Jesus All About Life by Murray Smith

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For Noah, Ella, Jemimah, Calvin and Levi: may your lives be all about Jesus, who is all about life.

What’s inside?

What’s Jesus got to do with my life?

Jesus and the good stuff

1. The good stuff in life

2. The real Jesus

3. Will the real god please stand up?

4. An amazing Father

Jesus and the ugly bits

5. Life in a broken world

6. The ugly life of Jesus

7. The heart of the problem

Jesus: a new start

8. The great restoration project

9. A whole new beginning

10. Death by love

Jesus and where it’s all headed

11. Waiting on the world to change.

12. An (almost) unbelievable true story

13. There’s a new world coming

Life with God

The Bible: some basic info to get you started

WHAT’S JESUS GOT TO DO WITH MY LIFE?

Real life in the real world

When I was 15, I used to ride my bike to school every day and home every afternoon. I loved flying down the hills as fast as possible, and then taking it easy as I rolled up the other side. One day, I was feeling pretty good and I wanted to get home quickly, so I decided to work a bit harder. Instead of rolling up the hills, I tried to push it the whole way. About halfway home I was doing a really good time, pedalling like crazy, flying up a hill with my head down … and then the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back on the ground. The front half of my bike was so bent you could hardly recognise it. My two front teeth were broken, and I was mildly concussed. To this day I still can’t remember the moment of the collision.

What I do remember is that when I looked up, the first thing I saw was the car that had gotten in my way. I stood up, angry as anything, ready to blast the driver who’d pulled out in front of me. But when I got to the front door of the car, there was no-one in the driver’s seat!

That’s when I realised that I had ridden full speed into the back of a parked car. You can guess how stupid I felt.

I reckon that is a pretty good picture of what life can be like in our world. Often life is great. There is so much good stuff to enjoy. You can feel like you are cruising along, enjoying the ride. But then every so often, for no apparent reason, things go wrong. Sometimes it’s only a small frustration, like when you lose your phone or your wallet. Sometimes it’s more serious, like when you hurt someone you love and can’t make it right again. Or when you lose your job, your family breaks down or those you love get sick and die. At those times, it can feel like you’ve had a head-on collision with something big and ended up flat on your back on the ground.

This book is about real life in the real world. It’s about the good stuff and the mess. I can’t promise all the answers, of course, but I hope to help you to at least start to find your way.

Jesus

This book is also about Jesus, because Jesus knew all about life.

What’s Jesus got to do with my life?

When I say Jesus, I’m not talking about the wimp in a dress with long blond hair that you see in some picture books. I’m not talking about the holy-looking saint in the stained-glass windows who always seems to float two centimetres above the ground. And I’m not talking about the angry killjoy you sometimes hear about who’s determined to spoil your fun. This book is not about any of those made-up interpretations of Jesus. It’s about the real Jesus.

At around the same time I had the accident with the parked car, I was invited to go to a Christian camp with some of my mates from high school. I had grown up in a Christian family, but I had never owned up to that at school. It just wasn’t cool to say that you went to church. Probably more importantly, I wasn’t really sure how all the Jesus stuff I had learned at home and at church fitted in with the rest of my life. I felt confused, actually, about what life was about. I looked ahead, and all I could see was the HSC, then more study and then a job; everything seemed pretty meaningless. If I’m just going to die in the end anyway, I thought to myself, what’s the point? And to be honest, Jesus didn’t really seem all that relevant.

But the guy who was giving the talks at the Christian camp helped me to start putting the pieces together. He said something that I have never forgotten: ‘When you put Jesus at the centre of your life, everything else falls into place around him.’ He didn’t mean that life would suddenly be easy, or that you’d never make mistakes again, or that bad things wouldn’t happen to you anymore. He meant that with Jesus at the centre of your life, you’d be able to make the most of the good stuff of life, deal better with the ugly bits, and begin to live life the way it was always meant to be lived.

That weekend, I decided to test out what he said. I put Jesus at the centre of my life. From one point of view, not a lot changed. In fact, one month later – after I’d had my teeth fixed and my bike repaired – I was riding home again. It was the same bike. I got to the same hill. And then, for a second time, I ended up flat on my back on the ground. You wouldn’t believe it, but it was the same car!

From another point of view, however, the weekend that I gave control of myself over to Jesus was the most important in my life. I have found out since then that the speaker was right. When you put Jesus at the centre of your life, everything else falls into place

What’s Jesus got to do with my life?

around him. In fact, looking back on it now, it wasn’t so much the decision I made that weekend that mattered. It was more what God did that made all the difference. God took hold of my life in a new way that weekend, and I haven’t been the same since.

Real life and Jesus

At this point, you might be thinking that these are strange things to say about a man who lived and died on the other side of the world 2,000 years ago! Noone says this kind of stuff about Cleopatra, Alexander the Great or anyone else from the ancient world, so it may sound strange that I say these things about Jesus. At the same time, despite 2,000 years of history, Jesus is still by far the most influential person who has ever lived. A quick Google search for ‘Jesus’ shows up more than a billion hits, and there are more than two billion people around the world today who claim to follow Jesus in some way. It is possible, of course, that all these people are deluded. The fact that billions of people believe something doesn’t make it true. Still, it is surely at least worth asking why so many people, from all around the world, claim that Jesus makes the difference in their lives.

For now, let me say something briefly to the critics, and then something to those who have a hunch that there just might be something to the whole Jesus thing.

To the critics

Firstly, to the critics, let me say this: I am with you. There’s a great deal of false information out there about Jesus and the Christian faith, and it’s right to reject a lot of it. If, for example, someone starts to tell you that Jesus had an affair with Mary Magdalene before moving to France and raising his kids there, you’ve got every right to be sceptical. Despite its popularity in some corners of the internet, there is not a scrap of historical evidence to support such a strange idea. Christianity at its best never calls for blind faith, and I am not, in this book, asking you to check your brains out at the door. True Christian faith is confidence in God based on the evidence we’ve got. So, if you’ve got a healthy sense of scepticism, that’s a good thing. Keep your brain engaged!

At the same time, the fact that there is so much to be critical about doesn’t mean that we should reject everything. The question is always whether the evidence stacks up. That’s why whenever

What’s Jesus got to do with my life?

I talk about Jesus throughout this book, you’ll find quotes from the biographies of Jesus that we have in the Bible. There are four of these biographies, known as the four ‘Gospels’: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These four books are the earliest and most trustworthy historical records we have for the life of Jesus. If we want to get to know the real Jesus, they are where we need to start.

I’ll have more to say on this in the next chapter. In the meantime, if you want to find out more about the Bible, or the Gospels, then you could read the section at the end of this book. But that’s it for now for the critics.

To the curious

For the curious, there is a second point that I need to make right up front. Actually, it’s more like a warning: being interested in Jesus could turn your life upside down!

You see, it is one thing to be interested in Jesus as a man who lived in history. But if the Christian faith is true, Jesus is not just a man who lived and died 2,000 years ago. Christians have always believed that Jesus was God in the flesh – God up-close-and-personal – and that Jesus not only lived and

died, but that he came back to life again after he died. If this is true, it means that Jesus is still alive today, that he lives with God, and that he is in charge of everything that happens in the world.

So, the biographies of Jesus should come with a warning sign. On the one hand, putting a dead man at the centre of your life doesn’t make a lot of sense. If you end up deciding to follow Jesus as I have done, but it turns out that the Christian faith is all a hoax, then you, like me, will have been fooled. On the other hand, if Jesus really is alive, and you put your life in his hands, then I can guarantee you that he will turn your life upside down – in the best possible way! If you are curious, I want to warn you right up front: being interested in Jesus could change your life forever!

Where to from here?

Whether you are starting out feeling critical, curious or a bit of both, I want to encourage you to do more than simply read this book and think about it on your own.

You’ll get much more out of this book if you start talking to other people about what you have read. Why not find someone you know who goes to a church or a

What’s Jesus got to do with my life?

church youth group and see if you can tag along? If it is a good church where they teach from the Bible, then you’ll learn plenty about Jesus and about life. I can’t think of any church that wouldn’t be happy to have you along, and if you end up not being convinced, you can simply stop going.

At the same time, you’ll get much more out of this book if you start talking to God about what you have read. I recognise that if you are not used to praying, it can seem like a strange thing to do. But prayer is actually not that strange. Millions of people around the world speak to God every day. And from a purely rational point of view, it is hard to see what you have got to lose. If the whole thing is a hoax, then perhaps you will have spent a few moments engaged in wishful thinking. But if Jesus really is who the Gospels say he is, then you will have begun a relationship with the Creator of the universe!

Perhaps you could start by saying something like this:

Jesus knew all about life in this world. He knew all about the good stuff of life, and he knew all about the ugly bits, too. More than that, Jesus claimed that he had come from God to set the world right again.

If you’re curious to find out what Jesus said and did, and how his life might make a difference in yours, read on.

Jesus got to do with my life?

I said this is a book is about real life in the real world, and it is also about Jesus. The two go together, because

God,

I want to know the truth. As I read this book, please show yourself to me and help me to learn to trust you.

What’s

JESUS AND THE GOOD STUFF

1. The good stuff in life.

Random good stuff

Life is full of random good stuff; good stuff that seems to come out of nowhere.

Towards the end of Year 10, one of my teachers from school who knew I was into cycling invited me to go on a marathon bike ride. It sounded like fun (I was a cycling nut!), it was raising money for a good cause and it was at least as good as any other offer I’d had for the holidays. I decided to give it a go. I don’t really remember much about the ride. A thousand kilometres on country roads around New South Wales can get pretty boring after a while! But what I do remember clearly is that by the end of it I had met the girl who would eventually become my wife. She was intelligent, gorgeous and fun to be around. Best of all, even though I was a bit of a geek, she actually liked me!

It took us years to get together. We lived on opposite sides of Sydney and neither of us had transport. To begin with, each of us was busy with other things. We wrote letters back and forth occasionally (yep, texts weren’t invented yet!), and we basically saw each other once a year on the ride. But as time

went on, we developed a close friendship, and then a romance. When I eventually proposed, and she said yes, I almost couldn’t believe it!

I sometimes wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t decided to go on that first ride back in Year 10. Chances are we would never have met. We would never have become friends, gotten married, started a family and worked out our lives together. Who knows who I might have married, where I might be living, what I might be doing? Meeting and marrying Lynette has been one of the most wonderful things that ever happened to me. I can’t imagine life without her. And all of it came about because I ended up on one random bike ride when I was 15.

Life is full of random good stuff like that; good stuff that seems to come out of nowhere, almost as if it were an accident. In fact, I’m confident that if you sit down for five minutes and think about it, you’ll be able to make a long list of the random good stuff in your own life – the love of family and friends; the satisfaction of study or work; the pleasures of food and drink; the beauty of art, music and the natural world.

Have you ever wondered where it all comes from?

The good stuff in life

The good stuff, Jesus and God

Jesus taught that the good things in life are no accident.

They are, rather, gifts. Freebies. Presents. The good things in life are wrapped up and given to us with no strings attached by the God who made us. Here’s how Jesus put it in one of his most famous speeches: ‘God makes the sun rise on both good and bad people. And he sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong’ (see Matthew 5:45). Or again, ‘God is good even to people who are unthankful and cruel’ (see Luke 6:35).

According to Jesus, the good stuff of life doesn’t come our way by accident. God sends the good our way. In fact, according to Jesus, God is so generous that he even gives good gifts to people who ignore him or reject him. God doesn’t play favourites. He gives good things to everyone!

When we recognise this, Jesus said, it should lead us to ask God for more. Later in the same speech, Jesus put it like this:

Ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you. Everyone who asks will receive. Everyone who searches will find. And the door will be opened for everyone who knocks. Would any of you give your hungry child a stone, if the child asked for some bread?

Would you give your child a snake if the child asked for a fish? As bad as you are, you still know how to give good gifts to your children. But your heavenly Father is even more ready to give good things to people who ask. (Matthew 7:7–11)

Can you see what Jesus is saying here? God is generous to everyone. But he especially loves to give good gifts to people who ask him. The God who made us, Jesus says, is like a good father: he knows our needs, he cares about us and he loves to give good gifts to us when we ask him.

When my daughter was two, and just learning to talk, she would come to me, look into my eyes and say, ‘I peas haf dink of nulk now Daddy?’ There was no way in the world that I was going to deny her a cup of ‘nulk’ (= milk). There was usually plenty of milk in the fridge.

The good stuff in life

It was good for her. She asked me for it, and she even said ‘please’.

What kind of dad would say no?! And so, Jesus says, if human fathers like me (who so often get things wrong) still know how to give good gifts to their children, then it is certain that the God of the universe loves to give good gifts to the people he made when they ask him for them.

Have you ever thought to ask God for what you need? Have you ever thought to thank him for all of the good stuff in your life? At the end of the introduction, ‘What’s Jesus got to do with my life?’, I encouraged you to start talking to God as you read this book. Why not talk to him again now? Maybe you could say ‘thank you’ for some of the good stuff in your life, and ask him to help you with what you need.

2. The real Jesus.

Jesus and the food court

Finding the real Jesus these days is a bit like trying to choose what to eat at the food court.

I’m sure you’ve been there. It’s Friday night. You are out with your friends to see a movie, you need to grab some dinner on the way and you end up at the food court. You’ve got 20 bucks in your pocket and a bewildering range of options. There’s the healthy sandwich takeaway, the Indian diner, the Chinese restaurant, the kebab shop, the pizza joint, and –of course – the big-name fast-food outlets, along with a bunch of others. Sometimes the choice can be paralysing. Do you go healthy or cheap? The quick bite so you can catch the beginning of the movie or something more satisfying? The same as the rest of the group to keep things easy or what you really want, even though it may slow things down? Pretty quickly, what should be a simple decision becomes complicated because of the range of things on offer.

It is not much different when you start looking for the real Jesus, because there is, these days, a

range of different Jesuses on offer. A Google image search turns up plenty of options. There’s the ‘meek and mild’ Jesus of the children’s picture books, the ‘holy’ Jesus of the stained-glass windows, the ‘wise teacher’ Jesus of The Da Vinci Code, the bloodstained Jesus of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, the conservative Jesus of the political right and the ‘revolutionary’ Jesus of the radicals. And that’s just a small sample of the huge number of Jesuses on offer.

So, how do we find the real Jesus?

Did Jesus really exist?

The first question we need to ask is this: Did Jesus really exist?

Every now and then, you hear people saying that the biographies of Jesus in the Bible are fictitious fabrications – more fairytale than serious history – and that there never was a real person called Jesus. The idea may sound exciting, but it won’t stand up under scrutiny. The thing to notice about this question is that it is an historical question. It is exactly the same as asking ‘Did Adolf Hitler exist?’ or ‘Did Julius Caesar exist?’ Because these are historical questions, the only way

to answer them is by looking at the historical evidence.

The evidence for Jesus

It is certainly true that serious historians reach different conclusions about who Jesus was. In my PhD research in the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University, and while teaching at the University of Sydney, I have repeatedly been struck by the different ways in which serious historians interpret Jesus. What is even more striking, however, is that no serious ancient historian – whether Jewish, Christian, atheist or whatever –doubts that Jesus existed. Although Jesus’ existence is often questioned in certain corners of the internet and in sensational documentaries, the possibility that Jesus never existed is universally dismissed by those who really know what they are talking about.

The reason for this is quite straightforward. There is simply too much evidence to seriously question Jesus’ existence. Let me give you just a small sample from three different sources.

To begin with, since Jesus lived during the time when the Roman Empire was at its height, the first

kind of evidence we have is from Roman writers. One ancient Roman author called Tacitus, who wrote about 80 years after Jesus died, had this to say about him:

Christians derived their name from a man called Christ, who, during the reign of the emperor Tiberius had been executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate. The deadly superstition, thus checked for the moment, broke out afresh not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but also in the city of Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world meet and become popular.

(Annals15:44)

Tacitus here gives us some good basic information about Jesus. Jesus, he says, lived in the region of Judea (what we call Israel/ Palestine). He lived during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius. And he was executed under the Roman governor Pontius Pilate (26–36 AD). But the really interesting thing about this quote from Tacitus is that he is so obviously opposed to Christianity. He calls it ‘deadly superstition’, ‘evil’, ‘hideous’ and ‘shameful’. Tacitus is clearly no fan of Jesus, ‘the Christ’, or the movement that took its name from him – the

The real Jesus

‘Christians’. It is precisely for this reason, however, that Tacitus provides us with such excellent historical evidence. He has no reason to pass on information about Jesus that might support or encourage the spread of Christianity in some way. Yet, the information he does provide fits perfectly with what we find in the Gospels. More on that shortly. The second kind of evidence we have for Jesus comes from ancient Jewish writers. This is no surprise, because Jesus was a Jew by birth. One of these ancient Jewish writers, a historian named Josephus, wrote his book about 60 years after Jesus died. Here is what he said:

Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, [if it be lawful to call him a man], for he was a doer of surprising deeds – a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the gentiles. [He was the Christ]; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, [for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand

other wonderful things concerning him]; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day.

(JewishAntiquities18:63–64)

There is some debate about exactly what Josephus wrote about Jesus. Most scholars think that the sections I have placed in square brackets represent later Christian additions to what Josephus originally wrote. But even when we take these sections out, Josephus still reports a body of information about Jesus that fits perfectly with what we have in the Gospels.

Finally, the third source of historical evidence about Jesus comes from the things that Jesus’ earliest followers wrote about him. The most important primary sources are the four Gospels, which I have already mentioned. In addition to these, the New Testament contains a further 23 books, all of which were written in the first 60 years or so after Jesus died, and all of which have something to say about Jesus. Some might object at this point that the Christian writings about Jesus are so obviously biased that we cannot trust them as history. There is more to say about that in a moment. For now, it is enough to notice the simple point that

The real Jesus

27 separate books, all talking about a historical person within a generation or two of that person’s life, are extremely good evidence that such a person existed. How else can we explain why all these books were written, or why they all make the same assumption that Jesus actually lived and died in the land of Israel in recent history? As modern readers of these texts, we might decide that we do not trust everything they say about Jesus, but that is a different issue. If we are looking for evidence that Jesus existed, the large number of early Christian books about him has got to be an important factor.

It is true, of course, that even when we put all of this together, there is not as much concrete, physical evidence for Jesus as there is for, say, Julius Caesar. Jesus, after all, didn’t construct roads, mint coins, build cities or start wars! There is, however, more than enough evidence to be entirely confident that he really existed. This is why serious ancient historians – from every different religious perspective – accept that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure.

The nonnegotiables

More than the simple fact of Jesus’ existence, it is possible to say, with confidence, a great deal about him. When we put all the evidence together, the result is a clear and consistent outline of Jesus’ life. Even among the most sceptical non-Christian ancient historians, at least there is widespread agreement about these eight points:

• Jesus of Nazareth was a Jewish teacher who lived in the land of Palestine.

• Jesus lived from about 5 BC to 33 AD.

• Jesus taught people about ‘the kingdom of God’.

• Jesus was notorious for associating with ‘sinners’ – the outcasts and ‘low-lifes’ of the society in which he lived.

• Jesus chose twelve disciples.

• Jesus did amazing things that many people considered ‘miraculous’.

The real Jesus

• Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem on a Roman cross while Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor of the region.

• Soon after his death, Jesus’ followers started claiming that he had been raised to life again.

None of this is religious belief. These are just the bare bones of what ancient historians accept about the historical person called Jesus of Nazareth.

But can we trust the Gospels?

If we want to know more about Jesus, however – more about his teaching about God, his understanding of his own identity and mission, and his vision for life in the world – we need to turn to the four New Testament biographies of Jesus, the four Gospels.

Although the historical reliability of the Gospels has sometimes been questioned, there are good reasons to trust their testimony. Whole books have been written on this subject. Here are my top six reasons to trust what the Gospels say about Jesus.

A good fit

First, the Gospels fit well with the other evidence from the ancient world. The Gospels mention, mostly in passing, a range of historical figures and groups that we know from other texts: the Roman emperor Augustus, Herod ‘the Great’ King of the Jews, Pontius Pilate, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, just to name a few. There is no doubt that all of these people existed at the time of Jesus, and the details the Gospels give us about them in passing are a good fit with what we find in other ancient sources. In the same way, the Gospel descriptions of the geography, the social customs, and the religious and political situation in Palestine in the first century are consistent with what we learn elsewhere. The archaeological evidence from Galilee and Jerusalem – the remains of ancient synagogues, coins and inscriptions – also confirm the picture of life at the time of Jesus that we get from the Gospels. The result is that the Gospels have the ‘ring of truth’ about them. They fit well with everything else we know about Jewish life under Roman rule in Palestine at the time of Jesus.

Close to the events

The second reason we can trust the Gospels is that they were written not long after the events themselves. It is quite possible that all four Gospels were completed by 70 AD – that is, within 40 years of Jesus’ crucifixion in 33 AD. At the latest, the Gospels were completed by the 90s AD. While this might seem like a significant time gap, when we compare the Gospels to other ancient sources, they stack up very well. For example, the earliest surviving written reports we have of the exploits of Alexander the Great date from more than 200 years after his death.

Eyewitness testimony

Related to this, the third reason we can trust the Gospels is that they are based on eyewitness testimony. Here is what Luke says at the beginning of his Gospel:

Many people have tried to tell the story of what God has done among us. They wrote what we had been told by the ones who were there in the beginning and saw what

happened. So I made a careful study of everything and then decided to write and tell you exactly what took place. Honourable Theophilus, I have done this to let you know the truth about what you have heard. (Luke 1:1–4)

Luke here tells us where he got his information. It was from people who actually knew Jesus; people who heard what he said and saw what he did. Since Luke wrote his Gospel within 40 to 50 years of Jesus’ death, there must still have been people around who had heard and seen Jesus and could have corrected the story if Luke got it wrong. Further, Richard Bauckham, now retired Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of St Andrews, has shown that, just as modern historians identify their sources by the use of footnotes and bibliographies, the Gospels indicate their sources according to the ancient convention of naming the individuals who witnessed the events (e.g. Simon Peter in Mark 1:16 and 16:7). By itself, this doesn’t guarantee that everything the Gospels say is true, but it does show that the Gospels are based on the testimony of people who knew the truth about Jesus.

The real Jesus

Reliable, independent, testimony

The fourth reason to trust the Gospels is that they have all the hallmarks of reliable, independent testimony. The most significant sign here is that the four Gospels all relate the same basic story, but they fill in different details and tell it from slightly different points of view. This is exactly what we expect from good, reliable, independent testimony.

As an example, consider the reports in the Australian and English newspapers of the cricket test series known as the ‘Ashes’. If you read any two reports of the same match side by side, you quickly realise that they are telling the same basic story, but from different perspectives. The scorecard will be identical: the names of the players, the record of runs scored by each batsman, the way in which they were dismissed, the figures for the bowlers. All these details will be the same, no matter which newspaper you choose. At the same time, each report will have its own perspective and emphasis. One might mention the weather, the state of the pitch or the size of the crowd, while the other

does not. And each report will interpret the match result from its own point of view, reflecting the national sympathies of the journalist or newspaper.

Trustworthy, independent sources usually work like this: they tell the same basic story, but they each tell it from a different point of view and emphasise different details. This is exactly what we have in the Gospels, except that we have not two but four complementary accounts of Jesus’ life. These four accounts read like good, reliable, independent testimony.

Embarrassing details

A fifth reason to trust the Gospels is that they don’t hide potentially embarrassing elements in the story. In a male-dominated culture, for example, all four Gospels record that it was women who were the first eyewitnesses of the empty tomb or the risen Jesus himself (Matthew 28:1–10; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–12; John 20:1, 11–18). The first-century Jewish historian, Josephus, reflects the general attitude of the day when he says, ‘From women let no evidence be accepted, because of the levity and temerity of their sex’ (Jewish Antiquities 4.219). In this context, we have to ask why the Gospel

The real Jesus

writers would have chosen women as the first eyewitnesses of the resurrection, unless that’s what actually happened? The inclusion of this kind of potentially embarrassing detail provides strong evidence for the reliability of the accounts.

Written by people who cared about the truth

The final reason to trust the Gospels is that they were written by people who cared about the truth. Luke claims to be writing so that his readers might ‘know the truth’ (Luke 1:4). In John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of himself as ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6). Matthew records Jesus telling his hearers that when God judges the world, we will have to give an explanation for every careless word that we have spoken (Matthew 12:36). The point I am making is that the Gospel writers claim to care about the truth.

They present Jesus saying that God will judge us if we fail to tell the truth!

A sceptical reader might suggest that the Gospels are, at this point, brazenly manipulating their

readers – claiming that the truth matters, while actually telling lies. But this is highly unlikely. The Gospel writers, like other early Christians, had nothing to gain from the story they told about Jesus, and much to lose. Take, for example, Jesus’ disciple Peter, whose testimony stands behind the Gospel of Mark. Peter’s life was first threatened in Jerusalem, by the Roman puppet king Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:1–5), and later taken, in Rome, by the Roman emperor Nero, as part of his persecution of Christians. Indeed, nearly all of Jesus’ first disciples were persecuted and even executed for their confession. The question we have to ask, then, is who would die for a lie? The lives and deaths of those early Christians, whose testimony stands behind the Gospels, lend authenticity to the records they have left behind.

For all these reasons and more, I am convinced that we can trust what the Gospels tell us about Jesus.

The real Jesus

But aren’t the Gospels biased?

Now, you might well be thinking at this point, ‘But if the Gospels were all written by Christians, how can we trust anything they say about Jesus? Aren’t the Gospels biased?’

The answer to this question is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Yes, it is certainly true that the Gospels were written by ‘insiders’ – from the point of view of Christian faith. But no, this does not necessarily mean that they have distorted the truth about Jesus. You see, the reality is that all of us are ‘biased’ about everything. None of us can talk about Jesus, maths or ice cream, for that matter, in a totally ‘straight’ way. We all have a point of view on everything in life. We can’t help it. And, what’s more, this is not a bad thing! Often, if you want to find out about something, the best place to go is to an ‘insider’.

Take cricket, again, as an example. If you were new to game and wanted to know how it works, you could go to someone who has little interest in it in the hope of receiving unbiased information. The chances are, however, that such a person would be of little use to you. While they might

be able to describe the game in general terms, they wouldn’t be able to help you understand the differences between the five-day test match and the much shorter T20 format, the intricacies of the ‘leg before wicket’ rule or the meaning of the term ‘golden duck’. If you wanted to really understand cricket, you would be much better placed by asking a cricket enthusiast, an insider to the game – someone who knows it and loves it in all its peculiar glory. Of course, the cricket enthusiast would be telling you everything from that point of view, so you would need to keep that in mind as you listened to them; but they would still be a much better person to ask for good information than an uninterested outsider.

It is the same with the Gospels. Yes, they are written by people who knew Jesus, cared about him and thought his life mattered. But that is exactly what makes them such a good source of information about him! We need to keep that perspective in mind as we read the Gospels, but there is no better place to go for trustworthy information about the real Jesus than the four eyewitness accounts in the Bible.

The real Jesus

That’s enough on Jesus and the Gospels for now. If you want to learn more about all this, I’ve listed websites at the end of this book.

In the next chapter, we need to have a look at the second big question: Why should we believe what Jesus, rather than anybody else, tells us about God?

The real Jesus

3. Will the real God please stand up?

Can you invent your own religion?

The religion section of the Australian national census is mostly uncontroversial. Every five years, the Australian Bureau of Statistics asks every Australian whether they identify with any particular religion or spiritual belief. At last count, in 2021, about 52% of Aussies were happy enough to tick a box saying that they identify with one of the ‘big five’ religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity).

Back in 2001, however, the religion section of the census received some unexpected attention. No less than 70,000 people invented a new ‘faith’! Rather than identifying as Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Muslim or Hindu, they put down ‘Jedi Knight’ on the census as their religion! If he paid any attention, George Lucas must have been pleased with the popularity of his Star Wars movies, even if many of the people who identified as Jedi Knights were simply enjoying the joke!

The whole episode, however, also raises some really interesting questions. Can you invent your own religion? And how do we work out which, if any, of the religions tells us the truth about God?

In the last chapter, I suggested that we can trust what the Gospels say about Jesus as a historical figure. This, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that Jesus was right in what he said about God. It is theoretically possible that the Gospels provide an accurate record of Jesus’ wrong ideas. So, the question now becomes: what is the truth about God, and why should we accept what Jesus says about God, rather than following anyone else?

Which god is the real one?

The problem, of course – as the ‘Jedi Knight’ census results show – is that Jesus isn’t the only one who has ever had ideas about God or the gods. Indeed, according to the census, while many Australians still think that there is some kind of God or gods out there, we also have a wide variety of different ideas about what God, or the gods, might be like.

Will

Some say this doesn’t matter, since all the religions basically teach the same thing. There is, however, only a grain of truth in this statement. The major religions do, of course, have some things in common. But on the most important question – the question about G/god – the major religions all say very different things.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam agree that there is only one God. So far, so good. But serious Jews, Muslims and Christians strongly disagree about who the one God is! While Christians insist that the one God exists in ‘three persons’ –the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – and that Jesus himself is the key to understanding the identity of God, Jews and Muslims don’t accept that idea at all. They hold that Jesus was, at best, a prophet and, at worst, a dangerous false teacher! Hindus, for their part, affirm the existence of literally thousands of gods, which all reflect one godlike force known as ‘Brahman’. And to make things even more complicated, Buddhists – at least those who follow the most ancient Theravadan tradition – hold that there probably isn’t any god, but that if there is, we can’t know for sure and it doesn’t really matter anyway. So, the claim that all the religions basically teach the same thing about God doesn’t stand up under scrutiny. If you sit

down with anyone who actually believes in the teaching of any one of the major world religions, they will quickly set you straight.

There is obviously a great deal more that could be said about the different world religions. For now, the thing to notice is this: if all of the religions say very different things about God (which they do), they can’t all be right at the same time! As soon as we start talking about God, then, we have to ask the question: which God are we talking about?historical question. It is exactly the same as asking ‘Did Adolf Hitler exist?’ or ‘Did Julius Caesar exist?’ Because these are historical questions, the only way to answer them is by looking at the historical evidence.

The cosmic Santa and the SMITE god

As important as the ‘big five’ religions are in the modern world, my hunch is that most of us don’t think about God the way any of the major religions do. If we think about God at all, most of us prefer to make up our own ideas about him (or her, or them, or it!). I’ve found that people often talk about

God in one of two ways.

On the one hand, people often talk about God as if he’s a kind of cosmic Santa Claus: he’s big and friendly, but a long way away and irrelevant for most of the year. Maybe he created the world, but he’s now not directly involved in the things that happen here. Heaven doesn’t have much to do with life on earth. When we die, God will welcome most of us into heaven, because he is kind and forgiving. On this view, God is real, and kind, but mostly irrelevant.

I can certainly understand why people think about God like this. Many of us don’t feel like we’ve ever really had any experience of God. We can’t see, hear, taste or touch God, so it seems just too hard to find out anything reliable about him. It’s much easier to ‘believe’ in him like we ‘believe’ in Santa Claus: it’s a nice story, but it doesn’t have much to do with everyday life in the real world.

On the other hand, people also talk about God in a much more sinister way. They agree that he isn’t really involved in the world, but like the comic artist Gary Larson, they picture God sitting at his computer watching us, ready to hit the ‘SMITE’ button every now and then (Google it!). This

God gets a kick out of hurting people. He keeps an eye on us only to punish us when we are least expecting it. According to this view, God is not only distant and uninvolved in the world – he is also cruel and unkind.

Again, I can understand why people think about God like this. We see reports on the news of people suffering from famine and disease. We hear of horrific natural disasters and heartwrenching human tragedies, and we face difficulties and death in our own lives. It is easy to feel like God is out to get us.

Which, if any, of the many ‘gods’ on offer is the real God? How can we know the truth?

God in a test tube?

Our cultural tendency, at least in the modern West, is to turn to science at this point. The scientific method is so useful for understanding life in the world and making real progress that perhaps it can also help us find the truth about God?

On this most important question, however, science doesn’t get us very far. This is because science relies on observing things in the

Will the real god please stand up?

natural world and conducting experiments under controlled conditions. This scientific method is exactly the right method to use when we want to discover anything from the temperature at which water boils under different atmospheric conditions to the effectiveness of different vaccines in a global pandemic.

As any scientist will tell you, however, the scientific method has its limits. There are many important questions that science simply can’t answer. Whom should I marry? Is it OK to tell a ‘white lie’? What is the purpose of life? Science simply can’t help us here. The scientific method isn’t designed to answer these kinds of questions.

In the same way, we can’t put God in a test tube and conduct a science experiment on him. If we want to know if God is real and what he is like, we need some other way forward.

How do you get to know the God of the universe?

Most of the religions teach that God is not merely some supernatural force, but a personal being. Many people seem to think about God like this as well. If this is anything close to the truth, it follows that the only way we will be able to get to know God is if he tells us about himself.

This is true in all personal relationships. We can often find out quite a bit about a person from a distance by observing their behaviour, looking at their social media profile or – if they have a public presence as a politician or a celebrity – watching and reading reports about them. But that is the point: all of this only gives us some information about a person. If we really want to get to know someone – who they are, what they stand for, their likes and dislikes, what really makes them tick – the only way to find out is if they tell us about themselves.

Will the real god please stand up?

If God is a personal being, it follows that it is the same with him. The only way we can get to know a personal God is if he reveals himself to us.

One of the most striking things about Jesus is that he claimed to do just that: to know God in a way that no-one else does and reveal God in a way no-one else can. Here is what Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew:

My Father has given me everything, and he is the only one who knows the Son. The only one who truly knows the Father is the Son. But the Son wants to tell others about the Father, so they can know him too. (Matthew 11:27)

Jesus here claims to know God in a unique way – as the one and only Son of God, his Father. This claim is breathtaking: Jesus says that no-one else knows God like he does. Neither Moses, nor Buddha, nor Mohammed, nor Einstein. Certainly not you or I. Jesus’ knowledge of God his Father is unique. But more than that, Jesus says that he has come to reveal God so that we can know him too. If Jesus is right, this means that the best way to get to know God is by learning from what Jesus shows us about him.

One impressive life

But still, how can we know if Jesus is right or not? It is one thing to claim to know God and reveal God in a unique way. It is quite another thing for that claim to be true.

The biggest reason why I am convinced that we can trust what Jesus teaches is that God raised him from the dead. According to all four Gospels, Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried in a tomb, but he did not stay there. God raised him to new life on the other side of the grave ‘on the third day’. Now, I recognise, of course, that sceptical readers may not find this convincing in any way. There is obviously a lot that needs to be said about Jesus’ resurrection, and we will get to that in the proper place (chapters 12 and 13). For now, it is enough to say that if God really did raise Jesus from the dead, it would vindicate everything he said; it would be God’s stamp of approval of Jesus’ claims, including the claim that he came to reveal the truth about God.

There is, however, also a second reason why we can trust what

Will the real god please stand up?

Jesus said about God: it is his unparalleled life. While anyone can claim to know God as Jesus did, the proof of the pudding will be in the tasting. Does their life match up with the claims? And this is where Jesus really stands out. When you dig below the surface of any person’s life, you sooner or later find reason for disappointment. Selfishness. Hypocrisy. Moral failures. Even the best of us is fundamentally flawed.

But this doesn’t happen with Jesus. The more you dig, the more impressive he gets. He called on his followers to love and serve each other, and then he showed them how, at the cost of his life (Mark 10:45). He commanded people to love their enemies and forgive those who hurt them, and then, on the cross, he prayed for God to forgive the very ones who killed him (Luke 23:34). Even before you get to the amazing things Jesus did (the ‘miracles’), you can’t help noticing that his was one incredibly impressive life. At every point, Jesus’ life matched up with what he said about God.

All of this means that Jesus’ claim to know God is worth taking seriously. If you’re still reading this book at this point, then I guess you probably agree with me. You might not yet be convinced, but you may be willing to delve a little deeper.

In the next chapter, we’re going to pick up where we left off at the end of chapter 1 and take a closer look at what Jesus said about God, us and real life in the real world, starting with the good stuff of life. But before we jump in, there’s one more thing to say. If God is real and personal, as Jesus said, then you will only get to know him if he reveals himself to you. This is why I encouraged you right at the beginning of the book to start talking to him. So, if you’ve started doing that, why not pray again, right now, and ask God to show himself to you?

Will the real god please stand up?

4. An amazing Father.

Life in the Oval Office

John F. Kennedy (JFK) is one of the most famous of the US presidents. During his relatively brief term in office (1961–63), at the height of the Cold War, he was also probably the most powerful man in the world. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, JFK came as close as anyone has ever come to pressing the button to launch nuclear missiles across the globe. With decisions like that being made in the Oval Office, you can understand that it was well protected. Most people didn’t have even a slim a chance of getting in. Those few people who did needed all sorts of special permissions and high-level security clearances. It was not just anyone who got to enter the most influential office in the world to talk with the most powerful man in the world.

There were, however, two people who could get into the Oval Office anytime they wanted. In fact, these two people had such privileged access that they didn’t even need to knock. And they were so relaxed in JFK’s presence that they regularly kicked a soccer ball around the room and played hide-and-seek under the presidential desk.

I’m talking, of course, about JFK’s two kids.

John F. Kennedy was not only the president. He was also a father. Both of his kids were still young when he had the job, so it was only natural that they played freely with their dad in his office, even if most other people in the world would have never been allowed to enter it. JFK was obviously extremely busy as president, but by all reports he was still incredibly generous with his time towards his kids. At that stage of their lives, the Kennedy kids probably didn’t understand much about who their dad was. But they had an amazing relationship with a powerful and generous father.

Jesus on God our Father

Jesus spoke about God as a heavenly Father. You might remember these words from Jesus, from his famous ‘Sermon on the Mount’, which I quoted in chapter 1:

Would any of you give your hungry child a stone, if the child asked for some bread? Would you give your child a snake if the child asked for a fish? As bad as you are, you still know how to give

good gifts to your children. But your heavenly Father is even more ready to give good things to people who ask.

(Matthew 7:9–11)

Jesus talks about God in a way that is completely different to how we often imagine him. Remember the Santa Claus god: nice and friendly and all, but not really involved in everyday life in the real world? Or the SMITE god: uninterested and distant, watching us just enough to punish us every now and then? The way Jesus talks about God is completely different to both of those common ideas. According to Jesus, God is not out to get us. Quite the opposite. God is a generous father. He loves to give good gifts to his children. At the same time, according to Jesus, God is also awesomely powerful. A little earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus put it like this:

Look at the birds in the sky! They don’t plant or harvest. They don’t even store grain in barns. Yet your Father in heaven takes care of them … Look how the wild flowers grow. They don’t work hard to make their clothes. But I tell you that Solomon with all his wealth wasn’t as well clothed as one of them. God gives such beauty to everything

that grows in the fields, even though it is here today and thrown into a fire tomorrow. He will surely do even more for you!

(Matthew 6:26–30)

Can you see what Jesus is saying here? God feeds the birds. God clothes the flowers. Jesus’ words here echo the famous story from the first part of the Bible (the ‘Old Testament’) about how God made everything that exists. Jesus clearly took that story seriously. He knew that God brought the universe into being out of nothing. But here Jesus pushes the point even further. He says that God didn’t merely make the world and forget about it. God breathes life into the world every day. God is the one who makes the sun rise, and God is the one who sends the rain. His awesome power makes the US president look like a grasshopper. But amazingly, God is not distant or remote. This is his world, after all, and he is the one who keeps it going every day. According to Jesus, God knows and cares about every detail of his world, including every detail of each of our lives – even down to the number of hairs on our heads! (Matthew 10:20).

According to Jesus, God is neither a cosmic Santa Claus nor a giant killjoy. He is a powerful and generous father. He made the world, and because he loves us, he keeps it going every day.

God and science

At this point, you might be thinking ‘how does all of this fit with what we know from modern science?’ ‘What about the big bang?’ ‘What about everything that science has taught us about how the world works?’ These are good questions, and it is only natural that we ask them. Our culture has trained us to think that science and the Christian faith are enemies, or even that science has somehow ‘disproved God’. To many people, it seems that if you want to believe in God, you have to ignore everything we have learned from science.

But this simply isn’t true.

To begin with, there are many scientists who are convinced that the God Jesus spoke about is real. Professor Graeme Clark, for example, who is perhaps Australia’s most well-known scientist, is a committed Christian believer. Professor Clark invented

the ‘bionic ear’, which incredibly enables some deaf people to hear. There is no doubt that the work Professor Clark does is science at its best. But he has also written a book titled Science and God: Reconciling Science with the Christian faith. Despite the fact that many people think that science and faith can’t go together, Professor Clark is on public record as saying this: ‘I think that one can reconcile the two [science and Christian faith] – they’re different levels of explanation.’

This is a helpful point of view. Science and Christian faith are not enemies, but ‘different levels of explanation’.

A simple example might help. If you ask a Christian scientist why it rains, they will give you two answers at two different ‘levels of explanation’. First, they will say ‘God sends the rain’. But if you push them to explain, they will say ‘God works through the complex processes of the water cycle to send the rain’. If you push them further again, they’ll start talking about precipitation, evaporation, condensation, transpiration and all the fascinating and complex processes that help to explain how water moves around the globe.

The results of modern science fit within the Christian faith like

An amazing Father

a hand in a glove. The Christian faith says that this is God’s world, that he made it, and that he keeps it going every day. It offers answers for the bigger questions in life like ‘Who made us?’ and ‘What is the point of life?’ Science fits well with this. It explores the details of God’s world. It helps us answer the detailed questions about ‘what’ things are and ‘how’ things work. So Christian faith and science are not enemies. They go hand in hand. You don’t need to choose between God and science.

But what about ‘miracles’?

Thinking about God and science like this also helps us to make sense of the amazing events in the world that are sometimes called ‘miracles’. You see, if God is the one who oversees all of the detailed processes in our world that we study in science, it makes sense that he could also overrule them anytime he wants to.

This is certainly how Jesus viewed the world. According to Jesus, what we think of loosely as the ‘laws of nature’ are best explained as the result of God sustaining the world, keeping things ticking along in his world in an orderly and predictable way. If this is

true – if it is ultimately God who makes the water cycle happen, for example – then there is no reason why God can’t control the weather in some spectacular way every now and then. In the same way, if it is ultimately God who keeps our hearts pumping and our lungs breathing, then there is no reason why God can’t heal a sick person or even raise someone back to life from the dead. From a modern point of view, these things seem to go against the ‘laws of nature’. But if the ‘laws of nature’ are our modern scientific way of talking about God sustaining the world, there is nothing more natural than ‘miracles’. ‘Miracles’ are God deciding to do things differently every now and then.

The life of the party

With all of that on board, we’re now in a position to consider Jesus’ miracles. The Gospels report that Jesus performed many miracles, but I’ve chosen the following one because the Gospel of John presents it first and suggests that it takes us right to the heart of what Jesus came to do.

This miracle – John calls it a ‘sign’ – occurred when Jesus, his disciples and his mother had been invited to a wedding feast.

An amazing Father

Three days later Mary, the mother of Jesus, was at a wedding feast in the village of Cana in Galilee. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited and were there. When the wine was all gone, Mary said to Jesus, ‘They don’t have any more wine.’ Jesus replied, ‘Mother, my time hasn’t yet come’ You must not tell me what to do.’ Mary then said to the servants, ‘Do whatever Jesus tells you to do.’ At the feast there were six stone water jars that were used by the people for washing themselves in the way that their religion said they must. Each jar held about 100 litres. Jesus told the servants to fill them to the top with water. Then after the jars had been filled, he said, ‘Now take some water and give it to the man in charge of the feast.’ The servants did as Jesus told them, and the man in charge drank some of the water that had now turned into wine. He did not know where the wine had come from, but the servants did. He called the bridegroom over and said, ‘The best wine is always served first. Then after the guests have had plenty, the other wine is served. But you have kept the best until last!’ This was Jesus’ first miracle

[sign], and he did it in the village of Cana in Galilee. There Jesus showed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him. (John 2:1–11)

The details of this story are staggering. Jesus didn’t just turn a little water into wine. He turned heaps of water into wine – about 600 litres or 300 x 2-litre milk bottles’ worth of water into wine! Not only that, but Jesus turned the water into top quality wine, better than anything that had been served at the wedding party up until that point!

Jesus often introduced people to God at parties like this. In fact, according to the Gospels, Jesus had a reputation for being the life of the party. He loved people, and he loved enjoying the good stuff in life with them. His habit of celebrating with people even gained him a reputation for being a man who ‘eats and drinks too much!’ (Matthew 11:19). That was certainly unfair, but it does make the point: when Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding party, it was just one example of how he celebrated the good stuff in life.

An amazing Father

Jesus and the God of life

There’s more to say about this, however, because Jesus lived this way and performed this miracle for a reason. Once, when Jesus summed up the purpose of his mission, he put it like this: ‘I came so everyone would have life, and have it fully’ (John 10:10).

Jesus teaches us here that God made the world to be a place full and overflowing with life, a place that would reflect God’s great generosity and power. He knew that food and drink, friends and family, health and sex, art and beauty, are all good gifts from God to us. This is the reason why Jesus spent so much time celebrating with people.

But even more than that, Jesus knew that life is lived best when we live it with God. Jesus therefore announced that it was his life’s mission to introduce people to the Creator of the universe, the one he called ‘Father’. This is the most significant reason why he turned the water into wine. He did it as a signpost to show people that he had come to give us life, and life to the full: life with God.

The good stuff in your life

It is worth getting your head around this. A lot of people seem to think that God is on a mission to make life dull and boring. I’m not sure where people get this idea from, but it clearly doesn’t fit with what Jesus said about God or how Jesus lived his life. What Jesus shows us is that life is best when we live it with God.

What’s more, if Jesus is right, then it means that when you look out on the world and see anything good at all, you can be sure that it is a gift from God to us. If you sit down one day, like I suggested in chapter 1, and make a list of all the stuff you love most about life (family, friends, music, sport or whatever), then you can also thank God for all of it because it all ultimately comes from him. For me, the most precious part of my life is my family, and especially my wife. And because I’m sure Jesus is right, I have no doubt that – as random as it seemed at the time – it was God who got me into cycling, God who put me on that bike ride when I was in Year 10 and God who introduced me to Lynette.

An amazing Father

Deep down, I think most of us know this. The good things in life are not here by accident. They are gifts from God. That’s why, when something really great happens, we feel the urge to say ‘thank you’ to express our gratitude to the Somebody or Something that made it happen.

Jesus called that Somebody his heavenly Father. He saw it as his life’s mission to introduce us to him. So, if you are starting to feel you would like to get to know him more, then now wouldn’t be a bad time to tell him so. Maybe, before you keep reading, you could say something like this:

Father God,

Thank you that you love us and you love to give us good gifts.

Thank you for all the good things in my life. Please show me more of yourself, so that I can get to know you better and learn how to live my life with you.

An amazing Father

JESUS AND THE UGLY BITS

Jesus and the ugly bits

5. Life in a broken world.

The ugly bits in life

Life is full of really good stuff, but you don’t have to live very long to realise that there are plenty of ugly bits as well.

Sometimes these ugly bits can be trivial, like when you drop your phone and it breaks, stub your toe on the edge of the pool or leave your maths textbook on the bus. It’s frustrating, but it’s not the end of the world.

Sometimes, however, the ugly bits in life can be absolutely devastating.

When I was 20, I joined a team of people who travelled to the Philippines for the summer to help out some of the churches there. We ran games for kids, organised a youth camp and helped to deliver supplies to some families who were struggling after a massive flood. Towards the end of our time there, we were way up north on the island of Luzon, a long way from anywhere. At 3 am one morning, I woke up with an awful pain in my stomach. They rushed me to the nearest hospital and the doctors there decided I had appendicitis. They needed to operate. The problem was that although the doctors were

well trained, the conditions they were working in were atrocious. The hospital was completely run down. It was overcrowded. There were feral cats walking the corridors and cockroaches everywhere! When it came time to operate, the doctors simply didn’t have the supplies they needed. The other members of our team had to go across the road and buy the anaesthetic to put me to sleep. And the scalpel to cut me open. And the suture material to sew me back up again! Halfway through the operation, when they were trying to sew me back up, they ran out of suture material! The whole experience was pretty scary. It made me realise just how fragile our lives really are and how bad things can sometimes get. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, I was completely fine. I’ve just got a nice scar to prove it.

But it wasn’t the same for the little boy lying next to me on a bed in the emergency department. He was about four years old. He was terribly sick and needed treatment. His family couldn’t afford it. People tried to help, but in the end it was too late. The poor boy died there as he lay next to me.

That’s not just ugly. That’s devastating.

The world is full of stuff like that. You don’t need me to tell you about the heartache of broken relationships, the plight of poverty, the devastation of disease, the terrible effects of war or the way in which a virus can lock down the entire world. These things are all around us, and we can’t ignore them.

If life is full of really good stuff, then there are also plenty of ugly bits as well.

Why does God allow suffering?

Sometimes people look at all the ugly bits in life and conclude that God is not there or he doesn’t care. Or they think that if God is there and does care, then he must be powerless to do anything about it.

I can certainly understand why people think this way. One of the things I find most difficult to put together with my Christian faith is this question: why does God allow suffering?

There is no simple answer.

I am convinced, however, that if we want to find an answer, the

place to start is with Jesus. Jesus knew all about life, and if we are willing to learn from him, then we will find that God is there, that God does care, and that God hates the evil and the suffering in his world even more than we do. Most importantly, if we are willing to learn from Jesus, we will find that God has already begun to fix up the mess and he has promised to finish the job in the end.

A visit to the doctor

Exploring this will take us the rest of this book.

Before we get there, we need to think about the problems with the world a little bit more. This isn’t pretty, I know, but until we understand exactly what has gone wrong with the world, we won’t understand what God has done to start setting things right again. This part of the book, then, might feel a little bit like when you go to the doctor because you are feeling really sick. Often, when you go to the doctor, the first thing you hear is the bad news. ‘You have an ear infection.’ At the time, you usually don’t want to hear it. But when you think about it, hearing the bad news is actually the first step to getting better. Once the doctor has diagnosed what the problem

is, they can give you the treatment you need to get better. It’s like that with Jesus. The first thing we need to hear from him is a diagnosis of the problem: the bad news. Once we have heard that, we will be ready to hear the good news of God’s cure for the world.

6. The ugly life of Jesus.

Was Jesus bubble wrapped?

Some experts reckon that this generation of kids has gone through life in bubble wrap. You know what I’m talking about. Bubble wrap is that stuff you use to protect the breakables when you are moving house. It is certainly good for that, but it’s also fun to pop! Anyway, some experts think that this generation of kids has been wrapped up too much. They reckon that parents – because they love their kids – have been too quick to shield them from the hardships in life, with the result that kids these days have it too easy.

I’m not sure if that’s true or not. But it does raise the question: If Jesus was God’s Son, did God bubble wrap him?

In the first part of this book, we saw how Jesus talked about God as a powerful and generous father who loves to give good gifts. I guess that means the question has to be asked: Did Jesus talk like that because he had never experienced the ugly bits in life firsthand?

Maybe the only reason Jesus could speak so positively about God was because God had given him some kind of special treatment.

It is an interesting thought, but as soon as you open any one of the Gospels, it becomes clear that Jesus didn’t get any special Godstyle bubble-wrap protection as he went through life. Jesus knew all about evil and suffering from his own firsthand experience. In fact, Jesus had a downright ugly life.

Ugly beginnings

To begin with, Jesus’ birth was surrounded by scandal. The Gospels tell us that Jesus’ birth was a miracle. His mother Mary didn’t get pregnant in the ordinary way. Instead, because Jesus’ mission in life was so unique, God gave him a unique entry into the world. God himself caused Mary to fall pregnant. It was a miracle. You’d think that this would be something to marvel at, something to celebrate. But some people thought (wrongly) that Mary had cheated on her fiancé Joseph. They thought she had gotten pregnant by some other man. And so, Jesus’ birth was surrounded by scandal.

Things quickly got worse. Soon after Jesus was born, Herod ‘the Great’, the king of the Jews at that time, tried to have Jesus killed. Word had gotten out that some people were expecting Jesus to become a great leader,

The ugly life of Jesus

and Herod felt threatened. He was the king, and he wanted to keep it that way. Herod therefore ordered the execution of all the baby boys under the age of two in Bethlehem, the town where Jesus was born. Historians estimate that maybe 20 boys were executed at this time. Jesus’ family narrowly escaped. They fled from Israel down to Egypt and were forced to live there as refugees.

It wasn’t a great start in life.

An ugly life

When Jesus began his life’s work and started teaching people about God, he quickly found himself offside with the religious and political leaders of his day. You’d be right if you thought that people would be keen to learn about God from Jesus, because heaps of people were. Huge crowds followed Jesus. The problem was that this made the religious and political leaders jealous. One group, known as the Pharisees, had set themselves up as the authority on all things religious. They loved being the experts on God; it gave them power and respect from other people. When Jesus came along claiming to teach the truth about God, most of them weren’t impressed.

Some of the Pharisees tried to turn the crowds against Jesus. They

asked him trick questions to try to make him say something that would upset people. But that didn’t work. Jesus’ answers were always spot on. It was the Pharisees who ended up looking stupid, and that just made them angrier.

Other groups, too, felt threatened by Jesus. Herod Antipas had taken over from his father (Herod ‘the Great’) as the ruler of the region. Some of the crowds following Jesus had started talking about making Jesus king. Herod obviously didn’t like the sound of that, so his supporters started working out what they could do. It wasn’t too long before the Pharisees got together with Herod’s supporters and started plotting how they could kill Jesus. Therefore, Jesus spent much of his adult life with a price on his head. Powerful people wanted him dead. That’s an ugly way to live.

An ugly end

Finally, when Jesus made his last fateful journey to the Jewish capital, Jerusalem, the city authorities managed to arrest him. Because Jesus was popular with the crowds, it was difficult for them to arrest him without causing a riot. But they got their chance from the most unlikely source. One of Jesus’ closest followers – a man named Judas Iscariot –

The ugly life of Jesus

decided to betray him. The Jewish leaders gave Judas 30 pieces of silver, and in exchange, Judas gave them the information they needed. He sold the life of his friend and teacher for a month’s wages. He led them to the place where Jesus was spending the night just outside Jerusalem, and they arrested Jesus in secret under the cover of darkness. Almost as if to rub salt into the wound, Judas identified Jesus for the thugs who came to arrest him by greeting him with a kiss.

Now you might have thought that Jesus’ friends would have come to his aid at that point, but they deserted him. It is true that one of Jesus’ closest friends, a man named Peter, did try to defend Jesus for a moment. But his courage didn’t last long. Pretty soon, when Jesus needed his friends the most, they had all run away in fear.

Next, Jesus was put on trial before the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. They mocked him, cooked up false charges against him and finally condemned him to death. During this time, while Jesus was on trial, Peter was standing outside. He was hoping to find out what was going to happen to Jesus without giving himself away. When they asked Peter if he knew Jesus, he didn’t have the guts to own their friendship. Peter denied that

he even knew Jesus. He did that three times.

The Jewish leaders couldn’t execute Jesus on their own. Since the Roman Empire had control over that part of the world at the time, if people needed to be executed, the Romans liked to do it themselves. So the Jewish leaders took Jesus to the Roman governor, a man named Pontius Pilate, and asked him to execute Jesus. Pilate, however, couldn’t find anything wrong with Jesus and was going to let him go free. That is when the Jewish leaders stirred up the crowds against Jesus. They started calling out for Jesus to be crucified. Pilate thought a riot was about to break out, and so – because he knew a riot wouldn’t look good on his résumé – he decided to hand Jesus over to the executioners. Jesus was spat upon, mocked, beaten and whipped by the Roman soldiers as they prepared to kill him. He was forced to wear a crown made out of thorn branches on his head. He was forced to carry his own cross outside the city to the hill on which criminals were crucified. He was stripped of his clothes as a form of public humiliation. He had nails driven through his wrists and ankles. He was hung up on the cross between two terrorists. He had a spear thrust into his side. Finally, betrayed, condemned,

The ugly life of Jesus

abandoned and alone, Jesus died in humiliation; a death he never deserved.

The expert on all things ugly

Was Jesus bubble wrapped? You can judge for yourself. It is clear that Jesus was no stranger to suffering. He knew all about life in this world, and he especially knew all about the ugly bits.

All of this means that Jesus is well qualified to talk to us about life in a broken world. If we want to understand why the world is the way it is, then we can turn to him. He is the expert on all things ugly. The ugly life of Jesus

7. The heart of the problem.

The verdict of the experts

A few years ago, a bunch of ‘experts’ (scientists, economists, politicians) got together in Copenhagen, Denmark, to try to identify the greatest problem facing the world. They made a list of all the big issues: climate change, diseases, malnutrition, wars. They tried to work out which problems were most important, which problems could be fixed, and how much it would cost to fix them. It was an interesting exercise. What would you have put on the list? What do you think is the greatest problem facing the world? These experts decided that one of the greatest problems facing the world at that moment – and at least the one that we can fix most effectively – is the spread of disease, and especially the spread of HIV/AIDS. If they had met more recently, surely the global COVID-19 pandemic would have been near the top of the list. Not everyone will agree with this assessment, of course, but there is no doubt that the spread of disease is a serious problem for our world.

The heart of the problem: a diagnosis from Jesus

If you had asked Jesus the same question, however, he would have given you a very different answer. He wouldn’t have denied that disease, war, climate change and malnutrition are major problems. It’s just that he saw behind all those problems to their source, the root of all of them. Have a look at this story from the Gospel of Matthew:

Some people soon brought to him a man lying on a mat because he could not walk. When Jesus saw how much faith they had, he said to the man, ‘My friend, don’t worry! Your sins are forgiven.’ Some teachers of the Law of Moses said to themselves, ‘Jesus must think he is God!’ But Jesus knew what was in their minds, and he said, ‘Why are you thinking such evil things? Is it easier for me to tell this man that his sins are forgiven or to tell him to get up and walk? But I will show you that the Son of Man has the right to forgive sins here on earth.’ So Jesus said to the man, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and go

The heart of the problem

on home.’ The man got up and went home. When the crowds saw this, they were afraid and praised God for giving such authority to people.

(Matthew 9:2–8)

The man brought to Jesus was paralysed. He couldn’t walk. That is a serious problem. But the first thing Jesus said to him was ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ Jesus later went on to heal the man so that he could walk. But Jesus dealt with the bigger problem first, and the bigger problem is what Jesus called sin.

Sin is not a popular word these days, but don’t be put off by it. Sin means living as if God doesn’t matter. Sin is putting yourself first and putting God and other people at the edges of your life. Jesus saw that even though this man was paralysed, the even bigger problem in his life was his sin. He had lived his life as if he was the centre of the universe.

Another time, Jesus was talking with some of the Pharisees, and he spoke to them about the real heart of this problem:

Then Jesus said: What comes from your heart is what makes you unclean. Out of your heart come evil thoughts, vulgar deeds, stealing, murder,

unfaithfulness in marriage, greed, meanness, deceit, indecency, envy, insults, pride, and foolishness. All of these come from your heart, and they are what make you unfit to worship God.

(Mark 7:20–23)

Did you notice what he said? ‘It is from within, from out of the human heart’ that all of the evils in the world come. According to Jesus, the heart of the problem with the world is not disease, natural disasters, war or family breakdowns. The heart of the problem is not even that people haven’t kept God’s rules. The heart of the problem is the problem with the human heart. It is not that Jesus thought that all the other problems in the world don’t matter. He did (more on that later). It is just that, according to Jesus, these problems are all symptoms of a much more serious disease: the problem with our hearts, the problem of sin.

Where the world went wrong

Jesus probably had the Old Testament story about Adam and Eve, the very first humans, in the back of his mind as he said

The heart of the problem

this. According to that story, the problem goes right back to the very beginning of human history, when the first people decided to try to live life without the God who made them. Adam and Eve deliberately and knowingly rejected God. They rejected the way of life that God had told them was the best way.

As you might expect, it was an absolute disaster. The result of Adam and Eve’s decision was that the whole world was thrown into confusion. Adam and Eve’s relationship with God was severely damaged. At the same time, they started blaming and fighting each other. Even the world itself – what we sometimes call ‘nature’ – was thrown into chaos. The result was that natural disasters, diseases and death, which were not part of the world at the beginning, became a ‘natural’ part of life.

Now you might think that this doesn’t seem fair. OK, Adam and Eve stuffed up. But that was their problem. Why should we all suffer for it? I can understand the question, but God in his wisdom chose Adam as our representative. And the problem with blaming Adam is that it assumes you or I would have done a better job. I’m not sure that’s true. Are you? If we are honest with ourselves, even the best of us have to admit that

all too often we have lived as if we were the centre of the universe. All too often we have lived as if God doesn’t matter. All too often we have put ourselves ahead of other people.

Guilty and stuck

What I have been saying so far is hard to hear, so I want to remind you that this is like going to the doctor when you are sick. There is good news coming.

Unfortunately, Jesus has a bit more bad news to deliver first. It is this: without God, the world is both guilty and stuck. Have a look at what he said about this to some of the Jews of his day: ‘Jesus replied: I tell you for certain that anyone who sins is a slave of sin!’ (John 8:34).

Anyone who sins is a slave of sin. This is strong language. To be a slave means that you belong to someone else. Someone else controls you. You no longer have the freedom to make decisions for yourself.

Jesus says that our predicament in sin is like that. We choose to live life our own way without God. We commit sin. But the problem is deeper than that. We are also slaves

The heart of the problem

of sin. We’re stuck in sin, enslaved to sin, and no matter what we do we can’t get ourselves out

Imagine you’ve gone down to the beach with your mates for a swim. The weather is rough and there is a big swell with a strong rip. There are clear signs up on the beach saying ‘DON’T SWIM HERE’. But you and your mates decide you can handle it, so you jump in. Before too long you get caught in the rip. It is way too strong for you, and you are rapidly being pulled away from the shore. The waves are huge, and you are starting to drown. Did you do the wrong thing? Yep. Do you deserve what is happening to you? Yep. Can you get out of it on your own? Nope. You are both guilty and stuck. Jesus says that sin is like that. When we choose to live life without God, we get stuck in a downward spiral of living that way.

Breakdown

Worst of all, when we live like this – as if God doesn’t matter, making up the rules for ourselves as if we are in charge of the universe – it ruins our relationship with God. We come under his right judgment.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. If you start to ignore your parents and live as if they don’t matter,

rejecting the rules they make for your life, they will, no doubt, still love you, but it will make things difficult. Even though you might still live in the same house, your relationship with them will be broken. It will be no surprise when they impose consequences on you for your actions. You will come under their judgment.

It’s like that with God. When we try to live life our own way without him, it leads to a broken relationship with our Creator, and we come under his right judgment on our sin. This is what God said to Adam and Eve at the very beginning. He warned them that if they rejected him, they would come under the judgment of death. Instead of enjoying life with him forever, they would be excluded from his presence and suffer eternal death.

All of this is really bad news. According to Jesus, you and I, on our own, are not part of the solution to the world’s problems. We are part of the problem itself. This is because, from the very beginning, people have turned their backs on God. They’ve said ‘Thanks, but no thanks’, and they have tried to live their own way without him. All of us have done this in different ways. Not even the best of us have lived the life we were made to live. The awful result is that our hearts have

become sick, our relationship with God has been ruined and we face his right judgment for our sin. That’s the bad news.

Good news coming

In chapters 8–10 of this book, we’re going to start exploring the wonderful news that in Jesus’ life and death and resurrection, God has done everything needed to fix our broken relationship with him. In Jesus, God has taken upon himself the consequences for our sin and begun to heal our sick world.

But before we get there, if you’ve started talking to God about the stuff in this book, then now might be a good time to pick up the conversation again. If you do want to do that, you might say something like this:

Lord God,

You know that there is so much that’s wrong with your world.

Thank you for showing me that I am part of the problem too.

Please help me to understand what you have begun to do in Jesus to fix up the mess.

And please help me to understand how I can start again and live my life with you.

JESUS A NEW START

Jesus: a new start

8. The great restoration project.

Good art ain’t cheap

Good art ain’t cheap.

On 15 November 2017, a painting by Leonardo da Vinci titled Salvator Mundi (‘Saviour of the World’) broke the world record for the most expensive painting ever sold at auction. It was bought at Christie’s auction house in New York by an anonymous buyer for a cool $450.3 million. No, I didn’t get the decimal place in the wrong spot. You read it correctly. Four hundred and fifty million dollars! The ‘.3’ there is just the loose change that the buyer decided to throw in on top: an extra $300,000!

What’s even more amazing, though, is the fact that many, many artists refuse to sell some of their best work, even though it could make them an absolute fortune. For many artists, there is something about their best work that makes it hard for them to put it up for sale. It is simply too precious, too valuable, too close to their heart to part with.

I mention all of this because it provides us with a window into God’s commitment to his world. Let me show you what I mean.

The masterpiece and the vandals

So far, we’ve seen that there is a stack of good stuff in life but there are plenty of ugly bits as well. Maybe one way we can think of it is like this.

Imagine that the universe is like God’s masterpiece. It is one enormous, magnificent artwork. You couldn’t even begin to estimate its value. God handcrafted it and hung up it up for all to see, a wonderful display of his genius, creativity and overflowing generosity. Right in the centre of the artwork – the focus of the whole creation – is you and me, human beings, the crowning marvel of God’s creative genius.

If we think of it like this, then sin, suffering, sickness and death are like vandals who have sneaked into the universe, ripped the canvas of God’s masterpiece and smeared black paint all over the place. They have tried to ruin God’s great artwork. The beautiful masterpiece is still there – through the paint and rips you can still see how wonderful it is – but it has been terribly damaged.

The great restoration project

Restoring the masterpiece

Now imagine with me a little bit further. What would you have done if you were God in this situation?

Restoring a damaged artwork is never easy. Just ask the team who worked on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome; it took 10 years and millions of dollars to restore Michelangelo’s great masterpiece! You’ve got to think that one of the obvious options for God must have been to throw his ruined artwork in the bin and start again from scratch. Surely the prospect of restoring his damaged world was too much. Surely it would have been easier to simply forget the whole mess.

But, according to Jesus, throwing out his damaged artwork was never an option for God. Instead, God began his great restoration project.

When God turns up

Have a look at this famous quote from John’s Gospel:

God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn its people. He sent him to save them! (John 3:16–17)

Can you see what it is saying? God didn’t sit by on the sidelines watching his great artwork being vandalised. And he didn’t take the easy option of condemning the world either, of writing it off and throwing it in the bin. No. God loves the world – he loves us – way too much for that!

Therefore, God began his great restoration project. He began the work of saving and restoring the world. Did you notice how he did it? God didn’t send a mere messenger. He didn’t pay someone else to do the dirty work. Instead, God sent his own Son into the world to clean up the mess. Rather than giving up on his ruined masterpiece, God gave. He gave his own Son.

This is huge. It means that God isn’t ‘out there’ on the clouds somewhere, uninterested by the mess in the world. No. In his Son, in Jesus, God entered his world. He came in person to get his world

The great restoration project

back. He joined us in the mess. He got his hands dirty. Jesus got sick. He got tired. He was hurt. He bled and died. In his Son Jesus, God knows what it is like to suffer from the inside.

This, of course, still doesn’t explain why God allows suffering, but it does show us that God is not distant from us when we suffer. God understands suffering, because in Jesus, he has been there himself. You see, great artwork is never cheap, and it cost God a great deal to buy his masterpiece back.

In the next few chapters, we are going to explore exactly how God did it: when God entered the world in Jesus, the great restoration project began!

The great restoration project

9. A whole new beginning.

The end of a long winter

C.S. Lewis’ classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a children’s book, but like many children’s books, this one has plenty to say to the rest of us as well. If you’ve ever read it, or seen the movie, you’ll remember what happens to the magical world of Narnia when Aslan turns up.

Narnia is a fantasy world that has been trapped for as long as anyone can remember in a deep, icy winter. The wicked White Witch has cast her spell on the place, making it as cold, dark and grim as you can imagine. But the White Witch is no match for Aslan: the majestic lion whose awesome power brings the new life of spring wherever he goes. When Aslan starts to move in Narnia, things change. The winter spell that the Witch has cast is broken. The deathly cold begins to turn into spring. The snow starts to melt. The ice begins to thaw. The flowers bloom. For the first time in years, the awful silence of the long winter is interrupted by the singing of birds, the movement of animals and the flowing of rivers.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a fantasy, but this is a brilliant picture of what happened for real in our world when God turned up in Jesus. Sin cast its spell over the world right from the start, as soon as Adam and Eve decided to live life their own way without God. But Jesus’ life was a whole new beginning for the world. It was like the end of a long winter and the beginning of spring.

Let me show you what I mean.

The cold of death

There are countless places where you can feel the icy cold effects of sin in the world. The chill is there every time friends fight. It’s there every time people lie, cheat, gossip and steal. It’s there every time people get sick or hurt. Coldest of all, it’s there every time people die.

When my grandparents died, I didn’t really know what to do or how to feel. Some days I felt angry. Other days I cried. Often, I just felt empty. I had never lost someone I loved like that before. The most awful thing about it was the finality. No matter what I did, I couldn’t turn back the clock. That’s the thing about death:

without some kind of miracle, there is no way out. The spell of the long winter cast by sin is just so strong.

Life from the dead

But Jesus brought a whole new beginning for the world. You see this in the amazing things he did to heal the sick and raise the dead. If you open one of the Gospels and have a read, there is no way you can miss it. The Gospels are full of stories of Jesus’ amazing, life-giving power. Have a read of this one and see what you think:

Soon Jesus and his disciples were on their way to the town of Nain, and a big crowd was going along with them. As they came near the gate of the town, they saw people carrying out the body of a widow’s only son. Many people from the town were walking along with her. When the Lord saw the woman, he felt sorry for her and said, ‘Don’t cry!’ Jesus went over and touched the stretcher on which the people were carrying the dead boy. They stopped, and Jesus said, ‘Young man, get up!’ The boy sat up and began to speak. Jesus then gave him back to

his mother. Everyone was frightened and praised God. They said, ‘A great prophet is here with us! God has come to his people.’ News about Jesus spread all over Judea and everywhere else in that part of the country. (Luke 7:11–17)

Imagine yourself in this poor woman’s position. She had lost her husband. She had only one son. Then her son died, and she was left alone. She must have been utterly devastated. When Jesus said to her ‘Don’t cry!’, she must have felt that this was some kind of cruel joke.

Jesus then seemed to make it worse by walking over to the stretcher where her dead son’s body was lying. He touched it. You can feel the tension in the air. The people carrying the dead man stood still. There was deathly silence. Everyone was wondering what on earth Jesus was doing. Then, unbelievably, Jesus said the most ridiculous thing imaginable: ‘Young man, get up!’ Some people must have laughed. Others would have been in shock at the rude stupidity of what Jesus had just done.

But then the dead boy sat up. He began to speak, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

Can you imagine how the woman felt now? Instead of wanting to slap Jesus in the face, she wanted to hug and kiss him, thanking him for restoring her son to life.

Matched against the unstoppable power of God, sickness, suffering and death don’t stand a chance. God is simply too powerful for these vandals. The spell of sin just can’t hold, because in Jesus, God has entered his world to reclaim and restore his masterpiece. In Jesus, God has entered his world to bring about a whole new beginning.

Carving a way out of the mess

Jesus’ life was a whole new beginning for the world in another way as well. Sickness and death, you remember, are merely the symptoms of the problem of sin. Jesus didn’t just heal the sick and raise the dead, he also dealt with the heart of the problem – with sin itself. And the first thing he did to deal with sin was to carve out a whole new way of living.

When I finished school, I got a part-time job working for my uncle in his carpentry business. I needed to earn a bit of money, and I

thought it would be great fun playing with the machinery and making interesting things for his customers. The only problem was that carpentry takes coordination. I haven’t got a lot of that. One day my uncle gave me a pile of timber and asked me to cut each piece to the length he needed. It sounded like an easy job, so I got stuck in. But I soon realised it wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be. If you’ve ever tried to cut through a piece of wood with a saw, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. The first cut really matters. If you find that you are a few millimetres off once you make a start with a saw, it’s next to impossible to make a new start. You can take the saw out and line it up where it was meant to be, but once you start sawing again, it’s like the blade takes on a life of its own. It keeps slipping back into the original cut.

In chapter 7, we talked about the start that Adam and Eve made for the rest of us in the world. Their first cut at life took us in the wrong direction. They took us away from God. They carved out a life of sin. Try as we might, all of us who have lived since then have kept slipping back into that original cut. All of us have become stuck in that rut of bad living, ignoring God and putting ourselves at the centre of the picture.

But Jesus carved out a whole new way of living.

A new way of living

This part of Jesus’ life is not as well-known as the amazing miracles he did. But for my money, the remarkable way Jesus lived his life is even more amazing than all the miracles put together. Although he was completely and utterly human, and was often tempted to do the wrong thing like we are, he never gave in. He always chose love over hate. He always chose self-control over lust. He always chose kindness over bitterness. He always spoke the truth and never lied. He always chose forgiveness over revenge.

You see this in the way Jesus behaved when he was strung up on the cross. Having been beaten and spat upon, whipped and ridiculed, Jesus was finally hanging there with nails through his wrists and ankles, and the mocking crown of thorns on his head. If there was ever a time when you could excuse some bad behaviour, I reckon that would be it. As he hung there on the cross, he had one final chance to say something – to say anything – to get back at those who had mistreated him so badly. He had one final passing shot.

What would you have said? I’m sure, for most of us, that final passing shot would need to be censored.

Do you know what Jesus said?

Simply this: ‘Father, forgive these people! They don’t know what they’re doing’ (Luke 23:34).

Instead of cursing the people who were killing him, Jesus asked God to forgive them. Instead of hating those who hated him, he loved them instead. Who else has ever lived like this?

Jesus carved out a whole new way of living. He lived life the way it was always meant to be lived: loving God and loving others. This is great news for us, because unlike the rest of us, Jesus was never stuck in the rut of sin – and this means that he can lead us out of it. In fact, Jesus promised to do exactly that for anyone who would give up living their own way and follow him in living God’s way.

That’s great news. But there is still more. For the best news yet, you’ll have to turn to the next chapter.

10. Death by love.

Death by …

A few years ago, a new chain of restaurants opened in Sydney. They were instantly a hit, booked out well in advance. Everyone wanted to go there on Friday and Saturday nights, because this was a restaurant chain with a difference. While most restaurants offer a whole range of different types of food on the menu, these restaurants only offered one kind of dish. The name of the restaurants gave it away: they were called Death by Chocolate. You could get chocolate mousse and chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream and chocolate pudding, even chocolate pizza and a chocolate burger! The chain closed down in Sydney a while ago, but if you really want to check it out, it is still open in California (of course!).

Death by Chocolate is a great name for a restaurant. We all know that we have to die somehow. We may as well go out doing something enjoyable. Given the choice, who wouldn’t choose death by chocolate?

But this is another thing that makes Jesus so impressive. He chose to meet his death by a very different means.

Jesus chose death by love.

Love and forgiveness

Now, most Aussie blokes I know don’t like to talk about love. It sounds too weak. Maybe the girls wish we were better at it. I’m not sure. But since this chapter is all about love, and since this chapter is also the most important in the whole book, I want to make it clear at the start that I am not talking about a weak, wimpy kind of love. I’m talking about the kind of love that involves sacrifice; the kind of love you find between mates on the battlefield in a war. It was that kind of love that took Jesus to his death.

There’s more to say about this in a moment, but first I need to explain why Jesus chose death by love. The reason is simple. It was because he came to set things right in the world, and especially to restore our broken relationship with the God who made us. Jesus didn’t come simply to carve a way out of the mess for people who are stuck in sin. He also came to bring God’s forgiveness to people who are guilty of sin. It was love for God and love for people that drove him, and it was this love that took him to his death.

Let me explain this a bit further.

100% free forgiveness

Jesus was famous throughout his life for offering God’s forgiveness to people.

In chapter 7, I shared with you the story about the time when Jesus told a paralytic man that all his sins were forgiven. You’ll remember that when the Pharisees got uptight about it, Jesus healed the man in an instant to show that he really could speak for God (Matthew 9:2–8).

Another time, when a woman who was a ‘sinner’ sought Jesus out, he caused a scandal by declaring that even her sins were forgiven (Luke 7:36–50). The woman was probably a prostitute. Most people would have thought that she was beyond the pale – that she had been too bad and had done too much wrong to ever hope for forgiveness from God. But there were no restrictions on the forgiveness Jesus offered. There was no-one who was beyond the reach of God’s love. The forgiveness he offered was for everyone. It was immediate. It was complete. And it was 100% free.

It was always like that with Jesus.

Jesus, the friend of ‘sinners’

In fact, Jesus became notorious for hanging out with ‘sinners’; for eating, drinking and celebrating with them. Jesus welcomed the people that everyone else looked down upon, and he offered them friendship with God.

Once, when Jesus was questioned about it, he simply said this: ‘Healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do. I didn’t come to invite good people to be my followers. I came to invite sinners’ (Mark 2:17).

Jesus is saying here that if the world is sick (which it is), things are not the way they are meant to be (which they are not) and the heart of the problem is the problem with our hearts (which it is), then he came as a doctor, offering healing, forgiveness and new life from God to anyone and everyone.

Jesus said that no matter how guilty we are, God offers us forgiveness. God made us to live with him, and even though all of us have lived life our own way – putting ourselves at the centre of the picture and pushing God and others to the edges – God still

loves us. He wants to welcome us back. He loves to forgive. Jesus was very clear about this: anyone who decides to come home to God will find nothing except God’s outstretched arms welcoming them back with a party.

The most expensive free gift ever

But here’s the crunch. Forgiveness doesn’t come cheaply.

If you’ve ever had to forgive someone for hurting you, you’ll know what I mean. It’s not easy. You have to swallow the hurt. You must let the past go. And that costs.

The thing is, it’s the same with God. Forgiveness doesn’t come cheaply for him either.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day knew this. In fact, God had commanded his people to build a temple in Jerusalem to teach them that forgiveness doesn’t come cheaply. The temple system involved priests, prayers and, most importantly, sacrifices. God commanded his people to build this temple to teach them that forgiveness requires sacrifice.

But Jesus short-circuited this whole system. He taught that while the temple system was good for its time, now that he had turned up, it was past its use-by date. Jesus offered God’s forgiveness to people directly.

It is no wonder that people started asking questions: who does this man think he is? How can he be so sure that God will actually back up his claims and wipe the slate clean for anyone who asks him? How can Jesus offer God’s forgiveness?

These are good questions, because Jesus wasn’t merely offering forgiveness to one person for one hurtful action. He offered forgiveness to everyone for everything they had ever done wrong. It was an enormous offer, and people were right to ask the question: who is going to foot the bill for all of this?

Jesus had one simple answer. He offered God’s forgiveness to anyone and everyone because he was going to pay the price himself. I’m talking, of course, about Jesus’ death on the cross. It was a death he chose so that we could be forgiven. It was death by love. It was the death Jesus died to pay the price for the most expensive free gift ever offered.

Love, sacrifice and freedom

If you had been on the beach at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, in April and May 1915, you would have seen this kind of gutsy, sacrificial love in action. Australia was, of course, engaged in World War I, and the Anzac troops had been assigned the task of capturing the Gallipoli peninsula from the Turks. If you had been there on the beach at that time, you would have seen Private John Simpson returning from the battlefield over and over again, each time carrying wounded soldiers on his donkey. John Simpson is rightly remembered as a hero of the war. Time and time again he risked his life to save others, often carrying wounded fellow soldiers through enemy fire back to safety. What is not so often remembered, however, is that on 19 May 1915, as he was carrying two wounded soldiers back to the medical tent, John Simpson was hit by enemy fire and killed in action. As far as we know, the two wounded soldiers survived. The sacrifice of his life gave them theirs.

Jesus explained the mission of his life and the meaning of his death as something like this. The mission

of his life, he said, was to make the sacrifice that would set the rest of us free. Look at how he explained it to his friends when they were on their way up to Jerusalem for the last time: ‘The Son of Man did not come to be a slave master, but a slave who will give his life to rescue many people’ (Mark 10:45).

Don’t be distracted by the title Jesus uses for himself here. He often called himself the ‘Son of Man’. It was a reference to the glorious figure prophesied in the Old Testament book of Daniel (Daniel 7:13). The thing that really stands out here, however, is that Jesus had a very clear idea of what he had come to do. Did you notice what it was?

Jesus said that he came not to be a slave master, but to be a slave. He came not so that other people could serve him, but so that he could serve them. He came to serve others by giving his life to rescue many people.

Now that is a gutsy kind of love.

Jesus knew that forgiveness isn’t cheap, yet he spent his whole life offering God’s forgiveness to others, free of charge. He did that because he knew that he was going to pay the price for the most expensive free gift ever offered.

by love

Death

An offer (almost) too good to be true

Many people don’t realise that God offers them forgiveness. They seem to think that they must make it up to God somehow, that they need to live perfectly for a while or something before God could think about wiping the slate clean for them.

But Jesus teaches us that God is not like that.

If Jesus’ ugly life and painful death show us anything, they show us that God offers forgiveness to anyone who will receive it. In Jesus, God reached out to us and dealt with our problem for us. He gave up his own Son to pay the price for everything we have ever done wrong. God offers us forgiveness. He offers you forgiveness. He promises that if you turn to him, by trusting in what Jesus has done, he will wipe the slate clean and help you make a fresh start.

The only question is: will you accept this offer?

If you are ready to do that, you could use these words to confess your sin to God and ask for his forgiveness and help to start again with him.

Father God, You know that I haven’t lived the way I should.

I’m sorry.

Thank you that Jesus carved out a new way of living for us. Thank you that when Jesus died on the cross, he paid the price for everything we have done wrong.

Please forgive me, God, and help me to start a new life with you.

JESUS AND WHERE IT’S ALL HEADED

Jesus and where it’s all headed Jesus: a new start

11. Waiting on the world to change.

There’s got to be more

Back in 2007, John Mayer won a Grammy Award for his single ‘Waiting on the World to Change’. The song obviously struck a chord with people around the world. It expressed Mayer’s frustration and feeling of powerlessness. The world is not the way it should be, he sang, but there doesn’t seem to be much that we can do to change things. Mayer’s song powerfully captures the feeling that many of us have had at some point in our lives: we sense that the world is not the way it should be; we feel that there’s got to be more, but there also doesn’t seem to be much that we can do to really change things.

The problem with a dead Jesus

In the last couple of chapters, I’ve been talking about the good news that when God came to his world in Jesus, he joined us in the mess of life, pushed back the effects of sin in the world, carved out a new way of living, paid for our forgiveness and opened up the way for us to reconnect with the God who made us.

This is good news indeed!

At the same time, if you’ve been thinking about all of this, you must be wondering why the world still seems to be in such a mess. If Jesus’ life and death make such a difference, then why is the world still so sick? Why is God’s masterpiece still so damaged?

These are good questions. As I said at the start, if Jesus lived and died but remained in the grave, we would have to admit that he couldn’t get us out of the mess that the world is in. We might respect him as a teacher and admire his sacrifice, but we would have no reason to worship him, no reason to make him the centre of our lives.

The thing is that none of the four Gospels leave the story of Jesus’ life with him lying dead in a cold stone tomb. All four of them record what happened next. All four of them tell the almost unbelievable story that Jesus came back to life again.

If this is true, it has got to be –alongside Jesus’ death for us – the most important event in human history.

For that reason, there are two questions we need to deal with next. First, did it really happen? Second, does it really matter? Answering these two questions is what the next two chapters are all about.

12. An (almost) unbelievable true story.

Are monsters real, Dad?

When my eldest son was four, he loved to ask questions. Like most kids that age, one of his favourite questions, whenever we were reading a book or watching TV, was this: is it real, Dad?

Somehow, even at the age of four, he knew that it matters if something is real or not. If monsters are real, you need to keep the light on at night and take your water pistol to bed for protection. But if they’re not, you can relax. The light can stay off, and the water pistol can stay in the toy box.

Here’s the question: did Jesus really rise from the dead?

He is not here!

All four Gospels tell the same story. Jesus died on the cross. A man named Joseph of Arimathea was given permission to bury him. His body was taken down from the cross. It was wrapped in linen cloths and placed in a stone tomb not far from where he was executed.

Here is the way Mark tells us what happened next:

After the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene, Salome, and Mary the mother of James bought some spices to put on Jesus’ body. Very early on Sunday morning, just as the sun was coming up, they went to the tomb. On their way, they were asking one another, ‘Who will roll the stone away from the entrance for us?’ But when they looked, they saw that the stone had already been rolled away. And it was a huge stone! The women went into the tomb, and on the right side they saw a young man in a white robe sitting there. They were alarmed. The man said, ‘Don’t be alarmed! You are looking for Jesus from Nazareth, who was nailed to a cross. God has raised him to life, and he isn’t here. You can see the place where they put his body. Now go and tell his disciples, and especially Peter, that he will go ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you.’ (Mark 16:1–7)

‘God has raised him to life. He isn’t here.’ Those must be some of the most earth-shattering words ever spoken. The dead man’s body was missing – not because it had been stolen, but because he had been raised to life!

Fiction or history?

Some people dismiss these stories as made-up fiction. I can certainly understand where they are coming from. People don’t often come back to life again after they have died!

Still, I am convinced that these stories are not fairytales. They tell us about events that really happened. They belong in the non-fiction section of the library. They are history.

There is a lot that could be said about this, but here I just want to give you an explanation for why I am convinced (along with millions of Christians around the world) that Jesus rose from the dead. I can’t prove it, of course, at least not in the same way as we can prove things with science. I can prove to you, for example, that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius under certain atmospheric conditions, because I can repeat it over and over again. But ancient history doesn’t work like that. We can’t repeat the events to prove they happened. All we can do is make a judgement based on the evidence. In the next couple of sections, I simply want to lay out the evidence and examine some of the explanations for it. I hope

that, like me, you will become convinced that Jesus really did rise from the dead.

The evidence

Five pieces of evidence are important.

An empty tomb

First, it’s certain that Jesus’ tomb was empty. All four Gospels tell us this piece of information. And as soon as you think about it for a minute, you realise that there is no reason to doubt that this is true. The early Christians caused quite a stir with their claim that Jesus had come back to life. There were plenty of people who would have loved to point to Jesus’ dead body to show that the Christians were mistaken. If there had still been a body in the tomb, it would have been easy for the authorities to pull it out and parade it through the streets to show people that yes, Jesus was still dead. The Christian faith would have been dead in the water before it had even really begun. The fact this never happened makes it clear that the body was missing. The tomb was empty.

A visible, touchable Jesus

Second, there is no doubt that the earliest Christians were convinced that they had seen Jesus alive again. We have the books they wrote – not only the four Gospels, but also many of the other books in the New Testament. Over and over again in these books, the early Christians claim that they saw Jesus alive again after his death. In fact, we have more written references to Jesus’ resurrection than to almost any other event in the ancient world!

Many of these references to Jesus’ resurrection are relatively brief. But each of the four Gospels tells the story of the empty tomb, and three of them – Matthew, Luke and John – describe how Jesus appeared to his disciples again after his death. It is clear in these accounts that the earliest Christians did not claim to have seen a ‘ghost’ or a ‘spirit’ when they saw Jesus alive again. The Gospels include stories about how the disciples touched him, ate with him and listened to him speak (Matthew 28; Luke 24; John 20–21). They make it crystal clear that Jesus had come back to life in his body!

What’s more, the early Christian reports indicate that many people

saw Jesus alive like this. In one of the books in the New Testament –Paul’s first letter to the Christians in a Greek city called Corinth –Paul claims that not only he, but 500 people, all gathered together at the same time saw Jesus alive again (1 Corinthians 15:6)!

Authentic sources: the embarrassment factor

Third, the resurrection stories in the Gospels bear all the hallmarks of real eyewitness accounts.

For one thing, all four Gospels tell the story of the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances, but they each include different details. This is exactly what we expect from real eyewitness accounts.

What’s more, in a male-dominated culture, the Gospels record the potentially embarrassing detail that it was women who saw Jesus first. The early Christians knew, of course, that in their culture, the testimony of women wouldn’t stand up in court. So why would they have kept that part in the story unless it was true?

Like the Gospels as a whole, the resurrection stories bear all the hallmarks of a genuine eyewitness account.

Transformed disciples: who would die for a lie?

Fourth, nearly all of Jesus’ first disciples ended up being persecuted for their faith. They went around telling everyone this remarkable story about Jesus being raised from the dead, and they were persecuted for it. And when I say persecuted, I don’t mean that somebody called them names. No. Jesus’ disciple James was beheaded by one of the Herods. Peter was crucified in Rome. The other James – Jesus’ half-brother – was stoned to death. None of this is pretty, I know, but the point is simple: if these friends and family of Jesus knew that he had not come back to life again, why would they die for a lie? In terms of life in this world, they had nothing to gain and everything to lose from their claim that Jesus was alive again. Why would they spend their whole lives telling the story of Jesus’ resurrection, and then give up their lives for it, if they knew it wasn’t true?

A worldwide movement

Finally, we’ve got to somehow explain how Christianity started in the first place. When Jesus died, all of his friends and family fled. That’s no wonder: their lives were probably in danger too. So why

did they regather? How did they regain their confidence? Why did they start telling this story about Jesus coming back to life again? And above all, why did they start saying that Jesus rules the world? Everyone knew he had been executed. Only a lunatic would claim that an executed dead man now rules the world. Surely the most sensible option would have been to give up on Jesus altogether and get on with life. But none of them did that. Rather, they devoted the rest of their lives to promoting the message about Jesus. And when they explained why they were doing it, they said it was because Jesus rose from the dead. From a purely historical point of view, we’ve got to explain how Christianity grew from one man dying on a cross to be a worldwide movement within the space of a couple of centuries. The explanation the earliest Christians gave for this was that Jesus was no longer dead.

The explanations

None of this so far is religious belief. This is simply good historical logic based on the evidence. That is why most serious ancient historians, even those who don’t profess Christian faith, accept that the tomb was empty,

the earliest Christians claimed to have seen Jesus alive and Christianity grew because people believed their story.

Over the centuries, people have come up with all sorts of alternative explanations for what happened on that Sunday morning when the earliest Christians claimed that Jesus had come back to life. But none of these explanations can do justice to the evidence. Let me show you the problems with just some of the most popular ones.

People were gullible back then

One explanation is that people in the ancient world were gullible; they easily believed miracle stories. The problem is that this simply isn’t true. Although many people did believe the testimony of those who saw Jesus alive again, many others didn’t. It doesn’t take modern science to understand the reality of death. People in the ancient world knew just as well as you and I do that dead people stay dead.

The telephone game

This explanation suggests that the whole story about the resurrection was a myth that developed over time. One person told another, and as the story was passed down

the line, like in ‘the telephone game’, the legend grew. But this doesn’t fit the evidence. Within weeks of Jesus’ execution, the earliest Christians were announcing in public that he had risen from the dead. We have written accounts making the same claim from within 20 years of the crucifixion (I’m talking about the letters of Paul in the New Testament). The Christian stories about the resurrection are not a case of ‘the telephone game’.

The disciples stole the body and invented the story.

The idea here is that the disciples stole the body from the tomb, hid it and then made up the story about Jesus coming back to life. But this would have been a strange story to make up because no-one in the surrounding culture would have been able to make sense of it. On the one hand, the ancient Greeks were sure that the dead don’t rise. The Greeks commonly saw their bodies as a prison to escape from, so the idea of coming back to life again in a body was foreign to them. On the other hand, the ancient Jews also didn’t expect the resurrection of one man in the middle of history. Some Jews did look forward the resurrection of everyone at the end of history. But the early Christian testimony that Jesus had risen, on his own, ahead

of everyone else, would have struck most Jews as very strange. It is therefore highly unlikely that the disciples simply invented this story. It simply didn’t make sense to the world around them. Besides, even if they did steal the body and invent the story, we’ve still got to explain why they were willing to die for this lie.

The Jewish authorities stole the body

This one is even less likely. There is no good reason to explain why the Jewish leaders would have stolen the body of a man they had happily executed. More to the point, once the earliest Christians started claiming that Jesus had risen, the Jewish authorities would surely have produced the body, if they had it, to prove the Christians wrong.

The disciples hallucinated

I almost didn’t include this one because it is so far-fetched. Hallucination is an individual thing. It is highly unlikely, to say the least, that all the earliest Christians had the same hallucination. What’s more, when you remember that the resurrection of one man in the middle of history was a very strange idea to everyone at the time, you’ve got to ask where such

a weird hallucination could have come from.

None of these alternative explanations can do the job. But we still need an explanation for the evidence. Why was the tomb empty? Why did the earliest Christians claim so consistently and passionately that Jesus had come back to life? The best explanation is also the simplest: the early Christians claimed that Jesus was alive because he really had risen from the dead.

The bottom line

None of this evidence ‘proves’, in the scientific sense, that Jesus rose from the dead. But it does provide a strong historical case for the Christian claim.

The bottom line, however, is that whatever you believe about Jesus’ resurrection probably has as much to do with your basic beliefs about God and the world as it has to do with the evidence. If you don’t think God is real, the story about Jesus coming back to life again will seem ridiculous. But if you’ve read this far through the book, you probably have at least some sense that God is real. And if this is the case; if the God Jesus spoke about is really there, if he made

the universe out of nothing and sustains it every day, then surely it is also possible that God raised Jesus from the dead.

In the next chapter, we are going to explore the more important question.

If Jesus did come back from the dead, what difference does it make?

What does it mean? Why does it matter?

13. There’s a new world coming.

The first drop of rain

There’s nothing quite like the refreshment of a summer thunderstorm. I’m sure you know what it’s like. It’s a hot summer’s day. The air is thick with heat, and you’re drenched with sweat. The sun is unbearable, and the humidity is stifling. But at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon the breeze starts to pick up. It gets stronger. The clouds roll in. Then finally, at about 5.30 pm, you feel the first big heavy drop of rain fall on the back of your neck.

Now, if you paused the picture there, you’d be thinking, ‘OK, so one raindrop. It’s nice, but that’s not going to bring the refreshment we need!’ But as soon as you take your finger off the pause button, you know what happens next. The rain starts to bucket down. The wind sweeps the heat out of the air. You smell the rain on the ground. You see the plants straighten up. Everything is refreshed.

Jesus’ resurrection is like that first drop of rain. When you look at it by itself you might think, ‘OK, so one man came back to life again. That’s nice, but it’s not going to bring the refreshment we need!’

By itself, Jesus’ resurrection isn’t the change in the world that John Mayer is waiting for. But Jesus’ resurrection was not some one-off magic trick. It was the beginning of something huge; the beginning of God’s work to fully and finally restore his masterpiece and make everything new.

In this chapter I want to show you what Jesus’ resurrection meant for him, what it means for the world and finally, what it means for us.

A whole new kind of life

The first thing to get straight is that there was a massive difference between the people Jesus raised and Jesus’ own resurrection.

The people Jesus raised back to life came back into the same kind of life as they had before. Take the widow’s son in Luke 7, for example (chapter 9). This young man’s mother must have been overjoyed that she had her son back. But he came back to same kind of life. Even though the Gospel doesn’t spell it out, we can be sure that this young man got sick again, became tired, got into arguments, let his mum down and – in the end – died again. This young man, like the other people Jesus raised from the dead, belong

to a very select club of people who have died twice. This is because Jesus raised them back into the same kind of life.

But Jesus’ resurrection was different. He went into death, through death and out the other side. When Jesus rose from the grave, he rose into a whole new kind of life – the resurrection life of the world to come.

You can see this clearly in the Gospel stories (Matthew 28; Luke 24; John 20-21). After Jesus rose from the dead, he remained fully human. He ate and drank with his friends. He cooked breakfast for them on the beach. He showed them the scars in his hands and side, and he walked and talked with them like he had before. At the same time, his body was transformed. He appeared and disappeared at will. He never did that before his resurrection. More importantly, he never got sick, never got tired and, unlike the widow’s son, never died again. Luke explains in his Gospel how Jesus spent about 40 days with his disciples, teaching them from the Old Testament and helping them to understand how it had all begun to be fulfilled in his own life, death and resurrection. But then, when his work with the disciples was done, Jesus ascended to heaven to live with God and rule the world.

This, again, is good news. When Jesus rose, he came back into a whole new kind of life. He will never die again, and that means he is still alive today.

All authority

What is Jesus doing right now? The simple answer is that Jesus is ruling the world. Listen to this staggering claim Jesus made not long after his resurrection:

I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth! Go to the people of all nations and make them my disciples. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to do everything I have told you. I will be with you always, even until the end of the world.

(Matthew 28:18–20)

This is no small claim. Jesus says that ‘all authority’ in heaven and earth has been given to him by God. He claims authority over every nation, government, company, hospital and school –and everything else in the entire universe, including every single human being. He is in charge. And that means the US president, the secretary-general of the United Nations and the CEOs of all the major global corporations are merely his deputies at best. It also

means that you and I belong to him. Jesus is the one who holds real and lasting authority over everything that happens in the world.

The shepherd and his sheep

Still, you might ask, what is he doing?

This is where it really gets exciting, because we start to see not only what Jesus’ resurrection meant for him, but also what it means for us and for the world.

There are many things we could talk about here, but let me highlight two of the most important things Jesus is doing right now. The first is that Jesus is leading and helping everyone who has put their life in his hands. That is one of the really great things about being a Christian. Who better to trust with your life than Jesus, who knows all about life, laid down his life for his people and holds the universe in his hands? If you have been talking to God as you have been reading this book, and if you have handed control of your life over to

him like I encouraged you to do at the end of chapter 10, you can be sure that he has got your life in his hands. Consider this quote from Jesus in the Gospel of John:

I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and they know me. Just as the Father knows me, I know the Father, and I give up my life for my sheep … My sheep know my voice, and I know them. They follow me, and I give them eternal life, so that they will never be lost. No one can snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:14–15, 27–28)

Jesus here describes himself like a shepherd looking after his sheep. Because of his resurrection, we can be certain that Jesus is still alive right now. He is ruling over the world. And at the top of his agenda is looking after his sheep, gathering his people to himself and caring for those who put their lives in his hands. If that is you, you can be sure that Jesus is caring for you. No matter what is going on in your life, you can bring it to him in prayer and ask for his help. No one can ever snatch you out of his hands. He will look after you forever. In fact, on another occasion, Jesus promised his friends that after he ascended to God his Father, he would send his Spirit to live with

them, remind them of his love for them and teach them how to live (John 14–16). If you have handed your life over to Jesus, you can be sure that his Spirit is with you right now, helping and guiding you every step of the way.

That’s one of the things Jesus is doing right now.

The end of the great restoration project

The other thing Jesus is doing is equally exciting. Right now, as I write and as you read, Jesus is preparing to complete God’s great restoration project for the world.

A while back, some good friends of ours bought a house. It cost them a packet, and to be honest, it seemed like a real dump. The yard was overgrown, paint was peeling off the walls and the bathroom was a mess. When I first saw it, I thought, ‘Wow, you’ve wasted your money!’ It wasn’t long, however, before they started the renovation. The first thing they did was rip up the carpet and polish the floorboards. As soon as they did that, I started to see the place had real potential. They

were going to knock out a wall and open up the whole back half of the house. They were going to get the backyard landscaped and the bathroom redone. They were going to redo the kitchen and repaint the whole thing. It was going to take some hard work, but in the end, it was going to be a great house.

When God brought Jesus through death and out the other side, he started the job of renovating and restoring the world. He started the job of making everything new. Jesus’ resurrection is a bit like those polished floorboards: when you look at him raised from the dead, you get a glimpse of where the world is headed. You see, the big difference Jesus’ resurrection makes is that there is now one person – a human being like us –who cannot be touched by sickness, crying, pain and death. Jesus himself has been made new. God’s great renovation project has begun. It is now only a matter of time before Jesus comes back to finish the job!

Jesus said that much himself. Already, before his death on the cross, Jesus spoke to his disciples and promised that one day he would come again and make everything new (Matthew 19:28). Then after his resurrection, Jesus appeared to John (one of

There’s a new world coming

his disciples) and gave him an incredible vision of where the world is headed. John wrote it all down in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. Towards the end of that book, John records Jesus’ wonderful promise: ‘I am coming soon’ (Revelation 22:20). Just before that, John explains that he heard a voice – the voice of God – saying:

God’s home is now with his people. He will live with them, and they will be his own. Yes, God will make his home among his people. He will wipe all tears from their eyes, and there will be no more death, suffering, crying, or pain. These things of the past are gone forever.

(Revelation 21:3–4)

And finally, the voice that John heard said this: ‘I am making everything new’ (Revelation 21:5).

I hope you can see what is going on here. This is also God the Father promising that he will remove death, mourning, crying and pain from his world once and for all. This is Jesus, God’s Son, promising that he will come back again to finish the job of restoring God’s great masterpiece.

And right now, Jesus is preparing to finish the job.

So why the wait?

There is only one question left. It is this: why is God waiting? Why does he not step in and make everything new now?

This is a big question, but there is a simple answer. God is waiting because he wants to give people time to stop being part of the problem with the world – to turn away from their sin and back to him by trusting in Jesus.

Jesus himself didn’t talk about this during his life among us. That is no wonder: the people he was talking to were still struggling to get their heads around the meaning of his life and death! But in one of his letters, Jesus’ disciple Peter gives us exactly this answer.

Dear friends, don’t forget that for the Lord one day is the same as 1,000 years, and 1,000 years is the same as one day. The Lord isn’t slow about keeping his promises, as some people think he is. In fact, God is patient, because he wants everyone to turn from sin and no one to be lost.

(2 Peter 3:8–9)

God is waiting because he doesn’t want anyone ‘to be lost’. When Jesus finally comes to finish the job, to clean up the world and restore God’s masterpiece, he will also judge the world. When he does that, God will get rid of all the sickness, suffering, sin and death in the world. But this means that he will also judge, and condemn, those who continue to live as slaves of sin. And so, God is waiting. As Peter says, ‘God is patient’; he is allowing people time to turn from their sin, receive his forgiveness and make a new start with him by trusting in Jesus.

Waiting on us to change …

Don’t get me wrong. We don’t know when, but one day God will come to judge. He will come to judge because he loves his world and us. He will come to judge because he hates all the evil, selfishness and sickness that is ruining his world. He will come to judge because that is how he will clean up the mess and make everything new. And that day of judgment will be a terrible day for anyone who hasn’t yet accepted his offer of forgiveness. So, God is waiting. He is waiting on us to take up his offer of forgiveness. He is waiting on us to change.

I wonder, is he still waiting on you?

At the end of chapter 10, I encouraged you to talk to God, tell him that you are sorry for not living the way you should, and ask him for his forgiveness and help to start again with him. Maybe you sorted things out with God back then. If so, that is great news!

But if you didn’t sort things out with God back then, I want to put it to you straight: what is stopping you? Why not do business with God right now? Ask him to forgive you. Ask him to change you. Ask him to help you start a new life with him today.

Here, again, are some words you could use. Why not talk to God right now?

Father God, You know that I haven’t always lived the way I should. I’m sorry. Thank you that when Jesus died on the cross, he paid the price for everything I have done wrong. Please forgive me and help me to start a new life with you. Thank you that you have put Jesus in charge of everything. Please help me to follow his lead in everything I do.

LIFE WITH GOD

Jesus. All about life.

At the beginning of this book, I asked the question: what’s Jesus got to do with my life? If you’re still reading, I’m sure you know the answer by now: it’s everything! Jesus knew all about life in this world. He knew that all the good stuff is a free gift from the God who loves us. He knew that all the ugly stuff is the result of wrong choices we humans have made. Most importantly, he knew that God loves the world he made and God loves each of us so much that he was willing to send his only Son to deal with our problems and fix up the mess.

Jesus knew all of this because he lived it. You see, it’s not just that Jesus knew all about life. He also brought life because he is all about life.

If you’ve been talking to God along the way as you have been reading this book, and if you have asked him to forgive you and help you start a new life with him, then this last section is for you. I want to give you a few tips about how to keep growing in your new life with God.

Keep asking God for help

The first thing to do is to keep asking God for help to live the new life. Even though Jesus has carved out a new way of living for us, it is very easy to keep slipping back into bad old habits. The good news is that when we start a new life with God by trusting in Jesus, God will come and live with us by his Holy Spirit (John 14:23). He will become part of our lives and help us with the big and small things. Most of all, he will help us to keep trusting him and live life the way it was always meant to be lived.

The first thing to do – and keep doing – is to talk to God about anything and everything, and to ask him for his help as you live the new life with him.

Keep reading the Bible

The second thing to do is to keep reading the Bible. I’ve quoted some small sections of the Bible for you throughout this book, but if you want to keep getting to know God better, the best thing you can do is to start reading his book. The words of the Bible are

Life with God

the way God speaks to us today. When we read the Bible, we hear God’s voice, learn more about his love and understand more of how he wants us to live.

A good place to start is one of the Gospels, which will show you more about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Once you have read one of the Gospels, you can go on from there. As you read, ask God to help you to understand what you read. Ask him to show himself to you more and more so that you can trust him, love him and learn to live his way. At the back of this book, I’ve included a little introduction to the Bible and how to find your way around it. Maybe have a quick look at this first and then jump into God’s word.

Join a church

The third thing to do is to join a church. God designed us to live with him and his people. The church is the place where you will be fed from God’s word, learn to pray and be encouraged in your faith in Jesus.

I know that might sound scary if you haven’t been to church before, but be bold, ask around and find someone you know who goes to church and can take you

along. Look for a church where they teach from the Bible, Jesus is at the centre of everything they do and the people are welcoming and friendly. If you find a church like that, then I’m sure you will be blessed. Perhaps the best place to start is by asking the person who gave you this book.

Being part of the church has been one of the best aspects of my life. It’s not always easy, but meeting with God’s people every week to sing, pray and hear God’s word is an awesome privilege. It is certainly the best way to keep growing in your faith in God, so that you can live with Jesus – the One who is all about life – for the rest of your life.

The Bible: Some basic info to get you started.

What is the Bible?

An incredible book

The Bible is an incredible book. More than that: the Bible is the most incredible book ever written. I know that’s a big claim, but let me tell you why it’s true.

To start with, the Bible is by far the world’s bestselling book of all time. In 1992, the Bible Society estimated that 6,000,000,000 (that’s six billion!) Bibles had been printed in the modern era. But 1992 is a long time ago. Who knows what the figure must be now? No other book comes close.

The Bible is also the most translated book ever. At last count (in 2020), the full Bible had been translated into 717 languages, and parts of it had been translated into many many more.

For this reason, the Bible is also the most influential book of all time. The Bible has had a massive impact on human culture in many parts of the world. In Australia, you can find the influence of the Bible in our laws, political system, literature and the things we hold dear. Once your eyes are opened to it, you will find references to the stories from the Bible all over

the place – in movies, TV shows and books, and in everything from Shakespeare to The Simpsons

The Bible is the most incredible book ever written. But what I have said so far is only the tip of the iceberg.

God’s word

The most incredible thing about the Bible is that it is God’s word to us. The Bible speaks about itself like this. Here is how Paul put it in his second letter to Timothy:

Everything in the Scriptures [the Bible] is God’s Word. All of it is useful for teaching and helping people and for correcting them and showing them how to live. The Scriptures train God’s servants to do all kinds of good deeds.

(2 Timothy 3:16-17)

Everything in the Bible is God’s word to us. God showed us who he is and what he is like most completely by sending his Son Jesus to live, die and rise among us. And the Bible is God’s own word, in written form, through which God still speaks to us today.

I find this really exciting. It means when I open the Bible and sit down to read, the living God of the universe speaks to me through

The Bible: Some basic info to get you started

the words on the page. For this reason, reading the Bible is not like reading any other book. When you read the Bible, you need to be ready for God to speak to you. Through the Bible, God tells us about his plans for the world and us, shows his great love for us in Jesus and makes it clear how to live life the best way with him.

Through human words

The Bible is God’s word, but God chose to speak his word through human words. Another way of saying this is that the Bible didn’t just drop out of heaven one day. Instead, over a period of about 1,600 years, God inspired over 40 different people to write the words in the Bible down.

This means that the words in the Bible are both God’s word and human words at the same time. You’ll notice this as soon as you start to read it. God will speak to you, and you will hear his voice coming through the individual writings of the people he chose to inspire. These human authors of the Bible came from all walks of life. Some of them were kings, like David; others were leaders, like Nehemiah; yet others were fishermen, like Peter, and doctors, like Luke. God inspired each of these authors in a range of different ways. Sometimes they heard his voice. Other times they

saw visions or dreamed dreams. And other times, God enabled them as they researched history and wrote it down. By whatever means, God inspired the people he chose by his Spirit and showed them what to write.

For this reason, although it is right to think about the Bible as one book, you can also think about it as a collection of 66 different books. The Bible tells one big story from start to finish about God’s love for his world, but it tells this big story through a whole bunch of smaller stories. If you open a Bible and look at the contents page, you’ll see this straight away!

The incredible thing is that throughout all those years, through all these people and the different books they wrote, God speaks a consistent message to us about his plans for the world and his love for us in Jesus.

What’s in the Bible?

Two main sections

The Bible is divided up into two main sections: the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The first section is called the Old Testament. It contains 39 books.

Bible: Some basic info to get you started

Together these books tell the story of God and his world before the time of Jesus.

A ‘highlights package’ of the Old Testament would include some of these things:

• God making the world (Genesis 1–2)

• the first humans rejecting God and trying to live life without him (Genesis 3)

• God choosing one man, Abraham, and his descendants (the people of Israel) to spearhead his plans to win his world back (Genesis 12)

• God rescuing Israel from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 12–15: think The Prince of Egypt)

• God giving Israel his law (the Ten Commandments) at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19–20)

• God leading Israel into the land he had promised them (Joshua 6)

• God giving Israel a king – first Saul, then David (2 Samuel 7)

• King Solomon building God’s temple in Jerusalem (2 Kings 8)

• God judging the people of Israel for their continual rejection of him (Nehemiah 9).

As you can tell from this short ‘highlights package’, the Old Testament ends on quite a downer. The people God chose to spearhead his plans to win his world back failed dismally. They were just like Adam and Eve, and God judged them for their repeated rejection of him. Nevertheless, towards the end of the Old Testament, God says repeatedly that he will act to set things right and win his world back. Although the Old Testament ends on a downer, it also looks forward to what God will do in the future. It is a story looking for an ending.

This ending comes in the New Testament, which is the second major section of the Bible. The New Testament contains 27 books. It tells the story of how God sent his Son Jesus to finish the job he had begun with Abraham: to rescue the world and bring forgiveness to people who tried to live without God.

The New Testament begins with the four biographies, or Gospels, of Jesus’ life. These are followed by a book called The Acts of the Apostles, which tells the story of how the message about Jesus started to spread around the world after his resurrection. The New Testament also contains a whole bunch of letters (21 to be exact).

The Bible: Some basic info to get you started

These were written by some of Jesus’ closest followers to some of the very first Christian churches. They explain what God has done for us in Jesus and give helpful instructions about how to live life with God. The last book in the New Testament, Revelation, records a vision that Jesus gave to a man named John after Jesus had risen from the dead. Using wonderful (and sometimes weird) symbols, the vision lays out what God achieved by Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, and what all that means for you and me and the future of life in the world.

Many different types of text

The 66 different books in Bible all tell the same big story about God and his love for his world, but they each tell it in a different way. Understanding this helps a great deal when you read the Bible. Some of the books in the Bible record history, others contain poetry or laws or wise sayings (‘rules of thumb’ for good living) and yet others contain magnificent visions in highly symbolic language of God’s plans for his world.

It helps to understand this when you read the Bible because you need to read different kinds of books differently. This is just like when you turn on the TV. You

don’t interpret the nightly news in the same way as you interpret a Netflix comedy or an ad break: the first is (hopefully) a true and straightforward report of what happened, the second is a made-up story designed to make you laugh and the third is an opportunity to buy something. If you want to make sense of these different things you see on TV, you need to recognise that each of them is a different kind of thing.

The same is true of the Bible. All of it is God’s word and all of it tells the same big story, but God speaks to us in different ways through the different kinds of books in the Bible. This is one of the things I really love about the Bible. Over the years I have read most of it many times now, and while some parts of it are not an easy read, it is always a rich and satisfying book.

How to find your way around

I hope you’re nearly ready to jump into the Bible and discover for yourself what God is saying to you through his incredible book. Here are some tips on how to find your way around.

The Bible: Some basic info to get you started

Like many larger books, the Bible has a system to help you look up the part you need. This system was not part of what the original authors wrote, but it is helpful for looking things up. It works like this:

• Each book of the Bible has a book name (e.g. John = the name of one of the four Gospels).

• Each book is broken up into chapters (e.g. John 3 = Gospel of John, chapter 3).

• Each chapter is broken up into verses – a short section, usually only about a sentence long (e.g. John 3:16 = Gospel of John, chapter 3, verse 16).

To find a verse in the Bible (e.g. John 3:16) you need to:

1. Look up the book in the contents page at the front of the Bible and find what page it starts on.

2. Open that book and look for the right chapter. The beginning of each chapter is shown by a large number in the text.

3. Scan through that chapter and find the right verse. The beginning of each verse is shown by a small number in the text.

If you try this out with John 3:16, you should find that the verse says this: ‘God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die’ (John 3:16).

A note on different translations and versions

Sometimes people get confused when they realise that there are several different versions of the Bible in English. The reason for this is that the Bible was not originally written in English. It was written in the languages people spoke at the time when it was written. For most of the Old Testament this was Hebrew. For the New Testament this was Greek.

This means that our English Bibles are translations from the original languages. If you have ever had the opportunity to learn a second language, you will know that it is often possible to translate a sentence from one language to another in a few different ways. Both translations can be correct while also using slightly different

words to capture the sense of what is said in the original.

The same is true for our Bible translations. There are quite a number of different English versions of the Bible. All of them are translations from the original languages, but they each capture the sense of what the original says in slightly different ways.

There is no best translation; you just need to choose one that is true to the original and makes sense to you. The quotations I have used throughout this book come from the Contemporary English Version of the Bible. You will probably find it the easiest one to read, but you could also try the New International Version.

One last word

That’s enough about the Bible. Now it’s time to jump in and read it. The best place to start is with one of the Gospels in the New Testament. Any one of these (Matthew, Mark, Luke or John) will give you the full story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. After you have read one of the Gospels, you could move on to other books in the New Testament and then go from there.

As I’ve said, the Bible is not always an easy read, but it is always a rich and rewarding read. When you read it, make sure you pray and ask God to speak to you through his word. Then open it and listen to what he says!

Murray Smith serves as the Lecturer in Biblical Theology and Exegesis at Christ College in Sydney, and has also taught courses on Jesus and the Gospels at the University of Sydney. He previously taught history and Christian studies in two Sydney high schools. Together with his wife Lynette and their five children, Murray is part of Hornsby Presbyterian Church, where he also serves on the leadership team. He has been learning about Jesus all of his life, and loves introducing people to Jesus.

What’s Jesus got to do with my life?

ISBN 9780647532256

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

JOHN 10:10B NIV