Missionaries: Jesus as a Missionary and a Prophet

The following is comments on Sabbath School Lesson 4, The Son of God Among Us.

This week's lesson seems a bit Deja Vu... I'm sure it wasn't intentional but it covers in one week quite a bit of what we covered over 13 weeks during the last set of studies. Looking forward, it looks like the following two weeks will be along the same topic, with perhaps a review of the Discipleship studies from a couple quarters back thrown in to the mix.

This week's lesson starts off on an interesting step (Sabbath Afternoon, last two paragraphs):

As Adventists, we work from the starting point that the Bible is the Word of God and that what it says about Jesus is the truth, period. We do not have the time to waste on all the nonsensical high-critical speculations about whether Jesus really said and did the things the Bible says that He said and did. As Adventists we believe those things because they are written in God's Word.

After all, if we cannot believe the Bible, what can we believe?

I refer you to another blogger who posted some objections in regards to the above. This week's discussion at Good Word (Walla Walla University) I think is also helpful in regards to this.

My personal position is that the Bible presents evidence that reveals the existence and the character of the Word of God, the Son of God, who was manifest to the world in the person of Jesus Christ. God neither dictated to nor controlled the authors, or the process of its compilation. The Bible contains human thoughts about God and experiences with God, but it is not the Word of God. Each writer had an agenda or a purpose in putting together the words that he did. I believe the Bible presents a true, but not necessarily a completely accurate or precise, picture of God. (We see darkly, as through a fog...)

I think the lesson would have been much more helpful if, rather than mentioning and then dismissing the so-called "high-critical speculations," it provided some engagement with it. To simply mention and then dismiss smacks of arrogance, ignorance, and/or foolishness.

Better would have been to take the approach of Darrell L. Bock and Daniel B. Wallace in their critique and analysis of Jesusanity in Dethroning Jesus. They are conservative Christian scholars who affirm and defend the divinity of Christ. But they respect and find a place for higher criticism. They acknowledge both its strengths and weaknesses as it is applied to the Bible and how the Bible informs Christianity.

The practice of higher criticism actually has quite a spectrum to it. Some people practicing it are very skeptical about sources... Others are far less skeptical, using criticism to examine the proper historical context for biblical or other passages, but being open to any claims of divine activity that the text may make. Some claim criticism should be avoided altogether, but they fail to recognize that every reader puts the story presented by the sources together, thus engaging in criticism whether one recognizes the fact or not... It is a necessary interpretive exercise for any work claiming to present history. [17]

Now with what I see as the most problematic portion of the lesson out of the way, it's time to move on to the actual topic: Jesus as a missionary and a prophet.

In one sense Jesus was all missionary. He came from outside (or above, using Apostle John's words) the world to bring the message of God's loving character to the world (or below). But in another sense Jesus was also a prophet to his people, the Jews of the time. (John also writes that "He [Jesus] came to his own.")

Since the next two weeks appear to deal with more of the missionary aspects of Jesus, I want to discuss the prophet aspect of Jesus in the rest of this post. (This would be the Wednesday and Thursday lessons.)

Like I discussed in last week's post a prophet's mission appears to have been primarily to his or her own people. A prophet comes to a people who should know better. A prophet often comes to point out areas of life where behavior is inconsistent with knowledge, beliefs, and teachings. A prophet often comes to warn people of the consequences of continuing on a bad course. A prophet often comes to wake people from their self-delusions and laziness.

Did Jesus function in any or all of these ways? According to what we read in Matthew 23, Jesus certainly did. Jesus always had the most difficult words for those who professed to know and obey God. In v. 37 I read Jesus not only speaking of the past but applying the term "prophet" to himself and looking to what is about to happen to him in just a short time.

A true prophet fulfills these difficult tasks for just one reason: because he or she loves his or her people. A true love of God always manifests as love of people. Jesus came to be with his people because he loved them. Because he loved them, he didn't want to lose any of them. That compelled him to speak and act as a prophet to his people. Finally, Jesus chose to do the one thing that would leave no question in anyone's mind about God's character, his glory: Jesus chose to die, to suffer sin's curse. On the cross, through Jesus, God's ultimate glory was revealed (John 12:23-33).

As Christians, we may not (and do not) always agree on how we view and interpret the Bible. I hope, though, that we understand and believe the basic message of God's love for us as revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. I believe Jesus' prophetic message to his people was to remove all the baggage that had hidden this basic message of love.

I believe God is calling us to do the same thing today. If there are churches and professed followers of Christ that are actually obscuring and misrepresenting God's love, our prophetic call is to clear away the obstacles and level the paths. I believe we can only accomplish this when our knowledge of God and our experience of God's love are balanced. Both the head and the heart, both reason and emotion are necessary and must be balanced. One aim of discipleship with Jesus should be to develop this balance in order to be better able to reveal God's glory in each of our own lives.