JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

300
"Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.
He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty,
and then for three years He was an itinerate preacher. He never owned a home.
He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never
went to college. He never put his foot inside a big city. He never traveled two
hundred miles from the place where He was born. He never did one of the things
that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself . . . While
still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against Him. His friends ran
away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went
through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves.
While He was dying His executors gambled for the only piece of property He
had on earth—his coat. When He was dead, He was taken down and laid in a
borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is the centerpiece of
the human race and the leader of the column of progress. I am far within the mark
when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever were
built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put
together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as that
one solitary life."29
Mahatma Gandhi's earlier statement concerning the indifference to the historicity of Jesus
sounds strange to Christians whose Bible makes the historical Jesus, and one's response to Him,
the issue of eternal life and eternal death (damnation).
"I have never been interested in a historical Jesus. I should not care if it were
proved by someone that the man called Jesus never lived, and that what was
narrated in the Gospels were a figment of the writer's imagination. For the
Sermon on the Mount would still be true for me."30
Such indifference to the historicity of Jesus is nonsensical from a Christian standpoint.
Not only in the Sermon on the Mount, but throughout all His teaching, Jesus frames the issue in
such a way that the question of who He was and is cannot be avoided.
We are not asked to simply accept His teaching, but to accept Him. This is true even in
the Sermon on the Mount which so often is used as a pretext for claiming that who Jesus was is
un-important. He refers to Himself in this famous Sermon as the Judge on the Day of Judgment
who will be standing at the gate of heaven allowing only those who can pass His judgment to
"enter the kingdom" (Mt 7:21-23).
Our primary purpose, therefore, is not to find a religion or believe a doctrine, but to have
a personal encounter with a Person—Jesus Christ. Not a voice among many voices, but the
Voice. Not a teacher among many teachers, but the Teacher. Not a gate among many gates, but
the Gate. Not a road among many roads, but the Road. Not a savior among many saviors, but the
Savior. Not a lord among many lords, but the Lord. Not a king among many kings, but the King.