I recently watched a clip from a Charlie Kirk interaction with a college student after she asked him to clarify what Jesus stood for, especially on the subject of love. I found this brief interaction so well articulated on Charlie's part, that it got me thinking about this subject a lot and I felt compelled to share my thoughts here.
The question asked, "what did Jesus stand for," can be pretty easily answered just by reading one of the four gospel accounts in the bible. I think Charlie hits the nail on the head here with his quick summary of what Jesus stood for though, by pointing to John 8, which shows Jesus' mercy and love, but uncompromising commitment to truth. Charlie then goes on to point out that in our modern age especially, we are really good at pointing out the first part of this story while we neglect how it ends. In the first part of the story, a woman is accused of adultery by the religious leaders and they take the case to Jesus in an attempt to trap him by trying to get him to say something contradictory to the law. In response, Jesus calls out their hypocrisy:
'When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” ' -John 8:7 NIV
In God's word (The Bible), God has given us the law in the old testament, which shows us as his people, how we are to live in this world. The law reveals God's design and intended purpose for humanity, but the risk we run in applying it to our lives is that we can be overly legalistic and focus on just "keeping the rules," so that we fail to miss the point of the law, and what it points us to. This is why it's so important as followers of Jesus to understand the deeper purpose behind God's design for humanity, which is to draw us into an intimate relationship with himself, while He is perfectly holy, and we are not. When we only focus on the law and we lose sight of God's mercy and love, we can end up in legalism, seeking to be saved by our works alone. The reality is that the old testament law simply put words to the law to show what it looks like when lived out in our world. Summed up though, the law is about God's love, which Jesus articulated beautifully when he was asked to clarify which law was the most important one in Jewish law, which we see in the following exchange:
'"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."' -Matthew 22:36-40 NIV
To understand the purpose of God's law and design for humanity, you have to understand his infinite love for us all that is underneath it, and how everything is created and ordered to point us back to Him. If you only focus on "following the rules" and don't have love, you end up going way off the rails and aren't even following Jesus at that point, you're following a god of your own creation. The Pharisees were the masters of legalism in Jesus' day and the absolute experts on God's law, they knew every part of it, inside and out. Yet Jesus called them out again and again about their hypocrisy, calling them "whitewashed tombs," because their outside portrayal of following all of the letters of the law didn't match the sin that was still in their heart (Matthew 23:28).
This was not just a problem for the religious people of Jesus' day, it's an equal risk for us as well, as we can be tempted to justify and elevate ourselves by comparing our outwardly appearances to that of other people. Those in the church can easily focus on the acts of sin as they appear on the outside, while failing to look inward and see what's going on in our own hearts. This is an effect of pride. The prideful person is quick to point out the sin of others, while arrogantly failing to look inside of himself. Jesus had much to say on this, for example:
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" -Matthew 7:3 NIV
When we look at Jesus, we see his unlimited grace and mercy in his interactions with people, and that he is always pointing them back to himself as God as he grounds them in truth. If you have mercy and grace with no truth, you have a very dangerous combination there. This is a prevalent problem in our current time, as we increasingly seem to have a hard time accepting the fact that we live in a world that is filled with truth. Our world has countless truths that keeps it working, scientific truths that keep our planet spinning, keep us breathing, and keep us from floating away into space. People don't seem to have too much of a problem with scientific truths, as long as they don't point to God (although I think they do). What is it then that makes us so offended when we hear that God has created this world with specific purpose and order, and that there is a right and wrong way that we can choose to live?
When we choose to live in opposition to how God has intended us to, it is sin for us, and it always separates us from God. As it turns out, it seems that in general, people don't like to be told that they are sinful, or that something they are doing is wrong. This is not actually anything new, it has been happening from the beginning of time. One thing we see many times in the old testament is that when God would send his prophets to call his people back to him, there were always competing voices, false prophets, that would generally present a distorted view of God that focused on his love and forgiveness and removed the fact that God was trying to call them to repent and turn from their sinful living:
'Because they lead my people astray, saying, “Peace,” when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash,' -Ezekiel 13:10 NIV.
In general, it seems that we don't want to be confronted with the truth that there is a way that God has told us how to live, that there is right and wrong in this world, and that the sin that results from our willingness to engage in wrong behavior will keep us from being with him, by our own choice. We want to be affirmed in our choices, and we don't want anyone to tell us that we're doing wrong, and we naturally look for the voices of the world that tell us we're just fine the way we are, and that we don't need to change anything about ourselves. Again, this is not surprising, as we see it again and again in the bible, as another example:
"For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths," -2 Timothy 4:3-4 NIV.
When we look at Jesus and how he called people to himself, after some sort of personal encounter, he always gives an invitation to follow him and turn from their former ways, and to sin no more. There is always a cost to follow Jesus, he never affirms anyone in their sin and tells them they are fine just the way they are. To do so would not be loving at all, yet we see that all over in our current culture, and unfortunately it is spreading in the church as well. We see churches more and more that are willing to compromise on truth to be popular and to avoid criticism, for one reason or another. Jesus was not interested in coddling people and allowing them to live in sin, which would result in their eternal separation from God. No, he was interested in showing people who they really were to God, and that they were loved eternally, but that they had to leave their former way of living, or to "take up their cross," to follow him.
You simply cannot have the real Jesus without biblical truth. Jesus literally was the word of God incarnate:
"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth," -John 1:14.
Although Jesus was all about love and showed us how everyone is invited to be with God for all of eternity, he also confirmed that he did not come to get rid of the law, rather, he came to uphold it. He was exposing the hypocrisy of the legalism that was rampant in Israel at that time and pointed to the love of God that they were missing as they studied and enforced the law. God's law and order did not go away when Jesus came to Earth; a Jesus with all love and no truth, is not Jesus at all:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." -Matthew 5:17-19 NIV
Jesus Christ was the only one in the history of the world who loved perfectly, as the Son of God he has eternally been in perfect relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. As we look at Jesus, we should be drawn in by his love and by seeing what it looks like to live a life grounded in that perfect love, fulfilling all of the requirements of the law perfectly, as he was without sin. To follow Jesus will always cost you something, this is biblically sound teaching, but what you gain in return far outweighs all that you stand to lose in this world. As we look at Jesus in scripture, although we should be drawn in by his love for us, we should also be compelled to turn from our former ways and pursue holy living, as he told the woman in this example: "...from now on sin no more."
'Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” ' -John 8:10-11 ESV
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