Jesus is Alive

As a new Christian reading the Gospels several years ago, I only understood what Jesus was saying to the extent that I understood what other people told me He was saying. In other words, I didn’t understand much of anything at all.

In the early stages of trying to follow Jesus, I spent a long time feeling like it was pointless for me to keep reading the Gospels. Most of what Jesus said seemed flat and lifeless to me. These were the words of the God I supposedly believed in. I was frustrated and confused that I wasn’t finding in Jesus’ words the “bread of life” my heart desperately needed. 

I realize that it takes time to develop wisdom and understanding. I realize that it would have taken time for Jesus’ words to penetrate and affect my heart, no matter what. But what strikes me now, looking back at what I used to consider the beginning of my faith, is how great an obstacle theology actually was in my early reading of the Gospels. What I didn’t know at the time is that it wasn’t Jesus’ words that were meaningless to me. It was Theology rendering Jesus’ words meaningless to me. 

I remember reading for the first time, "Not all who say to me Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he that does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Even though I knew exactly what it meant to do the will of God; and even though I knew that I was practically incapable of doing it (loving); Theology was telling me to dismiss the conviction of my heart (the certainty that I was failing to do the will of God, and not going to heaven) and to believe that I was going to heaven anyway, based on the fact that I had at one singular moment in time “put my faith in Jesus Christ.”
  

It was true… I had put my faith in Jesus (some of it, anyway). I had experienced some noticeable changes in my heart. But I also knew that the majority of my heart was still very much dead. In the deepest, center-most part of my being, I knew what Jesus said in Matthew 7:21 was true. I knew I wasn’t going to heaven except in the rare and fleeting moments when I actually succeeded in caring about someone other than myself. 

Despite what I knew in my heart to be true, Theology kept telling me to ignore my instincts and to assume that I must be misunderstanding Jesus’ words. Surely all of the smarter, more experienced people who came before me; the ones whose religious expertise went into deciding what books would become the Bible; the ones who studied these books tirelessly and developed what is now considered ”accepted theology”; surely they must know far better than I could what Jesus was saying. And anyway, who was I to think that I could understand Jesus’ words all on my own? 

I kept trying to believe what Theology told me; that I was “saved.” I kept trying to believe that I was going to heaven. But trying to believe what was evidently not true was not drawing my heart any closer to God. It was making Jesus’ words more and more meaningless, and it was making the value of my faith rest entirely in some “divine blood- transaction” made between me and God in one singular moment a long time ago, rather than in learning what it means to abide in Christ in each moment. 

During my first couple years as a Christian, it seemed like no matter how much of my heart I gave to Jesus; no matter how much I gleaned from His words, and no matter how much transformation I experienced as I applied His teaching to my life; it was never very long before Theology would rear its ugly head again and zap the life out of Jesus’ words in my heart.

I remember the first time I read Sermon on the Mount apart from any theological program. I didn’t set out to read it any certain way, the words just happened to fall on my heart differently that time. What stood out to me the most was what Jesus said in Matthew 7:16-20. Before, when I read what Jesus said about The Good Tree, Theology told me to believe that I was definitely one of the “good trees.” 

I had “accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.” I had chosen the right God and I believed all the correct things. Even if it didn’t make any sense to me, and even if it seemed to contradict Jesus’ words, I thought that I must be one of the good trees. Isn’t that what my “becoming a Christian” meant?

But this time when I read what Jesus said about The Good Tree, I came to an entirely different conclusion. This time when I read it, I knew with every fiber of my being that I was not a good tree. This wasn’t exactly news to me. Deep down, I pretty much already knew that I wasn’t a good tree. But it came as a great surprise to find myself just as certain that I was not a bad tree.

If a good tree can only produce good fruit, and a good tree cannot produce bad fruit; and a bad tree can only produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit; then clearly I was not a tree at all! I (like everyone) produced both types of fruit at different times. 

Jesus wasn’t saying that some people are good trees and other people are bad trees. Aside from the fact that Jesus' words in Matthew 7:16-20 gave no logical basis for such a conclusion, it made much more sense to conclude that all people are something more like a Garden with many trees; some good and some bad. In fact, this was starting to sound an awful lot like the story of our Creation and Fall from Genesis!

I heard Jesus echoing this fact that is at the core of our broken hearts and the world we live in: We are sinners. Each and every one of us. We are the "house divided." And just as Jesus taught that “No man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24), with the story of The Good Tree, I heard Him saying that it isn’t possible to produce both good fruit and bad fruit, to serve both God and sin at the same time. In any given moment, we can only serve one. And since we know that "whoever sins is the servant of sin” (John 8:34), we also know that whoever loves is the servant of Christ. There is no other source from which love can come...

“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.” ~ John 14:21

I heard Jesus giving me the permission and wisdom to discern the source and intents of hearts. And not by the name of the god they claim to believe in. But by their fruits. 

This was the first time since “becoming a Christian" that I felt like I actually understood something Jesus was saying. Still, it was a rather unexpected insight and it didn't seem to fit the "Christianity" narrative very well at all. I wasn't sure if I could trust it. 

As I began to apply this understanding, as I began to live and breathe in it, I noticed exponential growth in my ability to discern the source and intents of my own heart. I noticed myself becoming more forgiving and more able to identify and be accountable for my own sin. I was also growing in my ability to identify the righteous “fruit” of God in others, particularly in people whom I had habitually condemned. I was becoming more able to love. And I will be damned if I did not enter the kingdom of heaven several hundred, thousand, million times over. 

Growth and transformation were happening with unprecedented speed. And the words which once meant absolutely nothing to me, not only meant something; but what they meant had power. The power to change my life.

How it makes my heart ache to recount the many, many times when I succumbed to the crippling fear that these insights; the ones that Jesus used to birth my transformation; must have been inspired by some kind of evil spirit. Time after time, Theology kept coming back and telling me to dismiss everything I had learned. And not just to dismiss it, but to renounce it. Theology said, “Christians are good trees and everyone else is a bad tree." So whatever this nonsense was about all people being 'Gardens with some good and some bad trees;' whatever this rubbish was about 'discerning the source and intents of hearts,' it definitely wasn't from Jesus. Because that’s not what Theology said Jesus was saying. 

Fearful that I had strayed from God, I would drop the insights and try to go back to the "correct" way to read Jesus' words. And then I'd be left with the same dead, lifeless Jesus I had started with. The Jesus whose primary value was in a “blood sacrifice” that I had accepted a long time ago. The Jesus whose primary value in my life wasn’t in the fruit of righteousness His spirit was beginning to produce in me, but in whether or not I believed the "correct" thing about what He said. The Jesus whose “words of life” I found empty and meaningless. 

I will never forget the moment when while reading one pivotal conversation between Jesus and some Pharisees, it finally hit me: I am that Pharisee! I am the Pharisee accusing Jesus of performing miracles by the power of a devil!

Jesus had given me His words of life and He had used them to heal me. Only a blind fool would accuse Him of doing it the "wrong way." But in the name of Theology, that is exactly what I had been doing. And in that moment, finally... Hallelujah! I was done. 

I don’t blame Theology for all of my woes. God knows I have worshipped far worse things in my life. At least Theology was trying to steer me in the right direction. I’m pretty sure that’s its job. But the tricky thing about Theology I find, is that it tends to look so much like Jesus to us that we sometimes struggle to know the difference. For me, the difference is this: Theology is dead. Jesus is alive.

I have to go where my Life is. Even if it's somewhere Theology can't go.