Jesus vs Jesus

I recently asked why we Christ-ians seem to have a hard time taking God's Word in general and Jesus in particular at face value. I chose a couple of "hard sayings" from Christ that trip us up and entice us to say, "Jesus never said that" in some way or another. One person told me it was because Jesus said a lot in the other direction, so we can be pretty sure He did not say what He appeared to say. When Jesus said, "Many are called; few are chosen" (Matt 22:14), for instance, He couldn't have meant that many are called but few are chosen because Jesus said, "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him" (John 3:17). Jesus said, "If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world" (John 12:47). The angel that spoke to the shepherds declared, "Behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people" (Luke 2:10). Jesus said, "The Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son" (John 5:2), and, "I pass judgment on no one" (John 8:15). These and more clearly tell us that salvation is not limited to the "chosen," the "elect," but includes everyone. "Who's not taking Jesus at face value now, eh?"

It's an interesting dilemma, isn't it? We can muster a few possible responses. The first and most obvious would be that Jesus was wrong. When He said things like "Many are called but few are chosen" (Matt 22:14) or "The gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it" (Matt 7:14), He was just ... well ... wrong. He was human, after all, and we all know that "to err is human." He wouldn't have been human if He didn't make a mistake from time to time. Or maybe Jesus didn't make a mistake. Maybe the writers of the Gospels made a mistake. Maybe Jesus never said those limiting things; the authors inserted their own ideas in places. Perhaps it's not that at all. Perhaps we just haven't properly understood what Jesus said. We would assume, then, that when He said that He came to save the world, we properly understand that, but when He appears to express restrictions and limitations on who can or will be saved, we're just not interpreting it correctly. It looks like "few" will be saved, but He didn't actually intend for us to understand it that way. That is, He didn't get it wrong; we did.

Without rectifying this situation, I'd like you to consider one thing. If "all Scripture" was "breathed out by God" (2 Tim 2:16-17) and God's Word is truth (John 17:17), we must assume that God's Word is truth and Jesus embodied truth (John 1:1; John 14:6). As such, pitting Jesus against Jesus is nonsense. He either was truth or He was not. He couldn't be partial truth and still be called "the truth." And Jesus said the Holy Spirit was "the Spirit of truth" and would "guide you into all truth" (John 16:13). So if the "Spirit of truth" guides you into understanding that Scripture cannot be properly understood, that is a problem. If you conclude that Scripture means what you think it means regardless of what it clearly says, that is a problem. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that you and I don't have the capacity to understand God's Word, so we should just leave it to the professionals ... in direct contradiction to Jesus's promise of the Spirit of truth. I am not, here, offering an answer to the contradictions raised above. What I'm offering is a basis, a platform on which to examine them. What we cannot do is pit Jesus against Jesus or show how God's Word contradicts God's Word. If you're willing to go there, you have nowhere to stand. And, as that phrase suggests, you have no standing. True believers have no room for explaining away the texts of Scripture. We need to correlate them ... show how they agree, not how they're wrong. When we conclude they're wrong, we are only demonstrating that we're wrong. Or God is wrong. Your choice.