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A Different God, A Different Hope

"But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, 'We do not want this man to reign over us.'”
Luke 19:14

If you have gotten this far in Behold the Man, a theological discussion on the person of Jesus, you have proven to have great patience. The goal of this final chapter is to summarize the issues already discussed, with some added discussion of those issues using a more subjective approach.

To begin with, perhaps the reason Jesus of Nazareth is hated and rejected by so many, as was alluded to by the parable in Luke's gospel, is that he is a man. People do not hate Jesus because they think he is God. People do not hate God, since it is taught that He is both, (somehow) God and man: the Godman.

People have hated Jesus, and continue to hate him, because in their hearts they are of this mind set: “We do not want this man to reign over us."[1] In other words, if I may be so bold—and not to contradict the scriptures—people reject the idea that it is a man who is destined to inherit, to reign, and to be the judge of the earth. This was precisely the attitude of those in charge at the time who heard Jesus tell his parable. The very effect of Jesus’ parable is dependent upon the attitude of those hearing it. This was the case then, and it remains the case today.

The questions we ought to be asking are these:

Why did so many people hate Jesus? And more to the point, why did the religious elite, the lawyers of the law, and the priestly class, feel threatened by him?

Certainly no one, whether elite or common, believed or thought Jesus was God when he walked the streets of Jerusalem and the hillsides of Judea. Throughout their entire history, the nation named after God never expected that God (Yahweh) would appear someday in the body of a man. No God-fearing Israelite would have entertained the thought, at any point, that Yahweh would die a criminal's death upon a Roman cross. And who can you find, at any time or in any place, who would agree that it was Yahweh, the Almighty El Elohiym, who became cursed by hanging on a tree? The concept was utterly unimaginable to those of Jesus’ day, as it should be to us today!

The fact is the Jews (Israelites) throughout the last two thousand years have been held accountable on the charge of being culpable in the killing of their own God.

Charges like these are at best disturbing. But this is the lens through which history has been viewed. It is a history seen through the eyes of a Christianity that has embraced the God who was killed by those people whom He chose for His name’s sake.

But is this the reality we find in the scriptures?

Is this a truth the apostles believed and taught, and then wrote about in the letters they left behind?

More important, can we interpret the parables of Jesus, the Nobleman in Luke 19 and the Vineyard in Luke 20, to explain why the Jews have been blamed for killing their God? Would this be the correct and honest way to interpret these parables?

 

Why the man Jesus cannot be found in the Church today, and few appear to be searching for him, is because Jesus has been made God according to Church doctrine. If Jesus of Nazareth is God, then the accusation that the Jews killed God is correct. And if it was God who died on the cross in the person of Jesus, then there is no reason to look for the man.

Based on the scriptures, it is clear that the Jews (Israelites) were looking for a man to come, one sent from God, who would be “like unto Moses.” The one like Moses came to them nearly two thousand years ago in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He came to us as the promised seed of Abraham, the son David. He came “to his own” claiming to be “the Son of man,” preaching the gospel (the good news) of God's kingdom on earth.

When the end finally came, and because of the rejection of both himself and the message he brought, we see the man crying out to God to deliver him from the cup (the sacrifice of his soul[2]) required of him. In the end, Jesus of Nazareth, the man who was rejected and judged by his own people, was condemned by Roman law to die a criminal’s death. And just hours before that death, Jesus stood solemnly before Pontus Pilate, who exhorted a condemned and guilty world to "Behold the man."[3]

But the man cannot be seen, and has been lost to us, based upon the dogma of a triune God that has been carefully written into the great ecumenical creeds of the Church. If the creeds are correct, one can only conclude that the parables of Jesus do and must teach that the nation called after God's name did indeed kill God, or, at the very least, one member of the triune God.

 This gives rise to several questions:

What has become of the Jesus of the New Testament scriptures?

What has happened to "the man approved of by God?"

Where is the Jesus who came to us as a brother, our kinsmen, made like us, and tempted in every way a man could be tested?

And, but not least, where is the man, as noted by the apostles, who, according to the flesh, descended from David?[4]

 Some of the most important words ever recorded in the history of the world, were spoken by Pontius Pilate when he presented the now scourged and bloodied Jesus before the people: "Behold the man!” This was no accident, nor was it coincidental that Jesus’ last public appearance was heralded by such a pronouncement.

The significance of Pilate's words may well have been lost to the man who spoke them, but they have also been lost in the dogma of the Church that has made Jesus God. If Jesus is God, then Pilate’s words have no real meaning, and are just the reverberations of a lost soul.

And if Jesus is God, then there was no reason to “Behold the man.”  

I believe (here my subjectivism is coming through) that Church creed has made Jesus God, because, just as the parable teaches, "we do not want this one to reign over us."[5]

As evil and foolhardy as man can be, it is not his first instinct to reject a supreme being, an omniscient creator who has revealed Himself to His creation. But it is human nature to reject His servants, those whom He sends to express and reveal the will of the Creator. This was the case with Moses, as well as all the prophets who came after who spoke for God. It was certainly the case with Jesus of Nazareth, the prophet for whom Moses spoke, "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen.”[6] Few did listen; many others, as history has demonstrated, have not.

The parable of the Nobleman illustrates the natural heart of man, which clearly shows us the rejection of Jesus. In the parable, there was no reason given to reject the nobleman before he returned from having received the kingdom. As far as we can tell, the Nobleman was rejected simply because he was the Nobleman. Later, we discover that the Nobleman was “the austere man” who expected, “to take up what he did not lay down and reap what he did not sow.”[7] The story is pointing directly to Jesus as “the one to reign over us.”[8] And if we really believe the Nobleman is Jesus, how then do we respond to the idea of him as the austere man, the man who appears to treat his subjects harshly?

In our hearts—speaking to those of us who believe God—we know deep down that each of us will be judged according to our works. As the children of the Most High, we know how we have treated others in light of the laws of God written upon the human heart. To not murder, steal, or bear false witness against your neighbor are moral laws that need not be read from stone tablets for us to understand whether these things are right or wrong.

The laws of God are engraved upon the hearts of His people. It is that reality which separates us from the rest of the created world. It is that gift of the conscience that no other of God’s creatures possesses, speaking to us, excusing or accusing us. Even at our best, we often can be made to feel uncomfortable about our shortcomings before a perfectly holy and righteous God.

What really is at stake in the parable is this fundamental fact: Men reject and hate Jesus because God chose the Nobleman. At its core, the parable is the depiction of mankind rejecting what God has chosen. Man has, from the beginning, hated God for choosing one above another. We see this when God chose Abel over Cain, Noah over his neighbors, Jacob over Esau, the Israelites over the Egyptians, and so it goes. Clearly, it has always been this way.

Then why does man continue to hate and defy what God chooses? Why the hatred toward the God who is Sovereign over His creation? Does not God have the right to choose and do with His creation as He pleases?

In Adam's first son Cain, this defiance of God's will was revealed when he would not do what was right by following his brother Abel's example. “If you do well, will you not be accepted?”[9]

Why would Cain choose to not do what was right? Didn't Cain want to be accepted? This is the question which bears down upon every man (and woman) who comes into this world. It is the question that cries out for an answer.

The answer is found in the truth: Cain's will was ultimately bound by a deceitful and desperately wicked heart. And why was the heart of Cain bound so that he could not do what right? The simple answer is that Cain received his father’s (Adam’s) heart.

In John, chapter 8, Jesus addressed the issue of the human heart, the will from which flows the desire of men. During a confrontation with the Pharisees (the Jews), Jesus told them, “I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father."[10]

When the confrontation escalated, the Jews came back with, “We have one Father—even God."

Jesus’ answer to them is most revealing, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but He sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”[11]

Jesus was not implying that there is a fallen angel called the devil who has spawned children, or that the Jews he was confronting were those children. Whether or not the Jews understood that Jesus was pointing back to Adam and his son Cain, “who was of the evil one,”[12] is unknown. One thing is certain. According to Jesus, all men have descended from the first Adam, the evil one, and his son, a murderer. And perhaps there is another certainty in the case of Adam and his son Cain: The hatred they both displayed toward God.

 

Hatred for God, at the core, stems from man's defiance of the sovereign God in what man believes to be his right to exercise what is often referred to as free will. This defiance began with Adam's disobedience, when He reached out to grasp (steal) the fruit, in the belief that it could make him like God.

If man's will is truly free, and if Adam was truly free to choose between God’s command and the forbidden tree, would this demonstrate that Adam and all his progeny were autonomous from God? And if we are, indeed, autonomous from God, then our will would have the power to override His.

In reality, as men living in this world, do we not live our lives as though God is at the mercy of our will? And do we not live, day to day, as if it is we (man) who chooses God, and not God who chooses us.

In the final analysis, man hates and rejects God because it is God who chooses. God chose Noah to build the Ark, wherein eight souls were saved.[13]

 God chose Abraham to leave his pagan roots and become the one from whom the nations would be blessed.

God chose Moses to establish the nation of God, leading the people out of the bondage in Egypt.

God chose David over Saul, and promised him the "sure mercies."

And most important of all, God chose Jesus of Nazareth to be the savior of His people, the Lamb who would take away the sin of the world.

The natural heart of man, in its pride, hates the God who is the potter and is the absolute Sovereign over His creation. It is the natural heart of man that despises the inequality of God who makes one vessel for honor and another for dishonor. Perhaps it can be rightfully stated that it is the inequality of what God creates, and how God acts upon His creation, that man rebels against and hates the most.

The reason Jesus is presented as God in Church dogma has been dealt with to some degree, detailed earlier in the discussion of the great ecumenical creeds adopted in the fourth century AD and later. Church history is complicated at best, and biased at worst, depending on who has written the history. What is not so complicated is the understanding the people of God—the Israelites, and later the Jews—possessed concerning the God who demanded their absolute allegiance.

The God Who revealed Himself in the Old Testament scriptures is not, for the most part, the God of the Church today. In fact, if you are one of those who has spent serious time studying the scriptures, sooner or later you will come away with the clear understanding that the God the Church preaches and teaches is not the one you will have discovered in the scriptures.

In the ninth and tenth chapters in his letter to the Church at Rome, the Apostle Paul specifically explains in detail the nature of how God deals with His people. If you find Paul's words harsh or repugnant, then you may be in need of the new heart. The absolute truth each of us must accept, (based upon Paul's argument for those seeking the one true God) is that we are to approach God with the conviction that we deserve nothing from His hand. In simple terms, God owes man (us) nothing. He is the potter with the right to do whatever He deems fit with the vessels He has created.

 

In seeking to understand the God of the scriptures, we must turn to the Israelites, who witnessed the wonders and miracles when God delivered them from the yoke of the Egyptians. Even after all the people went through and witnessed, they continued to spurn God with their stiff necks. You may ask how that could have been possible. If you had been there to see the angel of death slay the Egyptian firstborn, and watch the Red Sea part, surely your loyalty and devotion to God would have been assured.

Would it? Do we need to be reminded that all the adults, twenty years and older, who came through the Red Sea and saw the wonders upon the Egyptians, perished in their unbelief in the wilderness?[14] For the Hebrews who penned the scriptures, it was they themselves[15] who testified to the failure of those who came out of Egypt with Moses, only to die before they could enter the Promised Land.

The Old Testament scriptures are the record of the same God who, in the cities of the plain, wiped out every man, woman and child, saving only Lot and his two daughters. The accounts go on and on about how God killed and or directed His people to kill those He deemed wicked and fit for destruction. The record states, without any ambiguity, that to make room for His people in the land God gave to them, entire nations were wiped out, giving rise to the deep-seated distrust and hatred of them that has continued for more than three thousand years.

One would be hard-pressed to find someone today who will agree it was Jesus who did these things—Jesus who did the killing! That it was Jesus standing beside Joshua when he crossed over the Jordan River into the Promised Land and took the land by the force of the sword. Yet those very same people will argue that Jesus is God, and God is Jesus, and that they are one and the same essence, always having been together.[16]

The Church creeds, with no scriptural support, affirm that the doctrine of the Trinity is a matter to be accepted and believed, and that the doctrine is essential to the saving of one’s soul. In the not too distant past, to disagree with the creeds of the Church would have meant a death sentence.

Few find it agreeable to discuss the blood that has been shed at the hands of the Church and in the name of God, the blood of those who disagreed with the Church. Whether Protestant or Catholic, the result has been a tumultuous Church history. But more important is the all but complete and total disconnect between the God revealed in the scriptures and the God of the Church today, based upon Trinitarian creeds.

 

The God of the scriptures is simply not the God being preached (for the better part) from the pulpits of a divided Church, and in the classrooms of institutions of higher learning that are principally found in Christian colleges and seminaries. This has been the case since long before America was founded.

The God of the scriptures was forsaken before Constantine the Great threw open the doors of the Church to his empire, making the Christianity it recently persecuted, the legal faith, and allowed a pagan populace to pour through those doors. In fact, the forsaking of the God of the Scriptures had taken place long before, by those people He called His nation, when He was replaced by gods of wood and stone. When the people did finally give up their stone and wooden gods, just a few centuries prior to Jesus’ arrival, they replaced them with a strict regimen of law.[17]

When Jesus arrived on the scene, his ministry was directed specifically at that nation. He spoke to the religious elite—those steeped in tradition and the Law of Moses, the leaders of the nation—in no uncertain terms, "If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, 'He is our God.' But you have not known Him. I know Him. If I were to say that I do not know Him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know Him and I keep His word." [18]

Imagine if Jesus came up to you and said that. How would you feel? How would you react? It was these kinds of encounters, always with those considered the religious elite, which triggered the animosity and the death threats against Jesus. In the end…well, you know what happened in the end!

If the God of the scriptures is not the God professed by today’s Christianity—which is comparable to Judaism in Jesus’ day—consider the context of Jesus’ words in the passage above:' “But you have not known Him."

If this is true, it is because Church dogma has not merely forsaken the God of the scriptures, it has also forsaken the promise of the hope found in the scriptures.

This question is forced upon us: What exactly is the hope of the believer found in the scriptures?
We now begin the second segment of this final narrative chapter.

 

Throughout “Behold the Man,” the concept of God desiring to create man in His image and likeness has been stated and restated. This was done in the belief that God's decree in the beginning, to create man in His image and likeness, is the foundation the scriptures rest upon, and so the hope of man.

What could be more important than to wake up from the sleep of death and be found in the likeness of God, to be one with God, and to experience the reality of God dwelling in the midst of His people?

The hard truth is, man was created to die. Every man who has come into this world, and yet to come, was, is, and will be born a mortal creature. In “Behold the Man,” it has been shown that Jesus of Nazareth was a man like you and me. Jesus was made in every way a man can be, vulnerable to temptation, grief, sorrow, pain, but especially he was mortal like every other man. Did he not die and lie dead in the tomb for three days?

The difference between Jesus of Nazareth and all other men is that Jesus did not sin like the first Adam, who believed that equality with God was a thing to be grasped. Adam, in the deceitfulness of his wicked heart (a heart of God’s creation), believed he could become like God by circumventing God’s commandment.

Not so with Jesus, as the heart of the promised one to come can be heard through David when he penned these words in a Psalm: “Then I said, 'Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.'" [19] The first Adam heard the law of God, but the law was not established “within his heart,” as it was with Jesus. The one viable and reasonable explanation is that God gave Jesus a heart bent upon doing the will of his God. If the fact that God gave to the one man a heart bent on disobedience and the other a heart bent on obedience becomes an issue of “fairness” to you, than surely the sovereignty of God has become its hostage.

Jesus did not come to us as the immortal God who somehow, in an incomprehensible mystery, put aside his immortality so he could die! Immortality is just that, it is the life-giving spirit, the state or condition which cannot die. Someone who is immortal and dies is simply a contradiction. To hold the belief Jesus was God, and therefore immortal and he died and lay dead for three days in the tomb, is a contradiction of what God is, a life-giving Spirit.

In no uncertain terms, the Apostle Paul states, “Yahweh alone is immortal.” Paul was adamant with his wording when he wrote that it is God, irrefutably, "who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen." [20]

The purpose of the one true God, who alone has immortality and who dwells in unapproachable light, was fully manifested in Jesus, who, as the last man in God's plan of redemption, became a life-giving spirit. As the Apostle Paul reminded us, “Thus it is written, ‘the first man Adam became a living being’; 'the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.’" [21]

The importance, the very magnitude of Jesus becoming a life-giving spirit, points us to the truth that Jesus was the forerunner, the first fruits of all those who are to partake of the divine nature. Through the promise of God, "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." [22]

One of the “very great and precious promises,” is “to partake of the divine nature.” The promise the Apostle Peter described is the great hope of the one who believes and trusts in the God who has promised His people that, upon their resurrection from the dead, they will awake in His likeness. This hope was expressed by the Psalmist nearly three thousand years ago. "As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness." [23]

The goal for the man God had in mind since the beginning was for him to ultimately be created[24] in the likeness of God.[25] This goal, in its purest essence, is the way to the Father. Jesus is the way to the Father, and he has shown us the way.

This is why he was sent into the world. Jesus is the only way to become like God, as Jesus is the living result of God's desire and decree to make man in His image and likeness! The true believer holds tight to the promise that, upon the resurrection, he or she will be conformed to His image and will have a body fashioned like His body. "But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself."[26]

Jesus is the answer to the question, "what is man, that you (God) are mindful of him?"[27]

The answer is the revelation of how God has rewarded the Son of man with all rule and authority given to him, the glorified man who currently sits in the throne of God as the express image of God.

 

 The true and faithful believer expects Jesus, who has gone away for a little while,[28] for the purpose of attending to his people as God’s High Priest,[29] and now stands as the one sole mediator[30] between them and God.[31] The promise with the hope is that Jesus is expected to appear a second time[32] to receive the kingdom promised him.[33]

 

Next Chapter

[1] Luke 19:14

[2] "You will not leave my soul in the grave," Psalm 16:10. The real or true sacrifice was the soul of Jesus, attested by the words of the Psalmist and repeated by the apostles, Acts 2:27, 13:35. Having said so, current Christian theology distinguishes between the soul and body, with the soul taught as being immortal. Regardless of the interpretations which abound concerning the body and the soul, Jesus and apostles taught that the flesh profits nothing in God’s kingdom, John 6:63 1Corinthians 15:50. The scriptures clearly teach two critical truths. First, the body of man is mortal, destined to die and to return to the dust, Genesis 3:19. The body must, therefore, be changed from mortal to immortal in God’s kingdom, 1Corinthians 15:53. Second, the LORD has spoken, “the soul that sins shall die,” Ezekiel 18:4, 20 Romans 6:23. The enemy mankind faces is the death of the soul, not that of the body. In other words, all men are going to die, i.e. the body, regardless, but it is the second death which is the true enemy of man. 1Corinthians 15:26 Revelation 20:14. The second death is that reality where the soul; the seat of the emotions and the appetites, that which is the man, in the final judgment, perishes, just as Jesus taught. Luke 13:3, 5 John 3:15-16. The hope to be found in the resurrection of Jesus is that God did not leave his soul in the grave to perish, with the promise to those who believe, with many who now sleep in death, 1Thessalonians 4:13, 14, that they too will be raised up in the newness of life. Galatians 6:15         

[3] John 19:5

[4] Acts 2:30, 13:23

[5] Luke 19:14 "this one" τοῦτον, is a demonstrative pronoun. Many Translations have translated
this pronoun as "man" i.e. "We do not want this man (one) to reign over us." Luke 19:14 ESV

[6] Deuteronomy 18:15 ESV

[7] Luke 19:21

[8] Luke 19:14b

[9] Genesis 4:7

[10] John 8:38 ESV

[11] John 8:42-44 ESV

[12] 1John 3:12 "We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother."

[13] 1 Peter

[14] Hebrews 3:16-19

[15] As the scribes/authors of the scriptures, the Hebrews, under the direction of the Spirit of God,
recorded the failures with the successes. Even the darkest side of the people God claimed for Himself was recorded.

[16] The Athanasian Creed (C.E. 500) reveals the strongest statement concerning the Trinity.
There were many previous ecumenical creeds that reveal the evolutionary process of the concept of a God in three persons. But it is the Athanasian Creed which has become the foundation Church dogma stands upon that defines the Trinity. And yet, the Athanasian Creed is one of the creeds of the church which is rarely referred to today, or even known, for that matter, among Church parishioners.

[17] It was almost always related to a case of law when the Pharisees tried to pin Jesus down in their encounters with him.

[18] John 8:54-55 ESV

[19] Psalms 40:7-8 ESV

[20] 1Timothy 6:16

[21] 1Corinthians 15:45

[22] 2Peter 1:3-4

[23] Psalms 17:15

[24] “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2Corinthians 5:17
 “For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” Galatians 6:15

[25] “As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.” Psalm 17:15

[26] Philippians 3:20-21 ESV

[27] Psalm 8:4

[28] Jesus uses the term "a little while" in the discourse in the upper room with his disciples, on that last evening.
 John 16:16-19 Also Hebrews 10:37 For "…yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay."

[29] "Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession." Hebrews 4:14 NAS

[30] "…one mediator…" There are aspects within Christianity that recognize other mediators, such as Mary, the mother of God.

[31] "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus," 1Timothy 2:5

[32] Hebrews 9:28

[33] "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!" Mark 11:10 ESV  See also Daniel 7:13-14 Revelation 3:21