The Gospels weren’t written to make you fall in love with Jesus.
CS Lewis was an absolutely brilliant man and a famous Christian author. He wrote Chronicles of Narnia, Screwtape Letters, the Great Divorce, Mere Christianity among many other works.
But CS Lewis wrote that before he became a Christian (He became a believer as an adult), other Christians would come to him and tell him ‘you have to read the Gospels! You’ll fall in love with Jesus.’ So he did read the gospels and he did not fall in love with Jesus. Actually, Lewis was at times turned off by the Jesus he found in the gospels.
Bc the Jesus Lewis found in the gospels didn’t seem to care what CS Lewis thought.
In fact, Lewis realized that the gospels weren’t asking him to judge Jesus or even trying to make Lewis like Jesus. He quickly saw that according to the Gospels it would be Jesus who would be judging Lewis and it was Jesus who had to decide whether or not He liked Lewis.
The point of the gospels was not to present a really likable guy that everyone just had to love. CS Lewis understood that when he was reading the gospels all he was being asked to do was make one decision – believe what Jesus said about Himself and therefore, submit and obey or disagree with Jesus and therefore, ignore Him and go on with life as it was.
Lewis was not being asked to like Jesus but simply believe Jesus’ message about the Kingdom and the King.
Be careful how you present Jesus. Sometimes I feel like as Christians today we desperately want people to believe in Jesus which is a good thing, but we don’t know how to make that happen without selling Him. So, we try to make Jesus sound safe and like-able. We create pictures of Jesus holding a little lamb in His arms smiling. We don’t want to make Him sound too big or too scary bc that might turn people off. So we create this man who loved everyone and was open to everything, and we think this man is easy to love!
But we don’t realize He’s also easy to ignore.
Do you realize, in one sense, Jesus isn’t asking you to like Him.
All the gospels ask of you is to believe Jesus and therefore, submit to Him and obey. Faith remember is action plus belief. And in a big way, Jesus has nothing to lose by your answer. You are the one who has everything to gain or everything to lose based on your answer to Jesus.
You don’t need to sell Jesus. He can handle Himself.
The man you find in the Gospels is dangerous, but He’s also good. My dad once made the comment that ‘we tell people to ask Jesus into their hearts but the reality is He wouldn’t fit.’ Jesus is too big.
Believer, may you never be afraid to show Jesus as He really was. He was a Man who came to save but also to divide. A Man who came to love but also to call people to repentance. Jesus came to bring His Father’s kingdom and to call others into service for the King and Kingdom work is hard!
Jesus isn’t safe, but He is good.