Who is this Jesus?

Today my niece shared on Facebook a beautiful photo of Jesus accompanied by a quote from 2 Nephi 25:26. The quote basically said “we believe in Christ” and my niece affirmed that this is indeed what she believes.

I’m pretty sure that her cross-posting is an attempt to help those who don’t know about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints understand and know that they too are indeed believers in Jesus, and therefore entitled to be considered Christian. This topic, as most of us know, has really entered the consciousness of our nation, as Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon, marches forward to become the Republican Candidate for President. 

It reminds me of another argument LDS folks make for being Christian when they say something to the effect of “well of course we believe in Jesus, His name, after all is in the name of our church.” Truthfully, LDS folks are quite offended and perplexed that we’d ever consider them anything but Christian when they so obviously embrace Jesus Christ, more or less as depicted in the pages of the Gospels.

I once read a clever analogy written by an acquaintance of mine about buying a truck. His analogy went something like this: I wanted to buy a truck, and I saw a truck that looked great to me. I couldn’t see any obvious problems, the price was right, and I was ready to buy it. However, he happened to live next door to the owner of the truck and knew that this truck was a real lemon. It had recently been to a mechanic who said it was on its last legs, and wouldn’t even last six months. To top it off, the body was full of rust that was carefully hidden by wax and a great detail job, so while I saw a few cosmetic defects, I was missing seeing that it was ready to fall apart. Would it be kind, or fair for my friend to not tell me the truth about the truck I was buying? The answer to that question is obvious.

The analogy applies here in that Jesus, and who He really is, isn’t just cosmetic either. He’s not an unimportant point in our religious discussions, but instead who Jesus is, is very probably the most important issue in our religions. Unfortunately it’s not really a discussion most LDS folks want to get into.

The LDS Jesus is a man who also is a God, the son of God really. He’s also the brother of Satan, and coincidentally you and I. The LDS Jesus is a man who is working and striving to learn and improve to achieve full-godhead so that someday He too can be a “God the Father” on another planet and another time.  The LDS Jesus is eternal only in the sense that his intelligence is eternal, just like all of our intelligences are eternal. In a very real sense the LDS Jesus is a man—very much like you and I, except of course that he’s perfectly sinless, and we, alas sin.

The Biblical Jesus on the other hand, is God Almighty (Is. 9:6) who also chose to be God with us (Matthew 1:23). He is eternal, and was always eternally God. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere all the time. He, in many ways, is indescribable and certainly can’t fully be understood by our finite minds. In short, He is God (John 1:1) and because He’s God, He really is too big, too awesome really, for us to understand.

The difference between the two is the difference between us and God, the difference between the finite and the infinite. The difference between a God who really is a man, with a man’s limitations saving mankind by their own works, and his sacrifice, and a God who became a man for a time in order to save us from ourselves.

It’s the difference really of limiting Jesus to His barest reality found in the gospels, that of a great, important, and even awe-inspiring man walking among men. It’s forgetting or ignoring those parts of the gospel that scream out that Jesus was not just a man, but He was also God, the God who walked among us, the God who could have called down 10,000 angels to fight for Him, but instead chose to die a horrible, cruel death on the cross and a death that none of us, no man among us could die because no man, no matter how noble is good enough to pay the price He paid.

It’s the difference that Thomas saw when he fell at Jesus feet and cried “My Lord and My God” (John 20:28) worshipping Jesus as God, as God Almighty, as the Prince of Peace, and as the Lamb who was slain.

It’s a difference that’s important; fundamental really.

What is "Our Part"?

Did you know that I could make someone real angry, really, really fast? I know it’s hard to believe about me, mild mannered mom and generally all-around nice person that I am, but it’s true. In fact, one of the ways I can tick people off faster than pretty much anything else is for me to tell a LDS person that they are not Christian. And, so in general I don’t make that statement—at all, even though more or less I believe it to be true.

The trouble isn’t that I’m right and they’re wrong, or even that they’re right and I’m wrong, but it’s all wrapped up in definition. You see, when LDS folks say they’re Christian they define that as someone who believes in Christ. When I (or someone else that I might agree with) say that they’re not Christian I mean that they do not believe certain biblical doctrines that are set forth so clearly in the Bible that their truths really are not open to debate.

As I read the LDS webpage entitled Jesus is the Way http://lds.org/plan/jesus-christ-is-the-way?lang=eng there’s a real good example of one of those differences. It’s in the portion of the article entitled We Have To Do Our Part, and says “. . . we have to do our part to overcome spiritual death. To be forgiven of our sins, we need to repent and increase our faith in Jesus Christ throughout our lives. We will not be saved simply because we get baptized or say we believe in Jesus Christ. It takes work. . .”

Now, no true Christian would disagree that there are things that God wants us to do, and doesn’t want us to do, and that a true Christian would live out his life trying to do, or not do, those things. In fact, as James so rightly points out, if we’re not doing (or not, not doing) those things, we should examine ourselves to see if we’re really Christians at all. But, the Bible is very clear that our works do not contribute to our salvation. Or in other words what we do, or don’t do won’t change one bit whether or not we’ve been reconciled to God if we’ve been reconciled to God in God’s way.

Paul is actually the apostle who talks the most about this concept and in Romans 4 he gives the clearest teaching of all about this when he compares us working for our salvation to having a job. Most of us when we go to work every day don’t do it out of grace: we do it because we expect to be paid. And, that’s just how Paul compares salvation, he tells us that if we work for it we get what we deserve, our pay so to speak. The trouble is that God demands that we do it either our way, or His way. His way is through putting our faith in His Son, Jesus and in His finished work on the cross. (See Romans 3 and 4, Ephesians 2, Galatians 3, John 3, 6 and many, many more verses.) Our way is to work and try to make ourselves good enough that God, or Jesus might accept us; to somehow do enough good deeds that our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds and somehow we’ll make the standard that God sets, even if by the skin of our teeth. (If we were Muslim we could choose martyrdom and then we’d know that we’d made it, but otherwise we’re always left wondering if we’ve lived up to God’s standard, no matter how “good” we become or how much “good” we do.)

And, this is where our own works trip us up. You see, the Bible also says that all—yes that’s ALL of our “righteous” acts are like filthy rags before God. (Isaiah 64:6) Other passages in the Bible agree with this assessment, Paul tells us in Romans 7 that in his flesh (our human nature) nothing truly good exists (vs. 18). And, the Proverbs tell us that what we think is “right” isn’t right with God (Proverbs 16:25).

So in the end, although it may seem that we can work and try and do all these good things that’ll somehow help in our salvation, the Bible is unequivocal in it’s teaching that we can’t do anything that’s going to help out in our salvation, and in fact, that if we’re counting on our good works for anything at all, we’ve nullified grace. . . which means that we then get the “wages” for our own behavior.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve tried to “do” all the right things, and you know what? It doesn’t last, or I just plain can’t do it right, or I don’t know really, but somehow it fails—fatally fails. I lose my temper, or I am not patient enough, or someone cuts in front of me in traffic, or the dog truly does eat my homework, and the washer eats my socks, and well, I just fail again and again and again.

The good news is that Jesus knew that. He planned for that in fact, by taking away the responsibility for my sin from me, and taking it on Himself and in taking it on Himself paid for it in the only way really possible. He paid for it in the only way that is, and will ever be, good enough.

And, all He asked from me was the one thing that I can do: to trust in Him, and even in my utter inability to do that well, He knew and made the provision, and He works in me to do what He’s purposed to do in me, and in that He is glorified, and I am not.

Which is why the next time I make someone mad, I’m trusting that Jesus will give me the will, power, and words to make the situation right, even if we have different definitions of the same word. And most of all I’m trusting that although my “work” is imperfect and in the end fatally flawed, His isn’t.