Some 2000 years after He died, Jesus is still a very newsworthy person. Google news on the internet has over 12000 links to Jesus as a keyword in the last 30 days. Mel Gibson just released a new version of his movie called “The Passion: Recut” this past Friday, praised by some, condemned by others. Jesus is controversial, different people have diametrically opposed views on him. Who was this Jesus? How should we think about Him? How can we sort out the conflicting opinions that people have of Him?
Many people think that Jesus was a good teacher, but he never claimed to be God. They think that he is just one of many religious leaders that point us toward the truth about God. Where does that kind of thinking come from? Well, it comes from thinking without accurately considering the evidence.
The classic example of this in the last few years is illustrated by the Jesus Seminar. The Jesus Seminar is a small group of biblical scholars who joined together to discover who the historical Jesus really was and what the historical Jesus actually said. The scholars got together and went through the historical accounts of Jesus, the four Gospels plus the gospel of Thomas, and voted on whether the things that Jesus said were actually spoken by Jesus. At the conclusion of the voting, only 20% of Jesus’ sayings remained. What was the scholar’s criterion for voting? Simply their opinions, what they thought Jesus would say.
Just this month, March 2-5, the Jesus Seminar held their yearly conference in Santa Rosa, CA. The keynote speaker was the Rev. Jerry Stinson. Here’s a quote from Rev. Stinson:
“I think that the life of the historical Jesus, in which Jesus is a very human figure, points us in the direction of God. I don’t think Jesus was God, but I think that when we look at the life of the historical Jesus we can get some incredible insights into the nature of the divine … I think Jesus is one of a number of lights that illuminate the divine for us.”
What stands out for me in that quote is that Rev. Stinson uses the phrase “I think” four times in the space of a couple of sentences. Truth is not the matter of opinion, truth is what is real, truth is determined by evidence. Our understanding of who Jesus was and what He said is not a matter of opinion, we can know what Jesus said by reading the historical documents that record what He said. Those documents are the four Gospels, reliably translated in your Bibles.
In my message “Why Jesus’ Words Matter,” we’ll answer the questions: Why do the words that Jesus spoke thousands of years ago matter? How are they relevant to our lives? What can we learn from them? Did Jesus claim to be God or not?
To hear more about this topic, listen to my March 13, 2005 message entitled Why Jesus’ Words Matter