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MORE THAN A GOOD TEACHER #4
NO ABSOLUTION FROM ARISTOTLE
We received a letter a few weeks ago that was one of
the most anguished cries for help I can recall. A young woman was involved
in heavy promiscuity, and also heavy drug use. In fact, the promiscuity
was mostly for the purpose of funding the drugs.
But then a heartrending confession. This mother had a very small child:
a daughter who was something like 18 months, two years old. And in her
cash-starved desperation, there had actually been times when she permitted
some forms of sex that involved that baby girl. What that means, I don't
even want to think about . . . but there are tragic stories out there
that do go on all around us.
And the cry in these brief lines was for forgiveness. "Can God ever,
ever possibly forgive me for what I've done?" How could such a wicked
thing ever be wiped away? This mom honestly wondered if perhaps she was
beyond redemption.
I suppose the sins in the classic books The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and
the companion volume about a naughty boy named Huck Finn were much more
innocent. But their creator, Mark Twain, is said to have once observed
and oh so true:
"Man is the only animal that blushes or
needs to."
The existence of guilt, and the subsequent need for forgiveness is a powerful
ache that resides within most of us. In his book Confession and Absolution,
Jack Winslow describes a large mental hospital over in England, and the
director of the institution, who made this startling admission:
"I could dismiss half my patients tomorrow
if they could be assured of forgiveness."
What would it mean to this young mother, who has committed such a vile
sexual crime as to involve her baby daughter, if she could know that she
was completely and freely and fully and totally forgiven? To know that
all the record of her wrong, the stain on her record, had been wiped away?
What would that be worth?
In his book, The Contemporary Christian, John Stott describes a confession
coming from the lips of Marghanita Lanski, one of the great novelists.
This woman was also an avowed secular humanist, and she once said to a
religious believer: "What I envy most about you Christians is your
forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me."
But do Christians indeed have such an advantage as this thing called forgiveness?
In our discussion yesterday, we pondered the mystery of a Man named Jesus
walking around saying to perfect strangers: "You hurt your neighbor;
you cheated on your friends, but I forgive you." By what right did
He do that? And the Pharisees were absolutely right when they said: "Only
God can forgive sins." Which, there in Luke 5, Jesus countered by
immediately healing the crippled person who was seeking two new legs and
a brand new forgiven heart.
Maybe you believe that story; maybe you don't. But there seems to be a
link here. Forgiveness comes from God. Or from Jesus if He's the Son of
God. But only through Jesus because of Calvary. And only through Calvary
IF Jesus was the Son of God on the cross of Calvary.
If you take the Word of God at face value which we determine to do here
at this radio ministry there's abundant evidence to support this entire
train of logic. Here's First John 3:16:
"This is how we know what love is: Jesus
Christ laid down His life for us."
"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world."
John 1:29
That was John the Baptist, referring to Jesus. And of course we move over
just two chapters to the most beloved, most quoted verse in the world.
John 3:16:
"For God so loved the world, that He gave
His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish,
but have everlasting life."
Notice that John clearly specifies that eternal life which implies forgiveness,
of course comes from this only begotten Son. It does come from Jesus.
And furthermore, it declares plainly that Jesus, this Redeemer, IS the
Son of God. Again I say, forgiveness is linked to Jesus, but only to Jesus
as God's Son.
And this is the probing question we have to wrestle with, together with
each of you. What if Jesus was nothing more than a good Teacher? What
if the legacy of Jesus included great Gospel stories, and those marvelous
parables, and His command make that suggestion; a mere teacher can't
very well command that we love one another? But what if that were it?
What is at stake if Jesus Christ is, or isn't, more than a wise man?
John Stott's book has a chapter entitled "The Uniqueness of Jesus
Christ," which is a title we heartily endorse, of course. But what
if Jesus were just one of the world's great spiritual minds? Buddha certainly
was. His writings have helped shape the lives of millions. But is he able
to offer forgiveness? Here's what Stott writes on that question:
"Buddhism sees the human predicament in
suffering rather than sin, and in the desire' which it sees as the root
of suffering. Deliverance comes only through the abolition of desire by
self-effort. There is no God and no Savior. Strive without ceasing' were
the Buddha's last words to his disciples before he died."
"Strive without ceasing." Jesus, in
contrast, said to sad and discouraged sinners: "Come unto Me, and
I will give you rest." But was He telling the truth?
You know, there are some things we can be confident of just from history.
Fact: There was a person named Jesus. Fact: He lived in ancient Israel,
and taught and preached around the year 30 A.D. Fact: He was executed
on a cross by the Roman authorities, in cooperation with the Jewish leaders
of that era. Nobody debates those points. This is in all the history books.
But . . . did this Jesus die for our sins? Well, that's where you have
to step beyond the history books and believe in the Bible. You have to
believe what this Person Himself said.
Here's the sobering question: if Jesus were just a good man not divine,
not the "Son of God," but simply another in a line of men like
Plato and Aristotle and Buddha and then was crucified, what would it
mean regarding our sins? People in that era died on crosses all the time.
Three men that we know of died that very Friday afternoon. Did the deaths
of the two criminals, one on each side of Jesus, have any implications
for our sins? Did they provide any kind of forgiveness? None whatsoever.
But then, why would the death of the Man on the center cross be any different?
The answer, of course, is that it doesn't . . . unless Jesus is more than
a good teacher. Unless Jesus is the Son of God, the Lamb of God, the Lamb
sent from God, then His blood on the sand of Golgotha doesn't mean anything
at all.
This takes us into a topic we'll continue to explore further in our two-week
series: the Resurrection. The resurrection is what assures us of forgiveness
of our sins. It wasn't enough for Jesus to die on a cross; many people
have done that. He had to die, and then to live again, in order for us
to be guaranteed forgiveness. Why?
Jesus Himself always linked our forgiveness to His own death. He said
so many times.
"But how can we know that He was right,"
Stott asks, "that He achieved by His death what He said He would
achieve, and that God accepted His death in our place as a full, perfect,
and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of
the whole world'? The answer is that, if He had remained dead, if He had
not been visibly and publicly raised from death, we would never have known.
Rather, without the resurrection we would have to conclude that His death
was a failure."
The Apostle Paul emphatically made this very point.
If Jesus isn't resurrected, he writes, which of course links directly
to Jesus' divinity, His being the son of God, then "we are still
in our sins."
We have in our offices a very troubling book entitled Why Christianity
Must Change or Die, written by a theologian who has abandoned all concepts
of Jesus as a divine, resurrected, alive-today Son of God. To him, Jesus
was a good teacher who was tragically executed around 31 A.D. and that's
it. So what is "forgiveness" to this searching man? Here's a
direct quote:
"Confession is my being confronting the
Ground of all Being, and forgiveness is my moving beyond my limits into
something more real, more whole, more life giving than I can now contemplate."
There's no thought here of "Jesus paid it all."
"What can take away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus."
All that is out, if Jesus Christ is only a good teacher, a compatriot
of the Aristotles and Buddhas of Planet Earth.
In his book, Living Faith, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has an anecdote
which might have meaning to our friend, this young mother who was so desperate
for forgiveness. Should she just keep on? Should she "strive without
ceasing," as the Buddha advised? Here's what Carter writes:
"[My sister Ruth's] faith was beautiful
in every way. She loved people and devoted her ministry primarily to those
who had lost hope in life. No matter what had happened to them, whether
it was drug addiction, alcoholism, infidelity, or crime, she was able
to convince them to place the affliction on the shoulders of Christ and
in that way to overcome it."
On the shoulders of Christ. The living Christ. The
Son-of-God Christ, the only Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.
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