Today's Christianity has lost sight of the 'real' Jesus

Kate Fehler

Jesus. Never has a name invoked so much outrage, hostility and curiosity. Outrage when it's used as a swear word. Hostility when it's used as a challenge to belief. And curiosity because, well, who is this Jesus anyway? There seem to be a lot of different views about him, how do we know which one is right? Sometimes it's just apathy - why all this fuss about a man who died 2,000 years ago? Surely he has no relevance to us today?

There are lots of images of Jesus around. He is a helpless baby born in a manager, a political revolutionary, a magician, a story-teller, a good teacher, a meek and mild man with sandals and a long beard, dressed in white. Some people think that the church has got him completely wrong. In his bestselling book The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown claims that "the early Church literally stole Jesus from his original followers, hijacking his human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity... to expand their own power."

Why is it that people just can't agree on Jesus? And does it matter? Robert Winston, in his book "The Story of God", compares a mortal view of Jesus with a divine one, saying of the latter: "It is that vision, of Jesus the Son of God, whose death invites all men into an everlasting life, that makes him relevant for over two billion people on this planet. Whether that rendition is based entirely on fact or partly on myth perhaps, in the end, does not really matter."

Well, I would argue that it does matter, it matters a lot, what you think about Jesus. The Bible tells us that our entire eternal destiny rests on the decision that we make about his man. In John's gospel, chapter 5, Jesus says "Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgement, but has passed from death to life." And earlier in chapter 3 verse 16, possibly one of the most famous verses in the Bible, Jesus says "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes him should not perish but have eternal life."

Why did Jesus come? He did not come to show us how to be good, how to work our way back into God's good books. Because deep down we all know that we don't live up to our own expectations, let alone those of a perfect and holy God. However hard we try we cannot be good enough for God. But Jesus came to repair our broken relationship with God by dying instead of us. He paid the price for everything we have ever, and will ever do wrong. He promises that if we believe in him, we will enjoy eternal life. And this is a free gift, totally undeserved, requiring us only to accept it and believe.

The Jesus that the Bible presents to us is clear, challenging and unpopular. He was misunderstood by the church leaders of the day, by the general public, and even by his closest friends. He was rejected to such a degree that he was executed as a criminal on a Roman cross. He did not give the people option to sideline him as a good moral teacher. You were either for Jesus or against him. It's the same for us today. As C S Lewis writes: "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic - on a 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 patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

So what do you make of Jesus? It matters, it really matters. It's something you need to consider properly. Before you write him off, go and read one of the gospels, one of the eye-witness accounts of the things he said and did. Make an informed decision. It's the most important decision you'll ever make.