The New Testament - the coming of Jesus

EXPLORING CHRISTIANITY - MORALITY

THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.

The New Testament - the coming of Jesus

When we come to the New Testament we find that all the main points we have discussed about the Old Testament are found here and clarified further. We would expect this. After all, the God who called his people out of Egypt in Old Testament times is the same God with whom we have to reckon today.

"Christ has come to live in our hearts in order that he may begin to reveal something of his character through us"

The New Testament begins with the appearance of Jesus in human history. This is not the place to go into the evidence for believing that Jesus was the Second Person of the divine Trinity, God the Son, now taking upon himself our human nature. I have dealt with this in the booklet Is Jesus Really God? Here I will assume it. As John puts it, "The Word was truly God [and] became a human being and lived among us" (John 1:1, 14). Though much of Jesus' teaching was based on the principles found in the Old Testament, which he referred to constantly, we now find that two new important factors enter the moral equation.

1.Jesus as a model of true humanity

First, Jesus, in his own example, has given us a perfect picture of what it means to be truly human. All that he was, and all that he did, speaks powerfully to us of all that God intended humans to be, and underlines the height from which we have fallen. As several writers of the New Testament declare, he was without fault, which can be said of no other figure in human history. We now have no excuse for not knowing what is truly good. He himself is the model for those who would claim to be his followers. He said, "As I have loved you, you must love one another" (John 13:34). After washing his disciples' feet on the night of his betrayal, he said, "Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you" (John 13:14,15). John says in his first letter, "If we say that we are his, we must follow the example of Christ" (1 John 2:6). However much we may be conscious of failure, this gives us a clear goal to work towards. But this is only half the story.

2. Christ within us

The second new factor concerns our personal relationship with Jesus. If we have come to him in repentance and faith and received his forgiveness and the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, then we have in him not just a moral ideal to follow but we have been touched by the Risen Lord himself. Stanley Grenz, in The Moral Quest, puts it like this:

Consequently we do not merely admire Jesus as we might admire other historical figures such as Ghandi, Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa. We do not simply draw inspiration or a pattern for living from his life as we might do from theirs. The Christian ethic does not look to Jesus solely as a historical example who we seek to emulate. We do not look to him only as the main character in a story from a bygone era on whose life we can reflect and thereby draw instruction. Rather he has loved us and has sacrificed his life for us. To this personal experience of Jesus' great love, we find ourselves compelled to respond with gratitude and love. Hence, rather than merely patterning our lives after his, we enter into relationship with him. In this relationship we desire to live as Christ would have us live, that is, to have Christ formed in us.

"To attempt to live the kind of life pictured in the New Testament without such a relationship with the living God is an impossibility"

We may bear the memory of others in our hearts, whose example we wish to follow, but Christ has come to live in our hearts in order that he may begin to reveal something of his character through us. As we have touched on earlier, it is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to accomplish this transformation. As Paul puts it, "We, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18). Much of the New Testament, particularly the letters, was written to give us guidelines as to what living out this relationship with Jesus means in practice.

One of the most striking things about the New Testament teaching on how we should live is its comprehensive nature. I mentioned earlier that I do not have the space, nor is it my intention, to deal in detail with specific moral issues. However, in order to give some indication of the wide range of teaching in the New Testament about how we should live, and to give some assistance to those who wish to check things out for themselves, I offer the in the next chapter "New Testament index of Christian behaviour" an index of subjects, with the references to where they are found in the New Testament. The list is fairly exhaustive but not completely so.

Where in the history of literature will you find teaching on human behaviour that is both as comprehensive and as challenging as this? However challenging it may appear, the Christian starts from the foundation of having first experienced God's forgiveness, love and full acceptance, and then of having received the Holy Spirit, the continued presence and transforming influence of God in his or her life. To attempt to live the kind of life pictured in the New Testament without such a relationship with the living God is an impossibility. A "good" life is a God-centred life.

It means also that the Christian life is one of continued growth. None of us can say we have got it made. Peter says we are to "grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18). That is, we are to grow in our understanding and our experience of all that we have been freely given in Christ. This understanding and experience grow out of our daily relationship with him. If we are not growing, then there is something wrong with the relationship. Paul could say, "I have not yet reached my goal, and I am not perfect. But Christ has taken hold of me. So I keep running and struggling to take hold of the prize...This is the prize that God offers because of what Christ Jesus has done. All of us who are mature should think in this same way" (Philippians 3:12-15). However far we have to go, it is the direction that is important. If we are truly committed to Christ then we will want to grow and to please him. The New Testament gives us the plan.

One thing is clear. The picture given above as to what Christian living is all about contrasts markedly with the Kiwi way of life at the end of the 20th century. Bishop Brian Carrell, in an article Understanding our Western World in a recent addition of AFFIRM magazine, sums up some of the ways in which Christianity differs from popular values:

...community over private persons, self-denial as more important than self-fulfilment, holiness before happiness, spiritual well-being above material comfort, prayer over ingenuity, human fallibility rather than human perfectibility, patient waiting ahead of instant gratification, the unseen over the seen, and accountability over total freedom.