Seeing Jesus for who He Is

I came across the quote by Mark Driscoll and had to share it. Mark, founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, is one of the leading voices of a resurgence of orthodoxy in faith and practice. This quote is about the person of Christ and how many in liberal traditions seek to minimize the biblical presentation of Christ.

There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity.

So often in our day we try to make Jesus into something that He is not, whether it be this loving do-good guy or as a weakling who could not stick up for Himself and that's why He got nailed to the cross. I'm really glad Scripture paints Jesus as King. Even in His earthly life, He was a carpenter, someone who did manual labor. Jesus was strong, able to go days without food or rest, and on Good Friday He was able to endure great suffering and flogging and still was able to carry His cross for a good part of the way.

Just some thoughts for today as we celebrate the Lord's Day. Who are you worshiping, the Hippie or the King?