Tuesday, October 28

Preach the hated Jesus

"If our conception of Jesus is such that He can be admired and applauded by the non-Christian, we have a wrong view of Him. The effect of Jesus Christ upon His contemporaries was that many threw stones at Him. They hate Him; and finally, choosing a murderer instead of Him, they put Him to death. This is the effect Jesus Christ always has upon the world. But you see there are other ideas about Him. There are worldly people who tell us they admire Jesus Christ, but that is because they have never seen Him. If they saw Him, they would hate Him as His contemporaries did. He does not change; man does not change. So let us be careful that our ideas about Christ are such that natural man cannot admire or applaud."

-D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, p. 117

1 comment:

  1. I think Lloyd-Jones is right in the sense of our overall theology, but I'm not sure if that would always apply to our witness. It seems likely that many of the people who ended up crucifying Jesus were at first praising him for what he taught. Some of what Jesus said was generally seen favorably. The more I share Jesus with non-Christians, the more I'm leaning to a methodology of starting with the easy-to-swallow parts, and then gradually adding on the more challenging truths of the Gospel. So many people will nod and say "Yeah, I believe in Jesus and the Bible's great and etc.", and that's when I start laying on the real weight of the Bible and hold them accountable to their claims. But I'm still experimenting and very green about the whole thing so a lot of what I just said may not be the best approach.

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