obey His parents. "And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them" (Luke 2:51).
Secondly, He had to obey His Father. Christ said, "I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me" (John 5:30). Wait a minute. Nothing? I can't toss a stone, scratch my head, take a nap unless God wills it? Christ's obedience to God was not limited to ministry tasks or long-winded sermons. He submitted to God in everything. His entire life was yielded to the perfect will of His Father in heaven. Do you realize what this means? He had to say no to His will. To obey someone else's will, you will frequently find yourself saying not to yours. Look at John 5:30 again, "I do not seek my own will, but the will of Him who sent Me."
The first most visible demonstration of this was Christ's temptation in the wilderness. If I don't eat for a day, I'm emaciated. Christ went without food for forty days (Mat 4:2). At the end of that episode, He probably looked like someone from Auschwitz Concentration Camp. You could have counted every rib. He was probably so thin and weak He could hardly breathe, let alone stand up. It was not a pretty sight. Forty days of starvation is at the brink of death. And do you know what He had to help Him? The Holy Spirit. That's all. Matthew 4:1 tells us, "The Holy Spirit led him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." And even when He did was invited to use His deity to aid His suffering, He refused. Satan said, "If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread" (Luke 4:3). Jesus could have done it by blinking His eyes. He could have turned the whole mountain into a loaf of bread! But instead He replied, "Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God" (Matt 4:4).
When I'm tired and hungry I'm more susceptible to temptation. I have learned by experience that the worst time to get into an argument with your spouse is right before you sleep. You're tired and emotionally prickly. Everything gets dramatized and you don't speak rationally. Christ wasn't just tired and hungry. He was fatigued and starving.
Christ's obedience to the Father reached a whole new level in the Garden of Gethsemane. He did not pull out his prayer rug and gently get down on His knees. Matthew tells us that He literally fell on His face—He collapsed before God, in emotional trauma and death-earnest fervency: "And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed" (Matt 26:39a). And this is what He prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will." Christ did not feel like drinking the cup of God's wrath. All the suffering the world has ever experienced combined can not match up to the dread of God's hell against sin. If all the sins you ever committed and all the guilt they produced was weighed upon you right now in one second of time, it'd probably kill you. But to multiply that by the number of people who have lived and ever will live is unbelievable. Christ endured this for six hours,2 six hours of God crushing Him (Is 53:5, 10). Again we are tempted to credit His deity for this level of endurance. But the text of Scripture never implies this.
In the end, Jesus' obedience killed Him. "Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:8). You may have grown up with a tough Dad, but not many can claim they obeyed their father to the point of death. Obedience does not get more radical.
Jesus had no servants, yet they called Him Master.
Had no degree, yet they called Him Teacher.
Had no medicines, yet they called Him Healer.
Had no army, yet kings feared Him.
He won no military battles, yet He conquered the world.
He committed no crime, yet they crucified Him.
He was buried in a tomb, yet He lives today.3
Endnotes
1. Politicians visit poor people in rural towns to let the world know what a benevolent
leader they are. But Jesus failed to bring in the cameras and reporters. He actually loved
the people.
2. He was crucified at the third hour (Mark 15:25) which is a Jewish time reference,
meaning, 9am. He died at the ninth hour (Luke 23:44), which is 3pm.
3. Author anonymous.