The Jesus We Forgot

Why did Jesus come?

The truth we know may be our greatest crutch. It is often the beliefs that we’ve held that can block us from finding a better way or a deeper truth. Haven’t we all seen people following useless actions because that is how they have always done it? Now I want to ask you, do you have the humility to take an honest look at what you know? If not, then perhaps this isn’t the book for you. If you know the answers already, then I won’t have much for you, and unfortunately, neither will God. Yet, if you are willing to question yourself at times, then you still have room to grow, for the Christian life is filled with moments of humility.

Now tell me, what would you say was the reason that Jesus came to earth? The obvious answer, which was the reason I “knew”, was to save us from Hell. He came to die and forgive us for our sins. By His death we can now find salvation and when we die we go to Heaven. Now let’s take a look at Jesus’ last prayer with His disciples before He went to the cross. Being His last, you would expect Him to lift up those things that were most important to Him.

Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life.” – John 17:1-2

Jesus first thought was to glorify God. After this, we find what Jesus said He came to give to those who follow God: eternal life. There we are, our answer. Most of us can quote this famous verse.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16

Fire Insurance

Throughout my life, I had always felt we had something a little off here. We teach eternal life as living in Heaven with God after we die. We preach repentance with concepts like “fire-protection”, “you can’t pull a trailer when you die”, “not fearing death”, and “assurance of Heaven”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that these things are wrong, but that they seem to captivate too much attention. Have you ever had trouble convincing someone why they should become a Christian when you can only provide for the future and not now?

It’s like life insurance. Honestly, I would make a horrible salesman for life insurance. I feel like I would have to feed off the fears of someone dying to make a living. There are better ways to come at this, and I have a good friend who does sell insurance, and does a great job. I fear that I would get stuck on the dying part and not focus upon the good it can do. Guess I’m just not up to the challenge. In the same way, this is how I sometimes felt about witnessing to someone. Let me scare you to make you fear death in order to bring you to God. If you were to die, this is how you can protect yourself. That’s good news, but is it “the good news?” That’s what the word “gospel” means. In fact, I once heard a minister say that the actual translation of the word used for the gospel comes out to something more like “the almost too good to be true news.”

It’s as if we treat life like a game we might play. Eternal life is our finish line, and we need to accumulate enough points to make it there before our time runs out. Life may be hard, unfair and taxing, but at the end of this game is all the happiness in the world. All we need to do is just hold out until we get there. We may not come out and say this, but if you watch our messages and how we comfort others, you will see this. Unfortunately, this sells the gospel short.

What is eternal life?

Let’s take a step back to that passage from John 17. In verse two we find that to every person that received Jesus, God gave them “eternal life.” It’s easy to glaze over this and believe we know exactly what eternal life is: heaven. We mistakenly take the literal translation that eternal life is a life that never ends. In some translation of the Bible you will even find it translated as “everlasting life”. Now is when I ask you to broaden your view. Perhaps it is more than what we give it credit for. This is something that took me fifteen years as a Christian to finally catch. All I had to do was move one more verse on without my preconceptions.

Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. - John 17:3

Jesus definition of eternal life was not going to Heaven when we die. Nor was it living forever. Instead, His definition was to know God and His son Jesus, nothing more and nothing less. Imagine that. We often preach that salvation is coming back to God so that we may go to Heaven; yet, I don’t believe that was Jesus’ primary goal. One of them, for sure, since it’s all caught up together, but perhaps not the primary one. Jesus came that we might know God. Now, I want to be very clear on this next point. This is not that we come to know Him when we reach Heaven, but that we may know Him now. We can have an intimate relationship with Him now. Eternal life begins right now, and not at our physical death.