The Living Revelation

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

“If you Christians want me to believe in your redeemer, you will have to look more redeemed.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

There are five gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian. And some people will never read the first four.”
- Gipsy Smith

“I have met a lot of purported Christians in my day, and while there are a large number who are genuinely kind people, there are an equally large number who are paranoid, hateful, despicable abominations of human beings. I know not to fight fire with fire, but a part of me deep down inside is deeply, fiercely angry with these people. How dare they claim to be followers of a loving God when all they do is hate? How dare they profane such a perfect concept with their pitiful, petty, ignorant complaints? How dare they try to tell me that they are better people than I?”
“One of the biggest tenets of Christianity is that all people are equal before God… Nobody is better than anybody else. And yet, so many followers are full of pride and hubris and the honest belief that they are somehow better than everybody else. How can they justify this? How do they? Have they ever actually thought about anything, or are they actually the brainless robots I perceive them to be?”

I found this last quote on a blog. It’s interesting and eye-opening, and leads us to the second part of this series of God’s revelation to man. Jesus warned us of this multiple times in the gospels. He warned us that if we do not connect truth to the way we live, the gospel to the way we carry ourselves the very thing we believe becomes deniable. The realities of the gospel must reach our everyday lives – our moment-by-moment lives – or we lose our greatest influence in this world today. This postmodern generation needs more than any other generation in history a living example of God and His work. It is not that we now deny beliefs as worthless, but we do deny beliefs that do not practically affect our lives as worthless. This is the second revelation God gives to man, and the most influential in these times: Christians. We are the living revelation to man.

Jesus said: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love for one another.”
- John 13:34-35

Here is where it starts, the way treat one another gives people the right, which is given by God, to judge Christians. As the blogger said hurtfully above, Christians are not acting like Christians. I travel a lot playing music for youth camps and conferences and one of the saddest things I hear too often is that the youth groups are worse than any other group that these camps and hotels host. They call them spoiled, selfish, careless of others in the hotel and even the property, and many other complaints. What we find then are people looking at this and saying, “If that is a Christian then I don’t want to be one nor let my children be one.” Christians like to point the finger at the devil and “sinners” for pulling people away from the church and away from God, but I think we need reexamine this and look at the sinners from within the church that have pushed people away by the way ignore their beliefs and not apply them to their lives. Jesus goes farther though:

“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”
- John 17:21

Now Jesus really starts to show the true responsibility of Christians. If the Christian is not in unity with his fellow Christians, people can begin to look at the church and say it is all fairy tales. From my own experience I have found that the church has somehow hurt the people who are hateful towards the church. This is not always, but more times than not this is the case. The way we live directly affects the gospel message and the credibility of it; that is a scary thought. We need to realize that what the Bible says has direct impact on the very way I live moment-by-moment. And from there, the Bible is very clear that the way I act has a direct impact on the way the world views, not just me, but God Himself. Christianity is not a vacuum that we leap into that is completely separated from life in the real world.

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden . . . Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-14, 16 NJKV)

Notice that Jesus said you ARE the salt and light, not should be but are. It is an indicative statement. That is who the Christian is, not who he should be. This is our nature that we must follow and live up to. We are to be the light among the darkness. We are to show that Christ is real in our lives and the result is that men will be able to see God in his glory. Ravi Zacharias, who is one of the most influential Christian apologists today, has admitted that his biggest struggle with Christianity and the hardest question for him to answer about Christianity is why so many Christians do not live with this supernatural transformation that they claim. Christians are losing their reputation and prestige much like Israel did when they began to forget that their lives reflected God on earth (Amos 5:2). The Christian is the living revelation that God has to man; Jesus was clear about that. God has declared his followers as evidence to his gospel’s reality, as his message to the world of how he is real, and as his very word in practical, tangible form. The living revelation to the world is what is killing Christianity right now. We must stay strong and obedient to God to show the world the reality of the gospel. God has given man his word through the Scriptures and gave man a propositional, testable, and powerful revelation in these Scriptures. Christians are the ones that show this revelation in living, tangible form. When we fail in this area we fail in showing God to be relevant to us. The Scriptures are relevant to this world whether or not we live it, but if we do not live it Jesus said himself that the world will not be easily acceptable to it. The living revelation of Christians is what will snatch a searcher long before he is able to think through the theology. C. S. Lewis said theology is practical; it is livable, and if we cannot demonstrate it then the world sees no real power in Scriptures, unless they spend the time to take it on without taking on its followers. Who wants that?

I do want to add that this is not hopeless. I know many Christians who truly show the power of the gospel through their lives. To the skeptic I want to say that while there are Christians who live inconsistently with the Scriptures, you must not take that as the final word. Augustine said that we must not judge something by its abuse. Take Jesus on and see how he lived and what he said. I believe if you do that you will find that the behavior of some purported Christians is completely inconsistent with what Jesus really says. A Christian, as the Gipsy Smith quote at the beginning implied, has a burden upon him to be that first testimony but the Christians is far from the truth. Jesus is the truth, the best a Christian can do is demonstrate this truth. The Christian truly is the living revelation to man, but he is at best a revealer and at worst a roadblock - never a falsifier.