Atheist turned Christian, C.S. Lewis, had observed that even skeptics readily acknowledge the wisdom of Jesus:
·
I find that when I am arguing with very anti-God
people that they rather make a point of saying, “I am entirely in favor of the
moral teaching of Christianity” – and there seems to be a general agreement
that in the teaching of this Man and of His immediate followers, moral truth is
exhibited at its purist and best. It is not sloppy idealism, it is full of wisdom
and shrewdness. The whole thing is realistic and fresh to the highest degree. (God in the Dock, 156)
While I agree with Lewis’ observations – and I too have heard
skeptics speak highly of Jesus’ moral teachings – I don’t think that I
understand why this is so. Because most of Jesus’ teachings are highly
challenging, hyperbolic, ungratifying, and parabolic! Consequently, they were
often misunderstood. For example, after Jesus had miraculously fed the
multitudes, He taught that if they wanted life, they had to drink His blood and
eat His flesh. As a result:
·
When many of his disciples heard it, they said,
“This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60)
Consequently, they departed from Jesus. However, Jesus had
been teaching figuratively – not about His physical body and blood but about
His words:
·
“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is
no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” (John
6:63)
It was His words that would give life not the ingestion of
His body. Nevertheless, this passage is just one small example of the challenge
we face in correctly interpreting the teachings of Jesus. Even at the very end,
Jesus’ Apostles still failed to understand Him:
·
So some of his disciples said to one another,
“What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and
again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the
Father’?” So they were saying, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do
not know what he is talking about.” (John 16:17-18)
In retrospect, we know that Jesus had been alluding to His
death and resurrection, but His disciples didn’t get it. Let’s add something
else to the problem of interpretation. Jesus always taught in parables. His
disciples asked Him why He didn’t teach more plainly, and Jesus answered:
·
And he answered them, “To you it has been given
to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been
given. (Matthew 13:11)
How then can we hope to understand with any degree of
confidence? These secrets were later explained to His disciples:
·
And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets,
he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke
24:27)
·
Then he opened their minds to understand the
Scriptures. (Luke 24:45)
Jesus promised that the Spirit would enable them to be His
witnesses after His ascension:
·
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your
remembrance all that I have said to you. (John 14:26)
Paul claimed that this had also been his experience:
·
These things God has revealed to us through the
Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God…Now we have
received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we
might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words
not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual
truths to those who are spiritual. (1 Corinthians 2:10-13)
Since we have been given the Spirit and the “Mind of Christ”
(1 Corinthians 2:15), the rest of the New Testament serves as an authoritative commentary
on the teachings of our Lord. Therefore, if we are struggling to understand the
parables of Jesus, we can turn to the apostolic writings of the NT. Besides, we
can also understand His teachings from the light of the Hebrew Scriptures,
which He had thoroughly endorsed as God’s Word (Matthew 4:4; 5:17-19).
I am not suggesting that the skeptic is any less intelligent
than we. However, it is unlikely that they regard Jesus’ teachings as wise.
Instead, we are reminded of Paul’s words:
·
The natural person does not accept the things of
the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand
them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)
Perhaps they believe that to affirm Jesus’ teachings makes
them seem open-minded, and perhaps their critiques of the Bible and
Christianity might therefore seem more credible. Instead, Jesus taught that we
must be born again to see the Kingdom of God, let alone to understand it. Even
the most highly educated, like Nicodemus, were unable to initially understand
or appreciate the wisdom of Jesus:
·
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you,
unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to
him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his
mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless
one is born of water [the natural birth] and the Spirit, he cannot enter the
kingdom of God…Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand
these things?...If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how
can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” (John 3:3–5, 10,12)
Unless we are born of the Spirit, we will not be receptive
to the things of the Spirit. Nevertheless, it is apparent that our Lord had
even opened the minds of His people of the Hebrew Scriptures, as the Book of
Proverbs suggests:
·
Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and
the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying,
the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the LORD is the beginning
of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:5–7)
It even seems that our Lord is also doing this very thing
today as He regenerates the mind of some previously antagonistic to His Word
but who now hunger and thirst after the truth.
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