A young man was helping his dad build a wood fence. The teenager’s job was to cut pieces to serve as spacers between the boards. His dad told him to cut an 8’ 2×4 into 4” sections and he needed about 200 of them. His dad told him to cut the initial 4” section and then use it to serve as the pattern for each of the other 199 sections.
But, just to save a little time and because he was a little lazy at the idea, the teenager used block #2 to serve as the pattern for block #3 and then used the third block to measure and cut block #4 and so on. Do you know what happened? Because he wasn’t using the original 4” block, each block after that was actually a smidgeon longer, at least the width of the pencil lead.
So after about fifty blocks, the pieces had grown to about 4 1/4” and then 4 1/2” and then up to 4 3/4”. Eventually, the dad took a step back from his work and noticed that the fence was not even! He got a little perturbed at the son for not following the pattern, the original. “ALWAYS go back to the original,” he told his now-educated son. “If you don’t, you’ll slowly go off.”
If we want authentic Christianity, then we need to get back to Jesus Himself, the real Jesus, the authentic Jesus. We must let Jesus reveal Himself to us as He is and not turn Him into something that He is not, something that we might want Him to be rather than Who He is. Of course, to turn Jesus into somebody He is not and then worship and serve the figment of our imagination is idolatry.
So, how do we return to the authentic Jesus?
- Let Jesus reveal Himself through the Gospel message. When John opens his Gospel account, he begins with these words: “The darkness did not comprehend” the light (1:5). Drop down to verse 11: “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.”
Why did the Jews, Jesus’ own people, not receive Him? Because He did not meet their expectations. Why did the Pharisees reject Jesus’ miracles? Because He was not who they wanted Him to be. Why did the apostles, after Jesus was crucified, go back to fishing? Because the death of their friend was not expected and they did not anticipate a resurrection. In short, Jesus was not who they thought He was, in a real sense.
We absolutely must allow Jesus to be Who He is. We’ve got to accept Him for Who He is and love Him for Who He is and follow Him for Who He is. Isn’t that how you and I want to be treated by our family and friends?
- Listen to Jesus’ message through His specially-guided followers. Jesus chose twelve men on whom to send the Holy Spirit to guide them to teach exactly what Jesus wants us to know in order to follow Him (Matthew 10:16-20).
For people who need to be built up spiritually, I frequently say, “Read one of the Gospel accounts. Just read Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.” But you will not, you cannot, get all the story if you only read about the life of Jesus. Jesus Himself told us that His disciples, His apostles, were guided by the Holy Spirit and we are to listen to them too. So, authentic Christianity, Christianity that is centered on Jesus Christ is going to take seriously the book of Acts and all the letters that were written by Jesus’ apostles from Romans through Revelation.
- Enforce the laws Jesus has set down (Luke 13:22-30). The point I want to draw to your attention is that word “evildoers,” the word that is used here in place of “lawlessness” in other contexts. To be an “evil doer” is to do something that is without Christ’s permission. Authentic Christianity is Christianity that enforces the laws that Christ lays down. To do things in the name of Christianity that is without His permission is to be an evildoer. So, in seeking to enforce the laws of Christ, we are particularly interested in what did Christ command of Christians in the first century that is a part of His pattern for Christianity?
- Do not make laws where Jesus has not made them (Mark 7:1-13). Jesus clearly teaches here that only He has the right, the authority, to design Christianity, making rules, regulations, and laws. If we want to have authentic Christianity, we do not need to make laws where Christ has not made them. That is the real Jesus – the one with all authority.
It is time to return to the real, authentic Jesus.
Paul Holland