Do you find this offensive?

Like Jesus’ first disciples, we, too, are faced with a choice. Will we follow Jesus in the way He modeled and commands, or not? Remember, Jesus said that “he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also” (John 14:12 KJV). So do you find this emphatic statement and his same-natured kingdom offensive?

Let us illustrate this offensiveness in a very practical way. How would you feel if twelve or seventy unlearned people, whom you don’t know and from out in the countryside, suddenly showed up, uninvited, at your church. Then, they started proclaiming out loud that the kingdom of God is “at hand,” casting out evil spirits from some of your staff, and trying to heal diseases and sicknesses of some of your members?

Or, let us put the shoe on the other foot. How successful do you think you would be in enlisting twelve or seventy people from your church to go out into local neighborhoods next Sunday after church services and minister the same miraculous works of Jesus to unbelievers? We suspect that not many modern-day, American Christians would want anything to do with this brand or type of the kingdom or Christianity. It goes so against the grain of our sensitivities, intellectualism, and desires for control. Most Christians I know would resist, just as many 1st-century Jews defamed and dismissed Jesus and his kingdom.

Guder notes that “The favored way to accomplish this over the centuries has been to diminish the historical particularity of Jesus by reducing him and his message to a set of ideas, an intellectual system, often connected with a codified ethic, and managed thematically within the church’s rites and celebrations.” This watering down makes our brand of Christianity “more compatible to our world and palatable for ourselves.” Sorry to say, and as Guder further adds, “the real and sinful purpose of reductionism is to back away from the call of Jesus . . . . to reduce the gospel, to bring it under control, to render it intellectually respectful, or to make it serve another agenda than God’s purposes” (Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church, 101-2).

Fact is, Jesus’ kingdom was and still is offensive, and frightening! Yet obedience and a faithful witness to this same-natured kingdom and its King by Jesus’ first followers in that 1st century, along with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, proved world-transforming. Luke records that “In this way [not in some other way] the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power” (Acts 19:20; also see 5:12-14 – emphasis added). Consequently, they were accused by their opponents of “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). Today, it seems the other way around—the world is/has turned the Church upside down.

Source:

1A Once-Mighty Faith (future book – est. 2014-2015) by John Noe