Tag Archives: the life of Jesus

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Whole Story

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There are stories that emerge from the life of Jesus before he was old enough to tell stories of his own. Some are more familiar than others. Some are always written out of the school plays and pageants. The prophet Isaiah told of a child who would be born for the people, a son given to the world with authority resting on his shoulders. Hundreds of years later, in Mary and Joseph of Nazareth, this story was coming to life. The angel had appeared. A child was born. The magi had come. The ancient story was taking shape in a field in Bethlehem. But when Herod learned from the magi that a king would be born, he gave orders to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under. At this murderous edict, another prophecy, this one spoken through the prophet Jeremiah, was sadly fulfilled:

A voice is heard in Ramah,

mourning and great weeping;

Rachel weeping for her children

and refusing to be comforted,

because they are no more.(1)

While the escape of Mary and Joseph to Egypt allowed Jesus to be spared, the cost, as Rachel and all the mothers’ who did not escape knew well, was wrenchingly great.

Of the many objections to Christianity, the one that stands out in my mind as troubling is the argument that to be Christian is to withdraw from the world, to follow fairy tales with wishful hearts and myths that insist we stop thinking and believe that all will be right in the end because God says so. In such a vein, Karl Marx depicts Christianity as a kind of drug that anesthetizes people to the suffering in the world and the wretchedness of life. Sigmund Freud’s estimation is similar: Belief in God functions as an infantile dream that helps us evade the pain and helplessness we both feel and see around us. I don’t find these critiques and others like them troubling because I find them accurate of the kingdom Jesus described. I find them troubling because there are times I want to live as if Freud and Marx are quite right in their analyses.

I am thankful that the story itself refuses me from doing so.

The story of Christmas is far from an invitation to live blind and unconcerned with the world of suffering around us, intent to tell feel-good stories while withdrawing from the harder scenes of life. In reality, the Incarnation leaves us with a God who, in taking our embodiment quite seriously, presents quite the opposite of escapism. The story of Rachel weeping for her slaughtered children is one story among many that refuses to let us sweep the suffering of the world under the rug of unimportance. The fact that it is included in the gospel that brings us the hope of Christ is not only what makes that hope endurable, but what proves Freud and Marx entirely wrong. For Christ brings the kind of hope that can reach even the most hopeless among us, within the darkest moment. Jesus has not overlooked the suffering of the world anymore than he has invited his followers to do so; it is a part of the very story he tells.

In a poem called “On the Mystery of the Incarnation,” Denise Levertov gives a description of the Christmas story with room for the darkness and a mystery that reminds us that the light will yet shine:

It’s when we face for a moment

the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know

the taint in our own selves, that awe

cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:

not to a flower, not to a dolphin,

to no innocent form.

But to this creature vainly sure

it and no other is god-like, God

(out of compassion for our ugly

failure to evolve) entrusts,

as guest, as brother,

the Word.

The story of the Incarnation presents a God who offers the whole Word, who comes near to the whole story, not merely the parts that fit neatly in pageants. This God speaks and acts in the very places that seem so dark that no human insight or power can do anything. God comes to be with us in our weakness, with us in despair and death and sorrow, with us in betrayal and abandonment. There is no part of the human experience that is left untouched by God’s becoming human. And there is no part of human experience that God cannot redeem and heal and save. There are many Rachels who are still weeping—the poor, the demoralized, the suffering, the mourning. With them, we wait and watch, looking toward the God who comes into the very midst of it.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(01) Jeremiah 31:15, Matthew 2:16-18.

Ravi Zacharias
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Ravi Z

In the first chapter of John a theme begins which John will carry throughout his entire testimony. We read, “The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and he said, ‘Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’” What John is saying here and will say again and again is “Look! Look at Jesus.” In fact, he goes on to use this word fifteen times in his gospel. In the King James Version, it is translated emphatically, “Behold!” Interwoven throughout his stories of the life of Jesus, John repeatedly seems to stop and point his finger to make sure we hearers are getting it: “Look at this. Look at Jesus. This is astonishing. This is amazing. This is mind-blowing. Will you behold?” It is an appropriate question to hold before us as we take in the events of Easter: What are you looking at?

In one of my favorite hymns, Charles Wesley writes in his final verse, “Happy, if with my latest breath I might but gasp his name, preach him to all and cry in death, ‘Behold, behold the lamb.’” An account of Charles Wesley’s death tells us that that is exactly what happened. As he lay dying, he said those words, ‘Behold the lamb,’ and then went to be with the Lord. What is it that you are beholding? John wants to make sure we heed the call to look at Jesus.

In his gospel, John then goes on to give us several signs that tell us something of who and what this Jesus really is. Out of the many miracles that Jesus performed in his ministry, John deliberately chooses seven in order to give us a very particular perspective. The first miracle he recounts is the miracle at the wedding in Cana where Jesus takes ceremonial washing jars filled with water and astonishingly turns the water the red. Choosing this miracle, John shows us a sign of what Jesus has come to do. He has come to wash us, to give his red blood as a gift that we might be purified. John wants us to behold Jesus as the one who comes to bring atonement.

In the second and third miracles John offers are the signs of miraculous healing. In chapter 4, Jesus heals the son of a man in the royal household of Herod. As this man’s son lay dying miles away at home, he begs Jesus to heal him. And right there, Jesus pronounces the words, “Your son will live.” In chapter 5, Jesus heals the man at the pool of Bethesda, literally “the house of mercy,” where the man had come for years hoping for healing but could never attain it on his own. Into this man’s despair Jesus comes and simply tells him, “Pick up your mat and walk.” In both of these miracles, we find the healing Jesus offers reaching far beyond the private corners of faith and into the very public realms of reality.

In the fourth miracle John chooses, we are shown a picture of the abundance in the very person of Christ. In John chapter 6, Jesus feeds a crowd of five thousand by dramatically multiplying the loaves and fish. We are left with a picture of mind-blowing abundance, the Son of God demonstrating the fullness of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Also in chapter 6, the fifth miracle shows Jesus walking on water in the midst of a storm. The disciples are terrified, but Jesus gives them an extraordinary look at his authority, not only over the elements, but over all that would cause fear. Here, he says to them, “It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

In the sixth and seventh miracles John offers, we are given even further reason to thoroughly behold the person of Christ. In chapter 9, Jesus heals a man born blind and we literally see darkness illuminated by the Son of God. Here, John gives us another sign of what Jesus has come to do. Christ has come into a dark and broken and needy world, and he is the light of the world who shines in the darkness. Finally, in the seventh miracle, John gives us a picture of all that is to come in Christ. In the raising of Lazarus, Jesus demonstrates his authority over death itself. It is a sign of his impending resurrection, a sign of the resurrection to come.

Thus the question remains: Will you behold the lamb of God? John wants to make sure we see clearly the one who brings atonement, who shows mercy, who brings healing, who has authority, the one who tells us not to fear, the one who is abundant, the one who illuminates a darkened world and literally opens the eyes of the blind, the one who has power even over death itself. It is Christ. It is this Jesus who we do well to be looking at. Will you behold?

Amy Orr-Ewing is director of programmes for the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and UK director for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Oxford, England.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – A Commanding Mystery

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Ravi Z

Today the Queen of England will host the Royal Maundy Service at Blackburn Cathedral. She will be carrying out the annual tradition held each year on the Thursday before Easter, handing out 88 coins, to mark her age, to men and women in recognition of their service to their community and church.

For those who first experienced the events that would become the stuff of tradition, the day was indeed eventful.The word Maundy, derived from the Latin word “mandatum,” meaning commandment, hastens the words of Jesus Christ at the Last Supper:

“And now I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”(1)

It was the day the disciples received the command to love and had their feet washed by Jesus. Though perhaps in hindsight, it was the day they first saw the connection between the Passover sacrifice, their beloved teacher, and the Lamb of God. It was a day their eyes were particularly roused by the uniqueness of the humanity before them, their minds filled with history, prophecy, tradition—and mystery.

As author Annie Dillard once observed, “We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery.”(2)

In fact, Jesus is a mystery that has unarguably shaped all of history. A 1936 Life magazine article on the life of Jesus noted, “Jesus gave history a new beginning. In every land he is at home: everywhere people think his face is like their best face—and like God’s face. His birthday is kept across the world. His death-day has set a gallows across every city skyline. Who is he?”(3) The mystery of Christ, his life, death, and influence is both unmatched and unsearchable. Even Napoleon, in a conversation while imprisoned at St. Helena, acknowledged in Jesus “a mystery which subsists”: “He exhibited in himself the perfect example of his precepts… Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires, but upon what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love and at this hour millions of men would die for him.”(4)

But who is this vicariously human, divine mystery behind these concentrated words? I can think of no better question to ask on Maundy Thursday. And yet, as Ravi Zacharias states, the precursor to the answer is the intent of the questioner. Magazine articles and television programming and new books by popular antagonists may reflect curiosity in the man the world remembers this week, but do we want to know who Jesus was, who he is, beyond the philosophical exercise?

Perhaps that first Maundy Thursday, just before the Passover Feast, just a day before Jesus was betrayed, is a revealing scene for the honest inquirer of his identity. The story is recounted in the Gospel of John.(5) Jesus looks at his disciples, his friends, those who would soon deny even knowing him, those who even so, he would love to the end. And standing with those men, knowing the weight of the darkness before him, he took a towel and a basin and began to wash their feet.

It was a lowly job—and an oft-recurring job due to sandals and dusty streets. It was a job for a servant. But here, the menial task was instead performed by the master, their teacher, the Messiah they hoped would save them with force but instead would die on a Roman cross.

The mysterious truth of Christ’s identity is this jarring humanity of an Incarnate Son who still does what is analogous to washing soiled feet: with our deepest sorrows, our sorriest actions, our small attempts at being human.  Might we wake again and again to the enormity of Christ, human and divine—royalty stooping down to serve.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) John 13:34.

(2) Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, (New York:  HarperPerennial, 1998), 4.

(3) George Buttrick, “The Life of Jesus Christ,” Life, December 28, 1936, 49.

(4) Napoleon I, “Napoleon’s Argument for the Divinity of Christ,” Evans & Cogswell, No. 3, Charleston, 1861.

(5) John 13:1-17.

 

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Inimitably Broken

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Ravi Z

In John’s telling of the life of Jesus, Jesus is described as the kingly shepherd who lays down his life for his friends, the gate who lets in the sheep, and the lamb of God himself. So it is not without significance that John dates Jesus’s death on the day of preparation of the Passover, the day a lamb is slaughtered in remembrance of God’s passing over the Israelites in Egypt. Whereas Matthew, Mark, and Luke each describe a final supper shared with the disciples in the upper room, John hints at the consumption of a meal in the mysterious space after Christ’s death. In other words, the bread of life and Lamb of God is first broken and slaughtered so that the Passover meal can be seen in its full significance in a greater upper room.

This mystery of the Lamb after the slaughter is extensively heightened in the Revelation of John. Envisioned is a heavenly scene with one seated on the throne holding a scroll, and John begins to weep because no one is worthy to open it. But then one of the elders points to “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah,” “the Root of David,” the one who “has conquered.” And John sees between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered,” one worthy to open the scroll. John doesn’t explain how a lamb can be standing after it has been slaughtered. What does that even look like? What are we to do with such a creature?

For me it brings to mind the deliberately impossible demands presented by Jesus. How are we to be perfect? To live holy lives? To keep anger at bay lest we be guilty of murder in our hearts? It is a life we might succeed in trying for a time, but ultimately one we cannot remotely achieve. In the words of one theologian, “[T]he summons to a holy life, far from assuming its achievement, assumes quite the opposite: that God has acted and nothing can be done in response. The structures of existence are incapable of change or alteration, whether empowered by grace or not.“(1) Which is perhaps to say, the lamb was slain. Irreversibly, Jesus was slaughtered, his life laid down for his friends. And now, in a seeming incapable structure of existence, this slaughtered Lamb stands.

Professor John Lennox notes that when Scripture speaks of Christ as the Lamb of God, it is easy to think of it as something like a symbolic code. We read of the lamb or the lion and the recognition is instantaneous: The lamb is Christ. The lion is Christ. But John’s description of the slain and standing lamb slow us down, seeming to say not only who it is, but what it is. This is Christ as the lamb—that is, beyond the statements he made about himself, beyond the parables, beyond the imagery and symbolism with which Jesus spoke truths and turned categories on their heads. In this inexplicable picture, Christ is the overturned. John places Christ as the lamb before us, and he is slaughtered yet standing. For John, literarily at least, the way of slaughter is the way of victory.

This is not to say, as some argue, that our own suffering is a similar way to the victorious life or that Christ is calling the world to suffer with him at the cross. The deliberately impossible marvel of the slain and standing lamb is blurred when we attempt to imagine ourselves in any way able to reproduce it. We can no more do so, than we can reenact the Incarnation.(2) While it is true that John’s audience was likely to suffer for their faith, the slaughtered lamb is not encouragement for of a brand of discipleship that recreates Christ’s suffering as victory; slaughter is not the goal. On the contrary, the slain and standing lamb is the one weapon capable of tearing violence and unjust suffering entirely apart. This is not a symbol disciples are to learn to repeat or mimic; it is the very structure and feat of existence that allows them to be disciples. John’s description moves far beyond the slaughtered lamb as symbol. This is Christ as the lamb—the impossible structure of existence given not for the world of souls to mimic, but rather to take, eat, and drink paradoxically. This is his body—a slaughtered and standing lamb—powerfully, mysteriously, impossibly broken and given for the world.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Roy Harrisville, Fracture: The Cross as Irreconcilable in the Language and Thought of the Biblical Writers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 111.

(2) For more on this, see J. Todd Billings, Union With Christ, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011).

Alistair Begg

Alistair Begg – The Love of a Husband

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Alistair Begg

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church.

Ephesians 5:25

What a golden example Christ gives to His disciples! Few masters could venture to say, “If you would practice my teaching, imitate my life.” But as the life of Jesus is the exact transcript of perfect virtue, He can point to Himself as the paragon of holiness, as well as the teacher of it. The Christian should take nothing less than Christ for his model. Under no circumstances should we be content unless we reflect the grace that was in Him.

As a husband, the Christian is to look upon the portrait of Christ Jesus, and he is to paint according to that copy. The true Christian is to be such a husband as Christ was to His church.

•             The love of a husband is special. The Lord Jesus cherishes for the church a peculiar affection, which is set upon her above the rest of mankind: “I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world.”2 The elect church is the favorite of heaven, the treasure of Christ, the crown of His head, the bracelet of His arm, the breastplate of His heart, the very center and core of His love.

•             A husband should love his wife with a constant love, for in this way Jesus loves His church. He does not vary in His affection. He may change in His display of affection, but the affection itself is still the same.

•             A husband should love his wife with an enduring love, for nothing shall “separate us from the love of . . . Christ.”3

•             A true husband loves his wife with a hearty love, fervent and intense. It is not mere lip service. What more could Christ have done in proof of His love than He has done?

•             Jesus has a delighted love toward His spouse: He prizes her affection and delights in her with sweet satisfaction.

Believer, you wonder at Jesus’ love; you admire it–are you imitating it? In your domestic relationships, is the rule and measure of your love “even as Christ loved the church”?

2 John 17:9 3 Romans 8:39

The family reading plan for March 20, 2014 Proverbs 7 | Galatians 6