Christianity & Liberalism: Christ

Introduction

What Machen set out to show in Christianity and Liberalism was that every core tenet of

liberalism was diametrically opposed to Christianity. Not just at the periphery but at the

foundation, not just in the part but in the whole. What we are fighting for is not some

extemporaneous theological issue that only fifteen socially awkward people care about. We are fighting for the very sum and substance of Christianity…What we are fighting over is, what others have called Mere Christianity.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the very core of Christianity is the Person and work of Jesus Christ…To which, anyone with half a brain responds with a resounding – DUH! At this point, even liberals would say that they agree. Of course, Christianity is about the Person and work of Jesus. However, and here is where the real rub in the road is, we’re talking about different people. Conservatives, are talking about the Biblical, historical Jesus.

The Son of God come in the flesh. The Son of God, our covenant head and Mediator. The Son of God who gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, voice to mute, healing to the leper, and peace to the broken-hearted. The Son of God who calmed the storms, cast out demons, walked on water, and rebuked the religious intelligentsia.

The Son of God who raised Lazarus from the dead and said that He was the resurrection and the life and that all who believe in Him will have eternal life. The Son of God who lived the perfect, sinless life that we could not live and died the death that we deserved to die on the cross. The Son of God who rose on the third day and ascended to the right hand of the Father where He is currently ruling and reigning over the cosmos. The Son of God who is the second member of the Trinity…our Savior and Lord. You know, the actual Jesus.

Liberals are more than willing to grant that Jesus was a great moral teacher…of course, but by this they mean that He ran about ancient Palestine fighting systemic racism and social inequity to ensure than gays in committed relationships were treated fairly and that the trans-community would be equally represented on the Sanhedrin…and we all know that He was crucified for His position on climate change…something about the earth being consumed by fire, or something like that – He was way ahead of His time.

The point being, that when liberals today say that Jesus was a great moral teacher what they mean is that Jesus is a wax nose that easily becomes a spokes-person for their latest cause fully equipped with a Ukrainian mask over His face while He drives alone in His car as to not give Himself Covid…

The fact of the matter is, we are very clearly, and distinctly talking about different people. Not only is the Liberal Jesus a figment of the liberal imagination, but this great moral teacher who pranced around Palestine who was our exemplar par excellence in living the nicest life ever lived, was not an option that He Himself left open for us. As C.S. Lewis pointed out in Mere Christianity:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” C.S. Lewis

In short, when it comes to their attitude towards Jesus Liberalism and Christianity are different religions. Which means that whenever you hear the phrase liberal Christian, progressive Christian, woke Christian…or any other such moniker, what you should hear is non-Christian.

Christ

Whenever I’m asked, “How do you tell if some is a false teacher?” The rough and ready

response I have to that this question, “What do they do with Jesus?” Again, Biblically

defined…you know, the actual Jesus. Every war is first a battle over words and definitions…this began in the Garden and hasn’t stopped…and unfortunately, far too many evangelicals today haven’t caught on yet and are happy just to hear someone speaking, what seems to be favorably, of Jesus with no real awareness of what is actually be said about Jesus.

At the end of the day, Jesus was the Son of God – fully God, and fully man, or He was not.

There is no middle option available to us – Period. The liberal, likes to wax eloquent about Jesus, and talks much about following Jesus, and about the example of Jesus, without ever really saying anything about His actual Person and work.

To them we should ask the following: How do they know who Jesus is? Where did they get that information? It would have to come from the Scriptures? If so, are they being consistent, or are they perversely cherry picking the Word of God like a democrat at a black church? (and everyone knows poor kids are just as smart as white kids). Who did Jesus Himself say He was? What did the early church say about Jesus?

Machen is incredibly helpful here,

“Jesus was not for Paul merely an example for faith; He was primarily the object of faith. The religion of Paul did not consist in having faith in God like the faith which Jesus had in God; it consisted rather in having faith in Jesus.” J. Gresham Machen

“The plain fact is that imitation of Jesus, important though it was for Paul, was swallowed up by something far more important still. Not the example of Jesus, but the redeeming work of Jesus, was the primary thing for Paul.” J. Gresham Machen

Again, an immediate tension presents itself here with words that sound Christian-ish but are really a bunch of syrupy emotive crap. Again, what do they mean by faith. When someone speaks about following Jesus or imitating Jesus or about Jesus being the example of faith – what do they mean? If by faith they mean some form of intuition, or wishful thinking which is generally the case, that means absolutely nothing, and at the end of the day is really just rank idolatry and self-worship…but it sounds spiritual.

In the Greek, the word “faith” is synonymous with the words “trust” and “belief” which gets us closer to the idea. So, If I say I have faith in someone, I am saying I trust that someone to act and speak in a certain way which is based on their person and work – who they are and what they’ve done – that is, what they have revealed about themselves.

Faith certainly has a subjective component in that there is an ascent to the object that one trusts in. However, it is the objective component of faith and this is the only thing that makes faith objectively valuable, namely, the object of said faith. The only thing that gives faith any value, any substance, any power is the object that one trusts in.

For example, If I am up the side of a mountain and begin to slip, and reach out for a branch, the reason I do that is because I believe the branch can hold me – the branch being the object of my faith. My faith is not what saves me in that moment, but rather the strength of the branch. If my faith is misplaced I die. If the object of my faith is strong I live.

Certainly the church sought to imitate Jesus. Certainly the early church followed Jesus, upon His command – He told them too. However, they were not simply trying to copy what Jesus did – that would be impossible, and absurd given the totality of His claims. The reason the early church sought to follow Jesus through obedience to His commands and teachings was because, “said following,” was predicated on their worship of Jesus – that is, Jesus’ Person was tied up in His Message – that He was the Son of God, that He was the Lord and Savior of men.

The liberal caricature of Jesus being the nicest and most emotionally sensitive man to have ever walked the earth, is not only historically inaccurate, but profoundly stupid.

“On the contrary Jesus presented the wrath of God in a more awful way than it was afterwards presented by His disciples; it was Jesus – Jesus whom modern liberals represent as a mild-mannered exponent of an indiscriminating love – it was Jesus who spoke of the outer darkness and everlasting fire, of the sin that shall not be forgiven either in this world or in that which is to come. There is nothing in Jesus’ teaching about the character of God which in itself can evoke trust. On the contrary the awful presentation can give rise, in the hearts of us sinners, only to despair. Trust arises only when we attend to God’s way of salvation. And that way is found in Jesus.

Jesus did not invite the confidence of men by a minimizing presentation of what was necessary in order that sinners might stand faultless before the awful throne of God. On the contrary, he invited confidence by the presentation of His own wonderous Person. Great was the guilt of sin, but Jesus was greater still. God, according to Jesus, was a loving Father; but He was a loving Father, not of the sinful world, but of those whom He Himself had brought into His Kingdom through the Son.” J. Gresham Machen

The wokies today, do not love this Jesus any more than the modern liberals did in Machen’s day. In fact, they distain this Jesus, they hate this Jesus. Jesus is not the object of their faith at all. What really gives liberals a grade-A wedgie isn’t that they think Jesus isn’t a good person. They won’t shut up about that. However, it is when you point out that it is Jesus’ “goodness” that is, His sinlessness that exposes their depravity, they lose their stuff like a fat purple haired Hilary supporter the day after the 2016 election.

“The very idea of sinlessness, much more the reality of it, requires us to conceive of sin as transgression of a fixed law or a fixed standard, and involves the conception of an absolute goodness. But to that conception of an absolute goodness the modern evolutionary view of the world properly speaking has no right.” J. Gresham Machen

One of the reasons why liberals can’t stand Jesus and why mushy evangelicals are constantly apologizing for Jesus is because He everywhere assumes the universal sinfulness of humanity, yet never finds sin in Himself. Which makes it possible for Him to deal with our sin problem which is why He came.

Which why He lived the life that we could not live and died the death that we deserved to die. Which is why He rose. Which is why He is currently building His church. This is why Jesus’ preaching began with “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This is also why the preaching of the early church began with, “repent and believe the gospel.”

“The primitive Christians felt themselves in need of salvation. How, they asked, should the load of sin be removed? Their answer is perfectly plain. They simply trusted Jesus to remove it. In other words they had ‘faith’ in Him.” J. Gresham Machen

It is very important that we don’t get the order of operations mixed up here. Jesus wasn’t simply offering guidance for life, or a way of life, but rather salvation. This salvation which Jesus accomplished for us and becomes ours through repentance and faith in Him delivers us from the domain of darkness and transfers us into the kingdom of light where we live under the reign of our great King Jesus – it is this glorious salvation, this glorious deliverance that leads to a way of life. Jesus everywhere offered Himself as the object of our faith, and it is this “offer” which is rejected by liberals, but accepted by every Christian.

In short, Christians regard Jesus as Lord, liberals regard Him as a guide, or example to a greater form of spirituality or living. To quote Machen again, “But the essential thing can be put almost in a word – liberalism regards Jesus as the fairest flower of humanity, Christianity regards Him as a supernatural Person.” Despite all of their pious sounding words, at the end of the day, liberals have a low view of Jesus because they still hold to a high view of themselves. Whatever they may say about Jesus…how kind or syrupy the speech, at the end of the day, they differ in kind not just in degree.

Conclusion

Refuting liberalism is not uncharitable heresy hunting. It is not arguing over peripheral issues. It is not making secondary things main things. It’s not making issues of conscience issues of law. In refuting liberalism we are fighting for the very sum and substance of the Christian faith, namely, the Person and work of Jesus. Without this, there is no Christianity worth speaking of.

“The liberal Jesus, despite all the efforts of modern psychological reconstruction to galvanize Him into life, remains a manufactured figure of the stage. Very different is the Jesus of the New Testament and of the great Scriptural creeds. That Jesus is indeed mysterious. Who can fathom the mystery of His Person? But the mystery is a mystery in which a man can rest. The Jesus of the New Testament has at least one advantage over the Jesus of modern reconstruction - He is real. He is not a manufactured figure suitable as a point of support for ethical maxims, but a genuine Person whom a man can love. Men have loved Him through all the Christian centuries. And the strange thing is that despite all the efforts to remove Him from the pages of history, there are those who love Him still.” J. Gresham Machen