Series: On Being a Christian
#5: What Do You Believe?
October 26, 2008
“It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe something.” How many times have you heard or read this statement? Nearly a year following 9/11 Rudy Guiliani, then mayor of New York City told a graduating class this: “You need to know what you believe in, you need to believe in it strongly…then have the courage to act on those beliefs.” (Courier-Post newspaper, Tuesday, May 21, 2002) While those sentiments referenced the resolve and will of the American people, they could very easily have been words describing the 19 terrorists who wantonly murdered over 3,000 innocent Americans. Does it matter what you believe? Absolutely!
We are looking at the 3rd evidence of what it means to be a Christian, and that is the essential of belief. This is the 3rd and final leg of the triumvirate of obedience, love and belief. If you remember we were a bit quizzical that John would begin with the ‘leg’ of obedience and not where most of us would begin at the ‘leg’ of belief. Keep in mind that all 3 legs are equally important. You can’t sit on a 3-legged stool with only 1 or 2 legs. It simply will not hold you up. But it seems to me that it is no accident that John ends with belief. The evidence of the vitality of your belief is in the character of your life. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr said it best when he admonished us to judge people on the basis of their character. Your character is influenced and defined by your obedience to God’s will, your love for God and one another, and what you believe.
John is saying that Christian belief centers on the person of Jesus Christ and this means that at the very center and core of our faith is Jesus Christ. In this letter to these early Christians John says that there are 3 things that a Christian believes about Jesus:
* A Christian believes that Jesus is the Christ, the Promised Messiah of the Old Testament.
* A Christian believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
* A Christian believes that Jesus has come in the flesh.
We see this first truth about Jesus as the Promised Messiah in 1 John 2:21-22, “I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is a liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ.” Christ is English, Christos is Greek, and Messiah is Hebrew. So the Christian believes that this Jesus, born in Bethlehem and reared in Nazareth is the promised Messiah of the Old Testament. The primary promise of the Old Testament is that one-day a Messiah, a Savior would be sent by God to redeem His people. The Hebrew word for Messiah means, “Anointed one.” When the Israelites kings ascended to the throne, that king was anointed with sacred oil to show his special responsibility to God. God had promised David that his descendants would sit upon Israel’s throne. God keeps His promises. Now this promise by God to David also says something about David. The first is that he was sold out to God and was known as ‘a man after God’s own heart.’ The second was that David was sold out to God (check this out) for the sake of his people. Can you imagine that? A political leader more interested in the people’s welfare than for his own gain? A leader who brought God into the equation for his leadership? Unfortunately David was alone in that endeavor as most of the kings of the Hebrews succumbed to the temptation to use their office for their own well being and gain on the backs of their own people.
These failures by human kings highlighted the deep desire of God’s people for a true king—one who would be self-giving and not self-serving, who would bring justice no matter what, who would not sell out to the highest bidder but have an interest in the “nobodies.’ John reminds these 1st century Christians that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy and that He is the Promised Messiah.
The second point is that this Jesus is not only Messiah, but He is the Son of God. In the ancient world there were many who claimed to be the ‘messiah’ and many who pinned their hopes on these false messiahs were sorely disappointed. The difference between Jesus and these false messiahs was as this point of being the Son of God. On 5 different occasions in this brief letter John points out that Jesus is this Son of God. It is clear that this claim in non-negotiable. The title Son of God is the Hebraic way of placing someone in the God-category which is to say that Jesus and Yahweh are the same in nature and in essence. There is not distinction between the God of the Old Testament and Jesus. Sometimes theologians and even some pastors say that they don’t believe in the deity of Jesus. John is clear that what you believe about Jesus is of eternal importance, and that if you deny Jesus’ deity then you cannot claim to be a Christian.
One time Jesus responded to the nay Sayers in this way, “Before Abraham was, I am.” How’s that for good English! Remember that the personal name for God in the Old Testament is Yahweh, and Yahweh means, “I am.” “Before Abraham was…” As a human Abraham was bound by time and by space and therefore he had a past, present and a future. Jesus however was able to say hundreds of years after Abraham lived, “Before Abraham was, I am” which echoes loud and clear that He pre-existed Abraham. So Jesus very clearly was stating that He and God the Father were one in the same.
Why is this important? Because Jesus is not just a man like the other messiahs who had come and gone. If Jesus is just a great teacher who showed how to live better lives, then it doesn’t matter if He is deity or not. Look back of 1 John 2:2 when John writes of Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but for the sins of the whole world.” Only God could die for the sins of the world. If Jesus were not God, then as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 15:17 we “are still in our sins.” The good news is that we don’t have to be ‘still in our sins’ because Jesus is the very Son of God.
John is quite emphatic in this letter that Jesus is the Messiah and He is the Son of God. The 3rd point is that Jesus has come in the flesh. In 1 John 4:2-3 we read, “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.” Across the centuries we have had difficulty in keeping the balance between Jesus’ humanity and His divinity. We tend to lean one way or the other. The early church lived within the Greek culture. In fact in John’s day, both extremes had gained popularity.
The Greeks were dualists, that is they believed that Good and Evil were constantly fighting each other. As Christians we believe that as well. However, the Greeks believed that Good and Evil were co-equal with neither one dominant. The Greeks understood that things of the spirit, the unseen things, were good and things of matter, that is that which is seen and tangible, were evil. Ergo their spirits were pure but their bodies were evil. The Bible however teaches us that God created everything---both the seen and unseen—and it was good! But something happened, didn’t it? What happened was that the spirit rebelled and has tried to use material things for itself. In the Bible “the flesh” is a spiritual problem, not a physical one. When Jesus came in the flesh, He destroyed this Greek idea that our bodies are evil. God made us in His image and breathed into us the breath of life. The gospels are very clear that Jesus didn’t rise only in spirit but He rose in body as well. When Jesus comes back, He will redeem the whole world and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. So human sinfulness is not because we have bodies rather human sinfulness is because our rebellious spirits try to use our bodies for themselves and corrupt the entire created order in the process.
Over the years this Greek philosophy of equality between good and evil has crept into Christian thinking and into American culture. We sometimes call it the ‘ying and the yang.‘ The Bible is very clear that God’s goodness and Satan’s evilness are not on the same level and are not equal. Our God is the almighty sovereign one, the maker of heaven and earth, who will not be defeated by evil, this world, nor the flesh.
So, these 3 beliefs are critical to our calling ourselves Christian: Jesus is the Promised Messiah, the Son of God, who came in the flesh. So John asks, do you believe? Sure, you say. But do you believe?
Here is the issue: for the Bible belief is never just a mental, intellectual acceptance of something. Starting in the Old Testament we don’t have the privilege of distinguishing between a mental ‘yes’ and a behavioral ‘no.’ In English we can separate the hearing of a command from obeying that command. There is a distinction for us between “obey the speed limit” and actually doing it. But not for the Hebrew: to hear a command is to do the command. If we hear it, we do it. If we don’t do it, we don’t hear it! For us knowledge and the will are separate entities, but not for the Old Testament—they are one and the same. So in the New Testament to believe something is to take action on that belief, to do it, to put your weight on it. The bottom line is that if you do not act on it, then you don’t really believe it.
There’s an old story about a tightrope walker who crossed over Niagara Falls on a high wire. The crowds cheered. He asked the crowd if they believed he could walk across pushing a wheelbarrow. They cheered him on as he did just that. He then asked if they believed he could cross the high wire over Niagara Falls, pushing a wheelbarrow with a person sitting in that wheelbarrow. Again the crowd cheered and cried, “Yes, we believe you can do it!” The tightrope walker looked out over the crowd and asked, “Who will be the first to sit in my wheelbarrow?” To believe it is to do it. To not do it is to not believe it.
So I ask again, does it matter what you believe? Do you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, born in the flesh? Are you trusting Him for your salvation and for your eternal life? Have your surrendered your heart and life to Him?
Would people look at how you live and say, “That person really believes in Jesus?” Faith is not just a way of thinking; it is also a way of acting. Jesus came into our world to transform our thinking, but also to transform the way we live.
If you believe like this, then you can confidently call yourself a Christian.