Who do pastors and Christian writers say that Jesus is? Some say a new Abraham, others a new Samson, and still others a new Moses or one of the prosecutors. When Jesus asked the question of his disciples, only Peter answered correctly. Jesus told him that his answer had been revealed to him from heaven. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
But Jesus is so often portrayed in sermons and Christian literature as a new Abraham, a forefather, a moral example. Look to Jesus and you will see one who models the life that you are called to live. Or Jesus is portrayed as a new Samson, a mighty spirit-filled man. If you tap into the power he possessed, you will defeat the Philistines in your life. Or finally Jesus is presented as a new Moses. The first Law was not good enough, so Jesus taught a new and improved version. All of these Jesuses are preached in churches today, but one is conspicuously missing. Jesus is preached as a second Abraham, a second Samson, and a second Moses. What we need to hear about is Jesus the second Adam, whose gift of himself restores what the first Adam lost.
Jesus the New Abraham
When pastors preach the New Testament they commonly make Jesus into a new Abraham. This is easy to do with the Gospels because in them we see how Jesus acts. Pastors forget to ask, or perhaps they were not trained to ask, why Jesus' acts were recorded in the first place. We assume that since we are imperfect and Jesus is perfect, we can improve ourselves by imitating his performance.
Sometimes we are told that living the Christian life could be difficult, but having a model makes it easy. Following Jesus, we are like a boy following his father through the snow. While the boy would be up to his chin in snow if he went his own way, it is all much easier if he places his shoes in his father's well-packed tracks.
At other times, pastors admit the difficulty of the way ahead. We must die to ourselves, like Jesus did. But after every Good Friday comes an Easter Sunday. After death to self we can look forward to a resurrection.
Each of these two ways of reading Scripture might have some merit, but this approach neglects to ask what the original writer intended in penning his gospel. Were the stories of Jesus primarily intended to teach us about our mission, or about the mission of Jesus?
At the beginning of his gospel, Luke said that he wrote so that his reader would know the certainty of what he had been taught (Lk 1:3, 4). The apostles recorded Jesus' life so that we might be able to conclude that he was the prophesied Messiah. Because of this, it is natural to preach gospel passages as evidence for the messianic nature of Jesus. They show us who our Messiah is and what that means for us.
Rather than preaching Jesus as a new Abraham, as a moral example, we ought to be instructed to follow in the footsteps of Abraham and trust Jesus as our Messiah. Scripture enjoins this:
And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you." For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed (Gal 3:8, 9).
Jesus was not the forefather of a new people, but the Savior of the people he had been calling out of the nations from before the time of Abraham. Rather than viewing Jesus as our example of morality, let us view Abraham as our example of faith in Jesus.
Jesus the New Samson
Jesus is often preached as a moral example by otherwise well-informed pastors who should know better. He is preached as a new Samson by pastors who are not Christian at all. Like Samson of old, Jesus is presented in many sermons as a spirit-filled man who did mighty deeds when he yielded to the plan of God. The problem is that the new-Samson Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible, for he is not God.
According to this teaching, Jesus was born a mortal human like you or me. Then a number of years later he was baptized in the river Jordan, and shazam! The Spirit descended upon him and he became the Christ. This view of Jesus is a popular one among televangelists and other trendy teachers who want to hawk an experience to their audience. "Why just look!" they say. "Before Jesus had this experience, he was virtually unknown. But afterwards, everyone had heard of him. And you can achieve the same results with spiritual power in your life. Just send in some money and we'll tell you how."
Televangelists are probably the only people who embrace this view of Jesus wholeheartedly, but pastors and teachers risk conveying this whenever they downplay the uniqueness of the incarnation. Too often the incarnation is presented as if Jesus was called God because God sort of generally resided with him. The pastor forgets to explain how God and man have become one person in Christ so that whatever Jesus says and does is said to be done by God.
This kind of preaching robs Christians of comfort, for it makes them imagine that the character of Jesus is not the true character of God. The Son of God may love me, but what about the Father?
To teach the incarnation properly, the pastor must carefully exposit Colossians 2:9, where we are told that "In Christ all the fulness of the deity dwells bodily." "All the fulness" means that there is nothing about God that you cannot find in the incarnate Son. True, neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit became incarnate, but all we know from Scripture that distinguishes them from the Son is that the Father is unbegotten, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Other than that, everything that can be said of God can be found in the incarnate Christ.
This solves the problem of not knowing what God thinks of us. Christ is, as it were, a key to the heart of God. With him secrets are unlocked. Christ did not merely tell the parable of the prodigal son to teach what God who is in heaven thinks of wayward sinners. Christ is God-in-the-flesh telling sinners that they are welcome to him.
Pastors must stop presenting the teachings of Jesus as the teachings of a man who has access to God's thoughts, and start presenting them as the teachings and actions of God himself. We are not dealing with general information and principles that just anyone could have presented. We are dealing with God's self revelation.
Jesus was not a mighty spirit-filled man who taught the principles of a spirit-filled life, but the Savior of a people who have failed to live that life from before the time of Samson. Rather than seeing Jesus as our example of empowerment, let us see Samson as our example of faith in Jesus.
Jesus the New Moses
The preaching of Jesus as a new Moses is both common and dangerous. A very plausible case can be made for this type of preaching when we look at the state of the church. Against the superficiality of external religion, pastors wish to preach a Jesus who demands an internal righteousness. They see how the Pharisees were able to outwardly obey the Mosaic Law while remaining cold-hearted, and conclude that the problem is with the Law itself. What we need is a Law that requires internal righteousness. And this is exactly what we find in the Sermon on the Mount. Doesn't this make sense? Jesus saw the same problem in his generation that we see in ours. And he offers a solution. Isn't this the reason he came?
The problem with this kind of teaching is that it rests on half-truths. On one hand, it recognizes the falsity of a righteousness that is merely outward. But on the other, it fails to recognize that the Mosaic Law required an inward righteousness. As Paul says "through the Law we become conscious of sin." The problem with Jesus' contemporaries is that the Law was no longer doing its job of revealing sin. In order for these people to know how far they were from righteousness, Jesus read the Law to them anew, in all its rigor.
The Sermon on the Mount is merely God's commentary on the Law of Moses. It is not a new Law, and it was not intended to save. It was intended to make us conscious of sin so that we might seek a savior. The Apostle Paul draws our attention to the opposite, yet complementary purposes of Moses and Christ when he says that the ministry of Moses was the ministry of condemnation, while the the ministry of Christ is the ministry of justification (2 Cor 3:7, 9). God uses Moses to kill us before he makes us alive in Christ.
When we read the Sermon on the Mount as if it were intended to save, when we look at Jesus' primary mission as the revelation of new ethical information to the human race, we make Christ into a new Moses. Martin Luther told the dangers of this in his Lectures on Galatians: "Paul sets Christ, the agent of righteousness who has fulfilled what Moses demanded through the Law, over against Moses. John 1:17 does not pass over this fact in complete silence. 'The Law,' says John, 'was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,' as if he were saying: 'The Law, not grace and truth, comes through Moses. Therefore it is rather sin and transgression that have been given through him.' Accordingly, Christ is not a lawgiver: He is the Fulfiller of the Law." (1) To be sure, we need both Moses and Christ, but Moses' primary mission is to let us know how badly we need Christ.
Jesus was not a new legislator who teaches the principles of a righteous life, but the Savior of a people who have failed to live that life from before the time of Moses. Aside from his role as lawgiver, Moses was a sinner who needed a Messiah, and looked for his salvation not in the law he gave, but in the one who would save him from the penalty of the law. The author of Hebrews says:
By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward (Heb 11:24, 26).
Rather than viewing Jesus as our example of empowerment, let us view Moses as our example of steadfast faith in Jesus.
Jesus the Second Adam
We have seen the dangers of presenting Jesus in the role of three Old Testament saints. A comparison to a fourth Old Testament figure will prove fruitful however. In the book of Romans, God compares himself to Adam when he says that Adam was the "type of the one to come," that is, Christ (Rom 5:14). There is a difference, however, and this difference makes all the difference.
When Scripture says that Adam is a type of Christ, that places Christ in the same role as Adam, but shows how differently Christ acted in that role. Both Adam and Christ performed acts that had universal effects. Adam's acts brought condemnation for all. Christ's acts brought righteousness for all. The universality of the two acts is the same. But, as the text says, "the free gift is not like the trespass" (Rom 5:15). Where one act brought death, the other brings life.
The difference between preaching Christ as a second Adam, and making him into a second Abraham, Samson, or Moses is that in the case of Adam it is easy to draw the appropriate contrasts, in the other cases it is not.
Scripture itself compares Christ and Adam. Christ's act is analogous to Adam's but greater, and produces the opposite result. Because of the disparity between the two men, it is not easy to confuse them. Adam brought death. No Christian will be so confused as to think that this is Christ's mission.
But when we compare, say, Christ to Moses, the distinctions are lost. Many people do think that Christ came just to be a greater Moses. But Scripture says that Moses' ministry was that of condemnation, Christ's ministry that of justification. Far better to compare Moses and Adam, if we must. Scripture repeatedly emphasizes Jesus' uniqueness. Jesus didn't come to earth merely to do a second time what God couldn't accomplish through someone else the first time, unless that person be Adam.
Let us hear Christ preached as a second Adam, and like Adam, look forward to Jesus who will offer us a free gift, canceling the condemnation of our trespasses.
