Why Jesus?

[HKHaugan]

Why Jesus?

When you think about the condition of the world around you, the political, social and economic division that is crippling human growth and maturity, you can’t help but ask, ‘Why Jesus?' After all, let's be reasonable. Why can't we just sit down and be civil human beings, discuss and solve our issues whatever they are by ourselves? With all that we have developed in technology and the social sciences it seems logical that, instead of war, peace would prevail. What is there in us, that conflict within and without that takes shape in almost everything we do? War becomes the inevitable answer to settling problems, the interpersonal conflict that can't be overcome through sharing and desire to do better. We all want the better not the worse. We all want acceptance and love, not hate and separation. Isn't the desire for goodness and peace sufficient to overcome all this mess the world is in?

That's what the situation is when I look outside my self. Why can't they...oh yes...they...they...I don't have a problem, they do. I don't have any problem at all. I'm a good person. Good people desire right therefore it should prevail. If everyone thought like I did we wouldn't have any problems at all. It's the same old thing again. It's their fault. Well it is, isn't it? I'm not a thief, a bank robber, a murderer, a swindler. I don't get drunk, use drugs, beat my wife or even get mad when things don't go my way. Oh, I might get a little upset now and then but my heart is in the right place.

But that raises another question in me. I guess if I really think about it what is there about the way my mind works.  Why do I find I have to keep justifying myself all the time? OK, so I got angry last night and said some stupid things that upset a friend. Couldn't he understand what I was saying? True, the other night I did slam the door on the way out but it's women and their emotional stuff. They just don't understand us men. No one seems to get it.

I hate it when they don't have more understanding especially since I'm on my way to a meeting with important people who could fire me if they wanted. So much depends on my giving the right impression. Actually I'm shaking in my boots on this presentation I've got to give. What if they don't like it? OK, so I'm afraid. Well, who wouldn't be?

Why Jesus? The real problem is me and the way I look at life and respond to the world around me. There is not a single human being who does not have this need to blame someone or something outside themselves for what is going on around them. There is no one who does not end up attempting rationalize and justify their personal thought and behavior. There is no one who is not alone even in the midst of a family or friends or a crowd. Everything we do is processed alone in the individual mind and heart.

That attempt to shift the blame, to accuse, to escape personal responsibility, to rationalize and justify the self is called sin.

What makes all of this even more of a problem is that everything we do is motivated 100% by what we can't see. This is true of every single human being. We are functioning totally alone in this individual body in which we live. No one can really get in it and we can't get out of it except by death. Every thought and emotion in us is governed by unseen forces within and without. I may live in me but I don't really understand myself or all the stuff that drives me.

While we've concentrated on blame and fear, self rationalization and self justification, that's not all. We're always trying to make a good impression even though we may say things and do things to fit in, the things that we don't like but do anyway. Things that build our guilt factor and we shove down inside. We are alone, we are afraid, we rationalize, we justify and we hide just like Adam did. We don't let that stop us. We have that 'whatever-it-takes' attitude. Again, all this is the nature of sin. It's the invisible infection in our 100% internal invisible environment. That's our individual life in this world.

So let's ask that question again: “Why Jesus?”

He didn't come to save the world, or nations or churches or religions. He came to rescue individuals, persons, you and me, the alone 'I' in each of us, from the sin that drives our engines! He came to touch and recover each heart, each mind and each spirit to trust Him, His mind and heart and Spirit. This is when the world is changed, one heart at a time. A changed heart changes the environment in which that heart lives.

This is the way He did it: He who knew no sin became a man, a human being in the flesh, just like us, with all the temptations to rationalize His responses, justify Himself and blame everything outside Him for the rejection and judgment He received from His family, His religion, His community and even His friends. He went through all of this alone without sin. He was sinless. He was never afraid, blaming, regretting or remorseful. The one thing that was different from us in Him was His perfect faith. He believed His Father and what His Word promised. He trusted His Father moment by moment in everything He did. He had faith in His Father by the Holy Spirit who raised Him from the dead.

That is why Jesus is a personal Savior, a person to person relational Redeemer and a moment by moment Lord who lives in our heart by the same faith He died and rose to give us. When He said on the Cross, “Father into your hands I commit my Spirit” it was the vertical beam of the Cross that returned us to the Father. When He said from the same Cross, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” He was offering eternal life to everyone who saw and heard Him as well as all those in the future who would see Him and hear Him, it was the horizontal beam. His heart was the intersection for the mind and the spirit right there in the middle reaching up and out for all and to all at the same time.

Now let's ask that question again, “Why Jesus?” and give it an even more powerful follower, “Why not Jesus?”

But still from top to bottom and side to side, the Cross is that juncture of the two beams where our gaze always reaches its inevitable destination, the heart of the One who makes eternal life possible. Jesus’ heart gave all to all for all in all.

“You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had, who though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature. He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross!
As a result God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow—in heaven and on earth and under the earth—and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father (Php.2:5-11 NET).”