Christmas Jesus–He’s Not Like That Anymore

For many Americans and millions of others our first introductions to Jesus were little nursery rhymes learned in childhood, such as:

Little Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child.
~
Christian children all must be
Mild, obedient, good as He.

Unfortunately, however, these oft-repeated rhymes, coupled with the baby Jesus we celebrate every year at Christmas, have etched deeply into our minds reductionistic and out-of-date visual images of Jesus.

In Your God Is Too Small, J. B. Phillips criticized “mild” as “the least appropriate” epithet for Jesus. It conjures up “a picture of someone who wouldn’t say ‘boo’ to the proverbial goose . . . . Yet it is this fatal combination of ‘meek and mild’ which has been so often, and is even now, applied to Him. . . . we can hardly be surprised if children feel fairly soon that they have outgrown the ‘tender Shepherd’ and find their heroes elsewhere.”

But here’s the shocker I have revealed  in my new book,The Greater Jesus: His glorious unveiling. “No longer is Jesus the sleeping babe in a manger we celebrate every Christmas, or the boy who played in Galilee, or the man they hung at Calvary, or even the lamb who died for you and me. No longer is He the earth-bound, historical Jesus of Nazareth we have come to know and love in churches around the world every week. Those traditional views are simply out-of-date and inadequate. Why so? It’s because He’s not like that anymore!”

In this my latest book I proclaim and document that the Jesus of today, the contemporary Christ, is much different and operates in far greater capacities than the historical Jesus most of us have worshiped  followed, and imagined.  I also affirm “that story is important, very important, but it’s also 2,000-year-old history .”  But “those traditional views simply fall short and people sense it.”

To discover what Jesus is really like and doing today all around the world—a greater Jesus than you’ll find in most churches the year around—check it out on this website and Amazon.com and “Look Inside” for FREE.