Jesus Testified

What Did Jesus Do?

The world hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.
John 7.7

Why is it that most of us find it so easy to hurt the ones we love, but so hard to love the ones who hurt us? If that observation stings you as it does me, then you and I can both affirm that the truth does indeed hurt, and that’s not a bad thing, if, being hurt by it, we nevertheless love the truth; for it is the Father’s will that only the painful truth can truly heal us.

Now the world, well, it does not care all that much for the truth, especially about itself. Go around telling truths about the world (Its ethics and its mores, its people, its politics, its values), and you will quickly earn its enmity. Why? Because the truth about the world is, not to put too fine a point on it, that it is driven by evil. Whoa! If those aren’t fighting words, I don’t know what would be! The world runs on evil? That hurts! How dare anyone say such a thing? Well, Jesus dared because testifying to the truth about the world, and about each one of us, was the reason He came into the world (John 18.37). Since He was, and is, THE Truth, Christ’s entire life was, and is, a painful, convicting, and, thanks be to God, redeeming testimony.

For doing nothing but good deeds, and testifying to nothing but the truth, so help us God, Jesus was punished with the punishment that all of us deserve. His good deeds could not go unpunished in order that we, for all our evil deeds, could. And the only way to bring about the divine act of grace and mercy was by Christ’s unflinching testimony to the truth about the world.

It wasn’t because the Father was seeking a quarrel with the world that he sent his Son, it was because he loved the world so much that the Father sent the Son to testify (John 3.16). For the only hope for the world, and for you and me, is to hear and believe the absolute, if absolutely painful, truth of Christ’s testimony.

Now, before I advise any of us to start going around pointing out the world’s evil, I need to state two qualifications that must be met: (1) we first confess, apologize for, and repent of the all evil we personally have done, and (2) we love the world and everyone in it enough to let the world and everyone in it hate us for telling the truth, and we keep on loving it though it hates us, hurts us, even kills us. Jesus didn’t have to meet the first qualification, because He alone out of all humanity was without sin (Hebrews 4.15); and He alone out of all humanity satisfied the second qualification (See Luke 23.34 for the proof). The rest of us must accept that our testimony is impugned by our very sin nature, so that our only avenue of testifying is to proclaim nothing more, nor less, than Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, as Savior and Lord.

Even so, testifying about the truth is risky business. The world still hates to hear the truth about itself, though it needs nothing so desperately as to have someone testify to the truth. That’s what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4