Dealing with Davinci

West Side Church of Christ

Meet the Real Jesus

Have you ever met someone who just couldn’t watch a T.V. until he figured out how all of it worked?
Many people will react to Jesus in the same way; they just will not follow him until they have him all figured out.
I for one am a ‘Thomas-type’ Christian.
I am always feeling a need for ‘proof’.
The fact is faith must eventually win over my need for proof. To borrow the message from Jesus to Thomas: ‘Do not disbelieve, but believe.’ (John 20:27)
One can discover all the ‘facts’ there is to discover and still choose not to believe. Engaging in an argument with someone to try to force his or her belief in something is not fruitful.
Admission of honesty for the believer: only the future will either confirm or disconfirm the Bible’s claims.
Put another way: unless Jesus Christ returns and judges the world, the Bible’s claims are invalid!
Faith is needed before that time comes!

Who is the real Jesus?
Is it the Jesus of faith, who still assists (even if only psychologically) the faith’s adherents or is it some Jesus of ‘history’ who some assert has to be different than the Jesus of faith?
Or, is the Jesus of faith the Jesus of history who in turn is the real Jesus?

One of the foundations of the Christian faith:
John 3:16—Jesus the divine! God’s Son has been given in order to give life!
How given?
As a sacrificial Lamb—John 1:29
How does he give life?
He lives again—John 14:1-4

From last lesson:
the followers of Jesus were claiming this about him long before Constantine and the council of Nicea)
Is this historical revisionism or are there persuasive reasons to believe?

Da Vinci Code’s claims:
‘Robert Langdon: every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith—acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.’ (p.369)
‘Leigh Teabing’s character: Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false’ (p.255)
‘Teabing: Jesus Christ was a historical figure of staggering influence, perhaps the most enigmatic and inspirational leader the world has ever seen.’ (p.251)
‘Teabing: Many scholars claim that the early church literally stole Jesus from his original followers, hijacking his human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power.’ (p.253)

Notice one of the things the Da Vinci Code admits:
‘Teabing: at this point in the gospels Jesus suspects he will soon be captured and crucified.’ (p.261)

One thing the DVC doesn’t deal with:
Why on earth was Jesus crucified to begin with?

One of the things that will sometimes be used against the traditional claims made by the church is the fact that it seems everyone else is so ‘inclusive’ while Christianity is so ‘exclusive’.

Many have nice things to say about Jesus:
Muslims & Bahai’s consider Jesus to be a great prophet sent from God.
Hindus, Buddhists & atheists find many of Jesus’ teachings respectable.
Yet, Christians go further and because they go further, they in turn must become exclusive.

The four traditional gospels and Paul! (See the appendix at the back of the lesson book dealing with all 27 books and their message about Jesus)
Paul is the earliest of our ‘traditions’ about Jesus. The four gospels are the only ones that can be traced back with certainty to be first century documents (see last lesson’s notes) and therefore they were not competing with other so-called gospels.

1 Corinthians 15:1-8—coupled with the teachings of the gospels:
Jesus actually died—Mark 15:37
The Romans made sure he died—John 19:34,35, Mark 15:44,45
He was buried/placed in a tomb—Mark 15:46
3 days later his tomb was no longer occupied—John 20:8,9
His opponents did not dispute this fact—Matthew 26:11-13, notice vs.15 (even when this gospel was written, the opponents were still not disputing an empty tomb but giving an alternative theory)
His followers claim to have seen him (at least 515 by Paul’s account—1 Cor.15:1-8)
His followers are willing to die for him (2 Timothy 2:11-13)

What is the only conclusion Paul could make? Romans 1:3,4
Jesus though born as a human was finally declared to be God’s Son!

Did Jesus ever claim special status?
John 8:19, 10:30-36, and 14:9-11à John 1:1,2

No-where does Jesus ever deny what his followers were claiming about him!!

Our main question:
What must have happened to explain the rise of the early church, the writing of the Bible as we have it, the willingness (at times the eagerness) of the early church martyrs and the persecution from those outside the community of the faith?

Listen to the words of St. Ignatius around the time of 110 A.D. prior to his martyrdom as he pleads with the church at Rome to not beg or even pray for his release from the death sentence:
‘Bear with me. I know what is expedient for me. Now am I beginning to be a disciple. May naught of things visible and things invisible envy me; that I may attain unto Jesus Christ. Come fire and cross and grapplings with wild beasts, cuttings and manglings, wrenching of bones, hacking of limbs, crushings of my whole body, come cruel tortures of the devil to assail me. Only be it mine to attain unto Jesus Christ. The farthest bounds of the universe shall profit me nothing, neither the kingdoms of this world. It is good for me to die for Jesus Christ rather than to reign over the farthest bounds of the earth. Him I seek, who died on our behalf; Him I desire, who rose again for our sake…Permit me to be an imitator of the passion of my God.’

Listen to the words concerning St. Polycarp about half a century later (he was a friend of Ignatius) prior to his own martyrdom:
‘Blessed therefore and noble are all the martyrdoms which have taken place according to the will of God (for it behooves us to be very scrupulous and to assign to God the power over all things). For who could fail to admire their nobleness and patient endurance and loyalty to the Master? Seeing that when they were so torn by lashes that the mechanism of their flesh was visible even as far as the inward veins and arteries, they endured patiently, so that the very bystanders had pity and wept…..the proconsul said; ‘I have wild beasts here and I will throw thee to them, except thou repent.’ But he (Polycarp) said, ‘Call for them: for the repentance from better to worse is a change not permitted to us; but it is a noble thing to change from untowardness to righteousness.’ Then he said to him again. ‘I will cause thee to be consumed by fire, if thou despises the wild beasts, unless thou repent.’ But Polycarp said; ‘Thou threatens that fire which burns a season and after a little while is quenched: for thou art ignorant of the fire of the future judgment and eternal punishment, which is reserved for the ungodly. But why delayest thou? Come, do what thou wilt.’
(Both quotes from the Apostolic Fathers listed in the back of helpful aids)

What must have happened to explain this phenomenon?
There is only one highly probably answer (all other answers fall short of reasonable explanation):
The early church believed that Jesus Christ had literally/physically resurrected from the dead and was living a life not equal to any other!
In other words: it was Jesus who was alive again after death, but he was alive in a much different/more powerful way!

To those first followers:
Resurrection was not used metaphorically!
In such case, Paul should have written something like this in 1 Corinthians 15:17—‘if your faith is valid and if you are no longer in your sins, then Christ is raised.’

Christians believed that what had happened to Jesus following his death on the cross was precisely something new (it had never happened before and it hadn’t happened since) because dead people do not ordinarily rise!

The Jews believed that there was only one true God (unlike the pagans): Deuteronomy 6:4
Here now you had Jewish Christians worshipping and praying to Jesus as God—
How?
Why?
What must have happened?
Let us begin by noting a firm belief by the early church! (A belief doesn’t necessarily mean truth, but the fact is there is a firm belief)
These early Christians believed Jesus had risen after dying!
They in turn believed that Jesus then was the divine Son of God!
This in turn meant that glorification followed suffering for Him, things they were willing and at times eager to do—Acts 21:13, 2 Timothy 4:6
Persecution followed because these Christians had to be ‘exclusive’.
The One true God was at work through Jesus Christ! There was no other way, but THE WAY!
Christians could not even with fingers tied behind their backs say ‘Caesar is Lord’ when it was clear who really was Lord!

Christians then would live differently in the world, because they saw the world differently. They believed that the resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of God’s redemptive work in all of creation—1 Corinthians 15:23, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

But, why did they believe the resurrection had to have happened?
Why believe that their suffering and deaths would lead to glory?
Where did this come from?

The most probable explanation is:
The empty tomb & the appearances of the risen Jesus.

Only ‘empty tomb without appearances’ leads to views that claim the body is simply missing but not risen from the dead.

Only ‘appearances without an empty tomb’ leads to views that either we are seeing a ghost (a messenger from beyond the grave—see Acts 12:14,15) or they are ‘hallucinating’ (seeing things they wish were true).

Empty tomb & appearances which in turn results in resurrection belief and lifestyle leads to the view that Jesus is indeed risen from the dead—See Acts 2:29-32)
When we meet the real Jesus—
The Jesus of history meets us and each time brings us back:

We meet the resurrected Christ (John 20:17-18)

We meet the crucified Christ (John 12:30-32)

We meet the Christ who performed miracles (John 10:25)

We meet the Christ who preached (John 7:46)

We meet the Christ who is still alive (John 20:30,31)
Christian faith is not just about a Christ of the past but also a Christ of the present and a Christ of the future.
God has made him both Lord & Christ (Acts 2:36)
We see in Christ a radical obedience to God and a self-disposing service towards others and this is now a pattern for all humanity that leads to resurrection and glorification.
Authentic Christian faith is a response to the living God, whom Christians declare is powerfully at work among them through the resurrected Jesus. (Luke Timothy Johnson—1996)

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