What Jesus Demands of the World - Lesson 3

Demand #4 – Believe in Me 

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. —John 14:1 

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. —John 14:11 

While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light. —John 12:36 

[ Jesus] said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” —John 20:27

Our inability makes belief in Jesus necessary. We don’t like starting from the basis of our inability but it is fundamental to salvation. In fact, our threefold salvation is intertwined with our belief. We are saved by faith, being saved by faith, and we believe we will be saved. Jesus is the only way and our insistence on the necessity of salvation by Christ alone can manifest the intolerance of our supposedly tolerant society. 

Piper uses the illustration of a fireman and the way we must trust in order to be saved. Sometimes wrapped up or strapped in all we can do is hold still and trust that we’ll be removed from danger because we can’t help. We have a natural perception of danger in a burning building but we saw in Romans that we need God’s Holy Spirit to convict us and move us for salvation because we don’t naturally have an appropriate fear of God. We don’t understand our position. There is a comedy called Evan Almighty in which “God” (Morgan Freeman) insists that Evan build an ark. Evan figures that he can simply ignore and avoid the call and at one point “God” just appears in the back seat of Evan’s car. Evan starts to scream because of fear and Morgan Freeman says, “Go ahead, let it all out, it is the beginning of wisdom”. That was probably the only scene I’d like to see again. 

We really are faced with the need to believe or perish. It isn’t just a good idea to believe in God it is necessary for eternal life. 

John 3: 16-18, 36  God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned; but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. . . . Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. (John 3:16-18, 36) 

Jesus came to deliver or rescue us not to condemn us. We face our inability and some of us have been unable to accept it. People have developed all sorts of ways to deserve God’s favor. We prefer to earn God’s favor rather than believe in Grace. Some crawl on knees to a religious shrine, some whip their back till it bleeds, some just tithe, some just show up with their wife for church, and some just figure that if they can think of someone worse than them then God will need to accept them and condemn the person they define as “bad”. It is a messed up world we live in but we have a shepherd. Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). In other words, Jesus’ death was purposeful. He intentionally laid it down in our place. I was part of a project in Indonesia in which we were introducing sheep to the culture of the folks that had been relocated to Sumatra from Java. They were good gardeners but had no history of being shepherds. They had no framework for understanding what a good shepherd was. The contrast for me between these shepherds and the shepherds of places like France where literally generations had handed down skills from fathers to sons was striking. We don’t understand the analogy very well in our culture either. Once we went to check on the grazing work and the sheep were gone. The shepherd had headed back to the shop for a snack or something and the sheep were headed for points unknown. Sheep don’t do well when left to their own devices. They need constant attention. Indonesian is an especially bad place for sheep. They are stolen frequently and the shepherds we hired really didn’t place their wellbeing at the top of their concerns. We have a different kind of shepherd and He laid down His life for the sheep. 

Isaiah 53:4-6  We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isa. 53:4-6) 

Our atonement or “at one ment” is based on the Cross. He (Jesus) took the punishment we deserved so that we can have eternal life that we did not deserve. You enter in to this relationship by believing in Jesus. He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life” (John 6:47; cf. Luke 8:12). 

Believing in Jesus is not really a vague proposition. It has meaning. First, there is an awareness of certain claims about your condition in sin, your guilt before a righteous God, the sacrificial atonement on the Cross, and Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. We have to be aware of the gospel and we need to believe it is true. It is not a blind leap of faith because the Gospel has content. What I mean by that is that we believe that Jesus really lived and that the Cross is not just a symbol but actually was a wooden cross that Christ really died on about 33 AD. This is a historical faith and what happened in the first century matters today. We need to stand on this point. If a real God/man didn’t die on a Cross about 33 AD and raise from the dead 3 days later then we are the most goofy bunch of nuts the world has seen. We need to all find something else to do because this is certainly not as nice a country club as we could form if that is the point. Jesus was not just a good teacher. He can’t just be a good teacher because if He was then He was a lousy teacher. He communicated that He was God. Now I know I’ve had some teachers who had delusions of grandeur but none of them have been so bold as to claim that they were God. Those tares who want a teacher to have a good moral influence on a world full of God’s children who need to be pointed toward a better more fulfilling life … well they need to stay away from Jesus.   

Even when we know the Gospel and believe it to be true we enter into the Kingdom by trusting him as a living person for who he really is. Jesus said “Believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1; cf. Matt. 18:6). Believing in Jesus is more than believing about Jesus and this is where Piper points out that the fireman analogy breaks down. Jesus isn’t just someone or something rescuing us. He is water to be drunk by us, bread to be eaten by us, our Shepherd, our Bridegroom, our treasure, our king, a vine to our branches. We don’t just know about the water we drink it and find our satisfaction in Him. He is bread that gives life and we find our life there. We don’t just know about the water and the bread. We don’t just believe that it is good water and bread. We drink and we eat and we find it to be life for us. We savor and are satisfied with Christ. 

Demand #5 – Love Me 

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.—Matt. 10:37

 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God.”—John 8:42, RSV

 Jesus is demanding love in these verses and some folks have stumbled so hard on this that they have tried to redefine love. They have looked at agape love and decided that it really wasn’t love in any sense we know. It is true that in agape love the will leads the emotions rather than the emotions leading the will. Agape doesn’t function in the backwards way that our modern society views love. Our society, generally only familiar with eros love, has no natural understanding of a love that isn’t led by various passions. We don’t have a natural understanding of passions being in submission to our being. 

Jesus has a lot of nerve. He commands feelings pretty frequently. As Piper points out Jesus commands that we rejoice in certain circumstances (Matt. 5:12), fear the right person (Luke 12:5), not feel shame over him (Luke 9:26), and that we forgive from the heart (Matt. 18:35). 

We may be too corrupt to experience appropriate emotions but that doesn’t free us from God’s commands to experience appropriate emotions. So when Jesus commands that we love Him with all we have and we don’t, our inability is expressed, our guilt established, and our hearts corruption is revealed. We should feel desperate for a new heart and Jesus promised that we can have a new heart. 

While our love for Him will include respect and admiration we are called deeper than that. He said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37). The love I feel for my dad is not something that is just an act of the will. The love I feel for my children is not just an act of the will. Affection is a tremendous component of this type of love and lasts through hardships and trials. I judge myself for any lack of love I see in these relationships. I’m ashamed when I forget to pray for my children. And yet Jesus demands more than this in my relationship with Him. 

Piper also points out that we can get John 14:15 backwards in our heads. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” So we can slip into thinking that keeping His commandments is loving Him but that isn’t what He said. He said that “if we love Him” then our behavior changes because of this love. First we love and then our love results in various actions that are pleasing to Christ. You will not find it in your fallen nature to love one that you haven’t seen more than those who you have seen and loved on earth. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to do this in our heart, our new heart, so that we can be pleasing in Christ’s sight. Jesus said, “If God were your Father, you would love me” (John 8:42). Now you’ve got to stop hearing this verse with this century’s ears. In Jesus day, this was a radical statement. I’ve heard it said that it was 400 years before another Jew would think of God as Father. I was working with a person once and we were writing something and they wanted it to apply to everyone so they said, “We’ve got to make it clear that this applies to all God’s children.” I knew what they meant but they wanted it to apply to all God’s children as well as the children of men. You were not God’s child before your salvation. You were lost and without hope. You were not the Sons of God; you were not a people set aside for God; you were by nature the children of wrath. I am sorry! It is not a popular topic in this seeker sensitive age. So to the first century listeners, Jesus is saying that if they were something they would consider blasphemous to claim (and it would have been false if they claimed it) then they would love Him. They needed to be born again. You must be born again. And Scripture teaches us that “To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, [Jesus] gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). You must pursue the process of Sanctification and cooperate with God to see these things happening in your life. All those means of Grace that we’ve discussed and especially prayer and personal Bible study are keys to your growth. If this command shows your inability then you know where to find ability. 

I still remember when I was a teenager reading the story of Jesus having dinner with a Pharisee, who really didn’t love for Jesus but obviously had to have Him over to dinner. While they were “reclining at table” (they ate at low tables), a prostitute entered and poured ointment—mingled with her tears—on Jesus’ bare feet and wiped his feet with her hair. You can imagine that the Pharisee was not pleased that a woman like that got in to his house at all and especially that Jesus didn’t stop her. So Jesus asked a question of the Pharisee: If a moneylender forgave two debtors, one who owed him five thousand dollars and the other fifty, which would love him more? He answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” Jesus agreed, then said, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.” Then Jesus concluded: “She loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:36-48). 

When I was a teen I remember thinking about this verse and wondering at the depth of sin that would result in much love. I wondered what Jesus point was and if He wanted to indicate that you should sin so that you’d love. Fortunately God couldn’t leave me thinking that way and caused me to realize that it is the realization of the depth of your sin and that it didn’t take any less Grace to save me than it did for the person I would classify as the “worst sinner”. I might have been young but I was lost and without hope apart from Christ. We compare our mole hills of righteousness with the Mount Danali of God’s righteous demands stands before us in Scripture. 

We can pray for eyes to see the beauty of Christ in His love for us when we were not lovable. We can glorify God with our satisfaction and love of Him. God can grow this love and stir us up to obey His other commands (John 14:15), to seek our ministry (John 21:15-22), and to desire to see Him honored and blessed (John 14:28; 5:23). Jesus deserves this kind of love. When we don’t feel it then the deficiency is in us and He is the solution. Our worthiness simply means that He has produced in us that which is suitable and fit for His worth (Compare the use of the word “worthy” in the phrase, “Bear fruits worthy of [that is, suitable to] repentance,” Luke 3:8, literal translation.) 

Because Jesus is infinitely worthy to be loved and our love for him is the enjoyment of his glory and presence and care, Jesus’ demand is more Grace (undeserved blessing) poured out on us.