A common objection to many claims of believers in general and Scripture in particular is "Jesus never said that." You understand the basis, I'm sure. If we are to be Christ-followers and Jesus never said anything about something, then following what He never said would seem to contradict that concept. In theory. But does it work?
The first problem with "Jesus didn't say" kind of thinking is the opposite question. If we assume that what Jesus said was authoritative, are those who are denying things on the basis of what He didn't say laying equal force to what He did say? Are they diligently seeking to do all that Jesus said? Like, "Take up your cross and follow Me" (Matt 16:24) or "Sell all your possessions and give to the needy" (Luke 12:33). Hard sayings. Jesus forbade divorce (Matt 19:4-6). Do these receive the full force of command from the Savior from the "Jesus never said" crowd? If not, I'd suggest that it's not an argument, but a smokescreen. Beyond that, the real problem is the supposition that we have recorded for us in the pages of Scripture every single thing that Jesus believed and said on which to base our beliefs and actions. That is, of course, obviously nonsense. John wrote, "Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (John 21:25). So that's right out. So, what we have is condensed. How, then, would Jesus decide (in three short years) what to teach and what not to teach? You would expect Him to teach them what they did not know, wouldn't you? As an example, if His disciples had the Old Testament and the Old Testament forbade homosexual behavior (Lev 18:22; Lev 20:13), why would Jesus bring it up? If you take the whole of Scripture, you'll find a lot that Jesus never said but God inspired from other writers. If Jesus was the Word (John 1:1), then, in essence, He did say it.
What did Jesus believe? He never commented on rape or incest or child molesting. What did Jesus believe? He never said a word against patriarchy. What did He believe? Jesus never said that God's word would someday be wrong because of new philosophies or modes of thinking (John 17:17). Jesus never said, "Sin is no big deal." Jesus never said, "Be true to yourself." Jesus never said, "Black lives matter." He never said, "Loving homosexual relationships are good." He never said, "Love is love; two people of any sex should be allowed to marry." Building a theology on what was not said is a foolish notion. Rejecting a theology because Jesus never said it is equally shortsighted since Jesus was not on earth to give us the full story. On the other hand, rejecting God's Word because it isn't "red letters" -- direct quotes from Jesus of Nazareth -- is equally misguided since He was the Word Himself. All of Scripture, then, is the truth, and Jesus, the Son of God, did say it all.
3 comments:
Technically then, the whole Bible should be in red letters, but that certainly would be hard to read with only red on white. Imagine if we color coded the Bible so that all "spoken" words were in a different color than the non spoken, and in different colors for different speakers.
Your point is one I've made many times: Since Jesus is God...with Him since before Creation...to say "Jesus never said" requires reviewing the entirety of Scripture and not just quotes of Jesus from the New Testament.
A couple of thoughts.
I think that your point is excellent. If folx are going to give authority to what Jesus didn't say, then it logically follows that what He DID say is authoritative. Yet many of those folx have hierarchies for Jesus' words. The ones they like, obviously have a great deal of authority, the ones they don't like have little or no authority. Perhaps the right response to this smokescreen is "f Jesus has said that X was wrong, would you accept that as authoritative?".
I've also pointed out that, if the Trinity accurately describes YHWH, then all of the words attributed to YHWH in the OT, should also be in red letters.
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