Divine Personality

It's interesting to read some of the so-called synopses of the nature of Jesus Christ, as armchair theologians will focus on one small aspect of Christ’s divine character and then pretend they have provided an adequate personality profile of the One whose brief three years of public ministry has drawn more scholarship than the all the other centuries of history combined.

The task of providing a sketch of Jesus Christ reminds me of the professor’s essay question, “Define God and give two examples.” Yet many attempt to place Jesus in a bottle or a box or some other neatly arranged system of thought, then moving on as if the mystery of divine character had been conquered.

There appear to be two different camps of Messiah profilers. One is preoccupied with the meekness and gentleness of Christ, while the other is consumed with the more forceful and darker side of Christ. One highlights His comforting effect on children, while another comments on His verbal fistfights with the self-righteous. Some love to paint Jesus as one whose grace forgave the most notorious of sinners, while others portray Him as a first century Clint Eastwood who wrecked the religion of the most pious of Pharisees.

The error of these extremes, in my humble armchair opinion, is just that. They are extremes, being only small pieces of a much more grand portrait. If the personhood of Christ could be so easily packaged, then God would not have inspired four separate and distinct gospel accounts of His life. For any who desire to explore the claims, actions, and attitudes of this One for whom tens of thousands have died, I exhort you to examine these written testimonies for yourself.

For now I leave you with the famous quote of Scottish Theologian, James Stewart:

He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men. Yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven with the glory of God. He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at his coming, yet he was so genial and winsome and approachable, that the children loved to play with him and the little ones nestled in his arms.

His presence at the innocent joy of a village wedding was like the presence of sunshine. No one was half so kind or compassionate to sinners, yet no one ever spoke such red-hot scorching words about sin. A bruised reed he would not break. His whole life was love. Yet on one occasion he demanded of the Pharisees how they were expected to escape the damnation of hell.

He was a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions, yet for sheer stark realism he has all of us self-styled realists soundly beaten. He was the servant of all, washing the disciples’ feet, yet masterfully he strode into the temple, and the hucksters and moneychangers fell over one another to get away in their mad rush from the fire they saw blazing in his eyes. He saved others, yet at the last, he himself did not save.

There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts which confronts us in the gospels; the mystery of Jesus is the mystery of divine personality.