Words of Faith: Jesus doesn’t need a makeover

In Isaiah 43:11 God said, “I...am the Lord, and besides me there is no Savior.”

In giving Moses the Ten Commandments, God said “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” (Exodus 20:3-4).

No images of God were to be made. Why? Because God made us, we didn’t make Him.

A god you can make is a god you can control and make do whatever you wish. The ancient Greeks had a host of gods, all created by men. Some demanded human sacrifice; others permitted prostitution, and even promoted it in their temples. When we reverse the order and start to create God in our own image, according to our imagination, we get the following things: (1) A god who’s liberal or conservative, a hawk or a dove; a god politicians conveniently pull out of a box at election time to garner votes even though they don’t truly serve him. (2) A flexible god who permits you to do whatever you want, and you can then say, “I just felt led to do it.” (3) A god who promises to bless his children with great prosperity but never disciplines them. (4) A god you can keep in his place until you need him. (5) A god who is not supreme, but happy to be one of many deities offering many ways to heaven.

But to all of these God says, “No.”

“I, even I am the Lord, and besides Me there is no savior.”

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). Jesus doesn’t need a makeover to bring Him into alignment with the Internet and the space age and our modern day culture. He is Lord! Someone said it right when they said, ‘If He is not Lord over all, He is not Lord at all.’

You see, in a world out of control, we like a god we can control: a comforting presence who blesses, provides, and advises. Kind of like God in a box. But when it comes to Christ, no box works. Many have designed an assortment of boxes for Him, but He never fit in any of the boxes. They called Him a revolutionary, but He paid taxes. They labeled Him a country carpenter, but He confounded scholars. They came to see His miracles, but He refused to entertain them. He was a Jew who attracted gentiles, a rabbi who gave up on synagogues, a holy man who hung out with streetwalkers. In a male-dominated society, He recruited females. In an anti-Roman culture, He opted not to denounce Rome.

He talked like a king yet lived like a pilgrim.

People tried to put Him in a box, but they couldn’t. And we can’t either; Really, we must not. Skilled living gets its start in the Fear-of-God, insight into life from knowing a Holy God (Proverbs 9:10). Most of our fears are unhealthy. They rob us of peace and joy. But the fear of the Lord does the opposite. One author writes: “There is nothing neurotic about fearing God. The neurotic thing is not to be afraid, or to be afraid of the wrong thing.”

That is why God chooses to be known to us, so that we may stop being afraid of the wrong thing. When God is fully revealed to us and we get it, then we experience the conversion of our fear. Fear of the Lord is the deeply sane recognition that we are not God. He is the Lord and besides Him there is no Savior.

This story was originally published August 21, 2015 at 3:51 PM with the headline "Words of Faith: Jesus doesn’t need a makeover."