Two Blemishes on the Face of Jesus
Doctrines are so unpopular! People think they're made-up rules churches use to control people. So, Christians are throwing doctrine away and guaranteeing a FAIL at their only divine assignment, revealing the face of Jesus!
Doctrines are tight scriptural combinations, Biblical brush strokes on a portrait of Christ. Doctrines show us whether Jesus is smiling or scowling, gentle or mean. Until your picture of Jesus includes His essential features, you don't even know what He looks like! You're recommending an impostor!
1. He really died so I don't have to. Every weekend, millions dress impeccably, drive their luxury vehicle to a steepled edifice, and listen to virtuosic music with only fleeting glimpses at an empty-faced Jesus. Battered by sin-pounding parents and preachers in their youth, their needy heart is encased in a defensive shell. Without an admission of their Saviorless life, the appealing smile of Jesus is invisible to them. Millions more are relativists. Nothing's wrong. Nothing's right. They cannot see the worry lines in the forehead of Christ. They're Saviorless, too. Society gives both an "A." Until they admit their need, they do not see the smile of Jesus, return it, and become His. And, being His saves.
"They aren’t acting on the basis of faith. Everything that isn’t based on faith is sin... [and] sin pays its wage—death." (Romans 14:23, CEB; Romans 6:23, GNT) "But to all who did accept him and believe in Him He gave the right to become children of God... He himself carried our sins in his body on the tree so that we would be dead to sins and alive to righteousness. By his wounds you were healed." (John 1:12, NCV; 1Peter 2:24, EHV)
That's solid Biblical soteriology, the study of salvation. When pastors quit preaching it, those in their pews stare at a blank visage of one who cannot forgive, save, and transform their lives! If you don't like the term, "doctrine," okay, but give them Jesus with His face painted-in!
2. He doesn't want anyone to miss being with Him! The worst distortion of Jesus' face paints Him as a fiendish terrorist torturing unbelievers in a blazing conflagration of 70 Billion years for a sin-life of a mere 7 decades. That aberrant portrayal of Jesus makes Adolph Hitler with his Jewish holocaust look like a choir boy in comparison!
"God is not so unfair... God is not unjust" (Hebrews 6:10, CJB, NIV) "The Lord... is patient toward you, not wanting anyone to perish but all to change their hearts and lives.... On that day the heavens will pass away with a dreadful noise, the elements will be consumed by fire, and the earth and all the works done on it... Make every effort to be found by him in peace—pure and faultless... Dear friends, since you have been warned in advance, be on guard so that you aren’t led off course... and lose your own safe position. Instead, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." (2 Timothy 3:9-18, CEB)
I hear a Friend not a fiend, don't you? That's grace not Jihad, forbear-ance not fury. Jesus wants us with Him in Heaven not consumed in Earth's planetary fireball. Flames? Yes, a global burn-off is forecasted. Pain, abuse, dementia, cancer, human trafficking, and war will all be consumed, gone! The cosmic cauterization preps the world's foundations for "a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness is at home." (2Timothy 3:13, CEB)
Teaching never-ending hell cakes our dear Savior with the most hideous face paint imaginable. Won't you replace hearsay and misquoted verses from your youth with the trustworthy scriptures above.
Your friend, Dave
