C. S. Lewis is the author of many famous books, including The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” – Mere Christianity, pages 40-41.
Purpose in the Savior’s Name
What’s In a Name?
In studying science, it has surprised me again and again how many strange names there are for scientific things. The vocabulary is often ugly: borrowed from many languages, then chopped and pressed into our usage. Look at a junk food label if you don’t believe me. One of my instructors often takes pains to explain the origin of these names. Sometimes they are named after the scientist who discovered it, sometimes based on appearance, and sometimes based on function. He always says he prefers a name that is explanatory rather than a technical catalog sort of name. The reason: it helps us to remember what that thing is, or what it does.
To the man on the street, the name of Jesus doesn’t hold any special meaning. It is just a reference symbol. For many His name is filler in a sentence. For some, a source of jesting and mockery; For others still, a distant historic name that has little personal significance; and for a number who call themselves by that name, “Christian”, it is a good luck charm. But the name of Jesus wasn’t chosen because it had a pleasant ring to it. When my wife and I chose our children’s names that was an important factor. How does the name sound when you say it? Can you picture yourself calling the baby this name? And what about when he grows up? And of course we practiced saying them, and comparing the sound of competing names from baby books. Not so with Jesus. God had picked his name and delivered it to Joseph by an angel. That name was not picked because of how it sounded. It was picked because of what it meant. It was picked because of Jesus’ job description. In our country we used to have names based on job description: smith, wainwright, etc. I used to work with a man with the last name “Goldsmith.” Jesus name fits his calling.
In Matthew 1:21 we read, “And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins.” The name of Jesus means, “The LORD is salvation.” He is a savior, and it is important to note that he will save His people “FROM THEIR SINS.” The whole purpose for the baby in the manger was to rescue sinners from their sins. And that is what He does. He takes people who are full of themselves, miserable because of their shameful behavior, sick in sin, and he rescues them…from their sins. What that means is that people who are saved by this Jesus are saved from their old way of life. Not saved to remain in sin, but to leave it behind. When Jesus saves a sinner he picks them up and puts them on a new path, a wonderful path of serving him.
That is my experience. I heard the story of the Bible many times, but when I really began to listen to the story of Jesus in my high school years, my sins began to look worse and following Jesus looked better and better. Most people that I speak to don’t see that they need to be saved from anything. Except maybe election commercials! And they’re probably partly right. But every time you say the name of Jesus you are handling a loaded gun. Jesus’ name has distinct purpose. It tells us about His skills, His purpose. His name is His resume. He saves us from our sins and reconciles us to God. That is why we pray in Jesus’ name, and that is why we baptize in Jesus’ name.
Most Americans say they believe in Jesus. Do you know anything about the purpose of this name? Have you been saved from your sins?
Did Jesus Have B.O.?
Did Jesus have body odor? A comic, perhaps, irreverent question for some. If it is a hard question to ask, it may be even harder to answer. The Bible doesn’t give any real ink to the subject of Jesus’ B.O. Yet this kind of question may be useful because it forces us to question our assumptions and beliefs about Jesus. What kind of man was He? If Jesus ever had a smelly day, that means He must have been very human, very ordinary. That means He must have worked hard and worked up a sweat. But coming to a realization like this may be a little shocking, like the first time you saw a school teacher at the grocery store and realized that they were “normal too.”
If we could rewind history and do a blindfolded smell test with Jesus and five other Palestinian men, several things would be immediately obvious. First, you wouldn’t choose this as a career. As Americans, we are pretty intolerant of funk. And second, you probably would not have been able to tell Jesus apart from any of the others by smell, or even by normal appearance. In fact, when Judas was carrying out the great betrayal, he led a small army of soldiers into a garden outside the city where Jesus and His disciples used to spend the evening. If the real Jesus were anything like the Jesus of medieval art, Judas would have said: “arrest the guy with the halo and the glow.” But Jesus could not be easily recognized from others, especially in the low light of the evening. So Judas gave a signal, “I will go up to Jesus and greet Him with a kiss. That is the one, arrest Him.” (Mark 14:44)
The Bible portrays Jesus as an extraordinary man, but also as a very ordinary man. Both of these concepts are important. More on this in a moment. In what ways was Jesus a normal guy? He grew up in a big family and He had a normal, working-class job in the family business as a carpenter (Mark 6:3). If He had pants, He would have put them on one leg at a time. He was so tired after a day’s work that He fell asleep in a storm-tossed boat. He walked almost everywhere He went. This produced the normal human experience: He was tired and thirsty and hungry (Mark 11:12). He attended weddings and feasts, and sometimes was criticized for it (Luke 15:1-2). He was betrayed by friends, criticized by the elite ruling class of His day. Often misunderstood, misquoted, and slandered. People used Him, and seldom thanked Him for His kindness. He was often tempted (normal!), but never gave in (definitely abnormal! Hebrews 4:15). The night before His betrayal and death He was lonely, and His closest friends stood Him up. He cried and prayed in His loneliness. He died a very human death full of pain, tears, bleeding, and loud cries. Then He was buried. After all this His friends cried and mourned. Scripture tells us how ordinary He was: “Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren…” (Hebrews 2:17)
However, this is only one side of the life of Jesus. If we only see His humanity, we will be just like the people who misunderstood Him. The facts of history record for us amazing things about Jesus. Those who heard Him said, “no one ever spoke like this man.” (John 7:46) He also performed miracles impossible in nature, because He had power above nature. He turned lots of water into lots of good wine (John 2:1ff). He loved His friends and His enemies. He said that He had the divine prerogative to forgive sins (Luke 5:17-24).
From his prison cell, John the Baptist sent someone to Jesus with a doubt-filled question: “are you the promised savior of the Old Testament?” Jesus replied, “Go and tell John the things you have seen and heard: that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.”(Luke 7:22) His own disciples were dumbfounded when Jesus calmed a storm on the sea of Galilea. Their response: “So the men marveled, saying, “Who can this be, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?” (Matt 8:27) So, from this perspective Jesus was definitely not ordinary.
So What? What’s the big deal with Jesus as ordinary yet extraordinary? Read the rest of Hebrews 2:17, which was quoted above: “Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” (Hebrews 2:17) Jesus had to be a real human being in order to suffer as a substitute.
This is the unpopular truth about Jesus. He wasn’t just a great rabbi who believed in humanity. He came to be the savior of humanity. All of us humans (yep- me and you) have universally made a mess of things. By selfishness and lawlessness we have worked hard to destroy our own lives and the lives of others. Jesus came to repair this. But even the good teaching of Jesus was not enough to fix things. Good examples are not enough. Committed leaders are not enough. The whole thrust of scripture is that we have incurred a debt to God by our bad conduct. “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) Jesus died to pay this debt. Here is a useful illustration: In terms of international finance, a debt must be paid in the same currency as the loan. Borrow dollars, pay dollars. Borrow yen, pay yen. Jesus had to be human to pay for the sins of humanity. “Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (I Peter 3:18). His death could pay that debt and bring us to God because He was very ordinary and very extraordinary. Hebrews 2:14 says the same, “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death.”
Here’s the rub: Jesus took on flesh and blood that he might change flesh and blood forever. If Jesus had B.O. it was because you and I needed a Savior.
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