The Me-Jesus

Lately, I’ve been struggling with the horror of just how easily deluded we are.  Knowing Jesus the way I know Him now, I look back over the course of my life and wonder who I was really following for the most part of it.  I believed in Jesus, but I wasn’t following Him because I was living my life the way I wanted to.   I went to church every now and then, when I felt like it or had time.  I had never really read the Bible for myself.  I read a Scripture here and a Scripture there, when I needed something like peace or happiness or hope.  God was my medicine when I needed it, and my silent co-pilot when I didn’t.  It was only during times of desperate need that I really sought God with all my heart, but then things would get better and I’d fall right back into my life of self-sufficiency.  The other night, as I contemplated our tendency toward self-delusion, I wondered, “Jesus, if I wasn’t following you all those years, then who was I following?”  Then the reality of my own self-delusion came crashing in like a tidal wave, because I immediately realized if it wasn’t Jesus I was following, then it was myself.  It was me.  I believed in Jesus but I was following me.  And it all made sense.

The reason the Me-Jesus was so real and so familiar, so comfortable and easygoing, was because it was me and everything I wanted God to be, so I made Him in my own image.  An image that didn’t ask me to change.  An image that didn’t cost me anything.  An image that didn’t require me to deny myself or face my flaws or admit my sins or turn away from them.  All those years I had been following the Me-Jesus.  All those years it was the Me-Jesus who assured me that I was following the real Jesus.  And then I read the Bible for myself, the whole thing, and I realized that I didn’t know God at all.  I only knew who I had made Him out to be all those years—a God who was patterned after my own likes and dislikes, my own understanding of the world and what was right and what was wrong.  I didn’t fear God because my god was myself.  It wasn’t until I read the Bible that I began to understand the paradox of God being both fearsome and approachable.

That’s the problem when we convince ourselves that we can have a relationship with God without reading the Bible or being in fellowship with other Christians.  The Bible is critically important to the life of a Christian because that’s what God has given us to keep us on the right path.  The Bible is what got me on the right path, because I had heard people preach messages from it all my life, but it wasn’t until I read it for myself that I truly began to understand God as a person and what He is like…..for better or for worse.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to hear good teaching from Scripture, but the key word here is “Scripture.”  God promises us that the Holy Spirit will guide us in all understanding if we ask Him and seek it in humility.   And one thing that you will understand when you read the Bible is that all of God’s plan throughout human history was to save us from sin.  It was sin that separated us from Him, it was sin that corrupted all of creation, it was sin that brought death and sorrow into the world, and it was sin that made it necessary for God to leave heaven, become a human being, and allow his own creation to spit in his face and flog him before He hung on the cross and suffered for six hours before He died.  It was sin that crucified Jesus Christ.  We are enslaved to sin, it is part of who we are, and God knows that, so He gave us a way to be set free from it.  He gave us a way to become a new creature where sin is no longer a part of who we are.  That way is trust in Jesus Christ and a desire to turn away from sin and back to God to be in relationship with Him.

The thing that the church needs to understand now, more than ever, is that when Jesus comes back, He is coming back to judge the world for its sin.  Acts 17:30,31 says that God “overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, He now commands all men everywhere to repent. For He has set a day when He will judge the world in righteousness” by Jesus Christ.  Psalm 96:13 says, “He is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the people with His truth.”   Psalm 50:3,4 says, “Our God comes and will not be silent! A fire devours before Him, and a tempest rages around Him. He summons the heavens above, and the earth, that He may judge His people.”  Revelation 19:11 gives us a picture of what the Jesus of the Bible will look like when He returns, “With righteousness He judges and wages war. He has eyes like blazing fire, and many royal crowns on His head.”  This is not the Me-Jesus who was okay with my lackadaisical Christianity, because lackadaisical Christianity has no power to deliver from sin, and thus no power to give eternal life.  God wants us to have eternal life so that we can be with Him forever, but it will cost us our Me-Jesus.  The Jesus of the Bible demands trust, self-denial, and obedience, and in exchange we partake of His divine nature, we receive His holiness, and we gain eternal life.  The Jesus of the Bible was crucified to set us free from sin, therefore this means we must crucify our Me-Jesus to be set free from our own delusion.

So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am about to vomit you out of My mouth!...you do not realize you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked...those I love, I rebuke and discipline, therefore be zealous and repent. (Rev 3:16-19)

The Spirit is the one who gives life. Human strength can do nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. However, there are some of you who do not believe. (John 6:63,64)

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and weep. Turn your laughter to mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you. (James 4:7-10)

And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and was raised again. (2 Cor 5:15)

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit...(1 Pet 3:18)

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. Through these He has given us His precious and magnificent promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, now that you have escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Pet 1:4)