The Biblical Christ vs. The Cultural Christ

Today professing Christians have many views about Christ Jesus, and sadly most of them end up being wrong. The one that I hear most often at work is the loving, kind, no need to have mercy on us, Jesus. For some reason or another the righteous, just, holy God, who is unblemished by sin has been rejected. The idea of Jesus and God sounds good to them, but they don’t like the God they see and read about in the Bible, God’s Word. The focus is put on God’s forgiveness of sin so much they ignore His justness. The idea is essentially that God will forgive you now matter what, even if you are living in sin all you have to do is passively say, “God, I’m sorry” and BAM! He forgives you. Here’s what is skipped over; “The only ground on which God can forgive us is the tremendous tragedy of the Cross of Christ; to put forgiveness on any other ground is unconscious blasphemy… The revelation of God is that He cannot forgive; He would contradict His nature if He did” (Oswald Chambers). Did you catch that? It’s against God’s nature TO forgive! So the very instant He does forgive us is a miracle! The only way He can forgive us is through His Son being sacrificed. Whenever we passively ask God to forgive us of the sin we are living in, all the while calling ourselves a Christian (follower of Christ), we have just slapped God in face and might as well told Him we don’t care that He had His Son killed on our behalf! Allow me to voice a word of caution and warning, do not be so quick to focus primarily on God’s forgiveness and love that you forget He is first holy, and just. Without His holiness and justice there can be no forgiveness or love.