My Theology is Jesus

My Theology is Jesus.

‘My theology is Jesus Christ, and nothing else. If I can but understand Him, I shall need no other. Take your theology from Christ Himself. Learn from Christ Himself. That is the only theology that everyone must have.” (George MacDonald (1824-1905), a Scottish author and  minister who has inspired me the most in my being a Christ-follower. C. S. Lewis considered him his “master,” and once said of MacDonald,  “I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself.”).

My theology is centered on the Jesus we find revealed in the Gospels. The reference point to my faith is Christ, and the spiritual grid I use is hopefully Christ-centered and Gospel-dependent. I choose to be one of those radicals who take Jesus at His word, and seek to think with His life and character in mind. I believe that Jesus Christ is the central Truth of the universe, and that He will lead us into all the truth we can handle. I believe that Jesus Christ fleshed out the Father’s thinking in those matters that demand our thought. I believe that without the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of the Father and the Son, we would not be able to take even one step in following Christ or in growing into Him. I believe in the Trinity, the divine Godhead, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as revealed a number of times in the Gospels and affirmed in the early authoritative Creeds of the Christian Church.

Therefore, I question those doctrines that don’t seem to square with the Jesus we see in the Gospels. Trying to use my common sense, I question any doctrine or Christian idea that seems out of character or is inconsistent with the Christ we come to know in Scripture. I want to work out my intellectual faith in fear and trembling as I take my life’s deep-dive into the Person of Christ. Therefore, I preface my views when I tentatively probing a mystery with thoughts like… “Well, for what it’s worth, here’s what I think at this point in my life; “This is what makes sense to me, so here’s my two cent’s worth; “I may be wrong of coure, but…”

I may be wrong, but I am persuaded that the following are some examples of doctrines that seem out of character with the Jesus I follow and worship:

1. That God has elected a privileged few to be saved and destined for heaven;
2. That God has elected an unfortunate few who will not be saved and are destined for hell;
3. That there is only one Church or faith community that somehow contains all biblical truth and contains the full knowledge of God. Yes, there are some that seem to hold more of the truth than others, but even the weakest faith communities may contain a mustard seed of truth and faith;
4. That any of us can be certain of who is saved or unsaved, in or out, accepted or rejected by God in ultimate terms;
5. That there is an everlasting, torturous hell to punish all those who have rejected God;
6. That, considering God’s mercy, we even have to worry about the salvation of those who have never heard the gospel or were not old enough to give the gospel serious consideration;
7. That God is content with a broken creation, rather than finishing what He started with a full reconciliation of all creation, including all people, at some time in the future.

I may be wrong here, but I believe the following views of mine are Christian ideas, because they do seem consistent with the Jesus in the Gospels, and so I ‘earnestly hope’ these views are true:

… God is a “finisher of the faith” and will ultimately restore and reconcile to Himself all things in creation, including mankind, making God all in all; that Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension began the ultimate redemption of the whole universe, and will eventually result in bringing everything back together under Him as Lord:

“The One who went down is Himself the One who also went up in His ascension, far above all of heaven, in order to fill all things.” (Ephesians 4:10).

“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things: All that exists originates in Him and comes from Him; all things live through Him; and all things are moving toward Him and will consummate in Him; so give Him the glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:36).

“God was pleased that all His fullness should forever dwell in the Son, who as predetermined by God, bled peace into the world by His death on the Cross as God’s means of reconciling to Himself the whole creation – all things in heaven and all things on earth.” (Colossians 1:19-20).

“In all His wisdom and insight, He has made known to us His secret plan, the mystery at the center of His will. With immense pleasure, He designed His intentions with Christ that will be put into effect when the time is ripe – His plan to bring unity to all things under Christ, when all things are brought together, placing everything in heaven and on earth under the Messiah’s headship.” (Ephesians 1:9-10).

“For just as in connection with Adam all die, so in connection with Christ all will be made alive… so that God may be all in all, everything in everyone.” (I Corinthians 15:22, 28).

“Jesus, whom heaven must keep till the universal restoration comes as proclaimed by God.” (Peter says, in Acts 3:21). 

“Look, I am making all things new!” (Revelations 21:5).

 

… God desires that at some point all people will be saved after a time of accountability and repentance, and He will eventually have mercy on everyone after a time of suitable punishment for rejection of Him:

“ And all mankind will see God’s salvation; all of humanity will witness God’s deliverance.” (Luke 3:6).

“God our Savior, who wants all mankind to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. He longs for everyone to embrace His life, to be delivered, and to understand the divine truth.” (1 Timothy 2:3-4).

“The Lord  is not slow in  keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance; It is not God’s purpose that anyone should be destroyed, but that everyone should turn from his sins.” (2 Peter 3:9).

“For God has shut up all mankind together in disobedience, in order that He might show mercy to all. He considers all of humanity to be prisoners of their unbelief, so that He can unlock our hearts and show His tender mercies to all.” (Romans 11:32).

“If a person’s moans would turn heaven for us into a hell, shall a mere man be more merciful than God? Shall, of all His glories, God’s mercy alone not be infinite? Shall a brother love a brother more than the Father loves a son? Would Christ not die yet again to save even one brother or sister more? My heart rests upon my Divine Master the Lord Jesus. I believe His Spirit will reach every heart. It may be thousands of years hence before it all happens, yet the words will eventually come, “I am sorry; Forgive me. At length, O God, wilt thou not cast Death and hell into the lake of fire – even unto thine own consuming Self?” (George MacDonald).  

 

… The sacrificial blood of Jesus was so profound, so far-reaching, and so powerful that God through Christ has already forgiven the whole world of all its sins.

Jesus was the Lamb of God who has indeed “taken away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). His blood on the Cross covered all of humanity, every person on earth. “And Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours alone, but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2). Forgiveness is a gift that can be accepted or rejected. As with any gift that already exists with its giver, it’s a matter of reaching out your hands and accepting the free gift. But there are many who decide to reject this gift, and so do not put Christ’s forgiveness into action in their lives. Everyone is forgiven, but not everyone has accepted that forgiveness. “There is one God and one Mediator between God and us – the man Jesus, God’s Christ, the Anointed One, who gave His life as a ransom for all so that we might have freedom.” (1 Timothy 2:5-6). To accept the gift of forgiveness during the process of repentance is to experience hope of a new life in God, it is to be freed from slavery to sin, delivered from the penalty of sin, and offered a new identity in Christ.

 

On the Knees: Intelligent Faith from Start to Finish.

1. We begin and continue our journey with God with intellectual modesty, a humility of mind like David in Psalm 131: “Yahweh, my heart is not haughty; I do not set my sights too high. I have taken no part in examining your ways that are beyond my scope. I don’t even begin to get involved in matters too big or profound for me, or the many things that are past my ability to understand them. I don’t concern myself with matters that are over my head, such as your complex mysteries and wonders that I am not yet ready to understand. I do not aspire to that which is beyond me. Instead, I hold myself in quiet and silence, in a contented trust in you, like a young child in its mother’s arms. My soul is like a young child, content to rest upon his mother. I have learned to hope in the Lord, now and henceforth forever.”
2. The best place to start and then continue with God is to acknowledge that He is God, and we are not. We need to humbly know our place in creation, as Isaiah quotes Yahweh in Isaiah 55:8-9: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, My plans and intentions are not yours. I don’t think the way you think, says the Lord. The way you work is not the way I work, and your ways are not My ways. For as the heavens soar eternally high above the earth, so do My ways surpass your ways.”
3. The deep humility of St. Paul is inspiring as he quotes from Isaiah 40: “We cannot wrap our minds around God’s wisdom and knowledge! Its depths can never be measured! We cannot understand His judgments or explain the mysterious ways that He works! For, ‘Who can fathom the mind of the Lord? Who can claim to be His counselor?” (Romans 11:33-34).
4. So it seems rather arrogant, or at least foolish, to delude ourselves into thinking that we can pretend to know the full knowledge of God’s thoughts on every matter in the faith… To stubbornly insist on our understanding of how God ultimately works; to self-righteously assume any of us can definitively know how God’s mind operates on eternal matters; to place unquestioning trust in our own fallible understanding.
5. Our biblical views, our doctrines, or our systems of theology, are all preliminary in the sense that God will obviously have the final word when the final age arrives. In the meantime, it would be wise for us to be a bit hesitant in drawing final conclusions on theological matters. When we are hesitant and cautious to make unequivocal statements, we are rightfully acknowledging that our own reasonable conclusions are temporary until the final conclusions are reached when He returns to take us home. God is too gigantic of a mystery to think we can systematize Him to the tiniest detail, and put Him a theological box that is questionable biblically. Systematic theology is an oxymoron.

On the Parable of the Prodigal Son as the Big Picture of God’s Ultimate Plans. I may be stretching things a bit here, but is it possible that Jesus’ story of the prodigal son could be seen as an illustration of God’s eventual plans? Perhaps the gracious, waiting father in the story is Christ’s character description of God the Father. Maybe the prodigal son is meant to point to all who die after rejecting God’s fatherhood and go to the far country, the place of punishment. And then perhaps the rebel who chose to go to hell and be punished comes to his senses after a while and decides to return to the Father. The Father, “whose mercy endures forever,” will wait for as long as it takes to welcome the prodigal home. Maybe hell is real but is not eternal. Maybe God honors free will in mankind to the extent that He will send someone to a temporary hell, eating the slop with the pigs in the far country outside of His presence, until each condemned person will come to himself, repent, and return home to God. As George MacDonald once said about free will, “You love the darkness, then abide in darkness. You choose the dark, you shall stay in the dark until the terrors that dwell in the dark frighten you, and cause you to cry out to Him.” Or as C. S. Lewis once wrote… It’s either, Thy will be done, or my will be done.

My Bottom Line… Jesus Christ was and still is Lord Yahweh in the flesh, the Old Testament God in a New Testament body; God made all of humanity in His image, and seeks to remake us into the likeness of Jesus; Christ is the world’s sun of righteousness, and the Scriptures are ‘the moon in our darkness’ reflecting the light of the sun; Jesus is the world’s only door to the Father, and the only fountain of the Holy Spirit; Jesus Christ was and remains Love with flesh on; the life-giving power of Christ literally holds all things together in the entire cosmos, and without His presence the whole universe would collapse unto itself and disintegrate into  nothing.

 

Steve Larson, June, 2024