Jesus Is Not Optional

This weekend, Tim and I officially decided that we'll be looking for a new church. Over the past year, we've been toying with the idea, but have also been trying to stay, wondering if we were there to try and help bring back some level of orthodoxy to the church - change from within, if you will. Week by week it's been more and more clear that what was, a year ago, a sneaking suspicion is a fact: the leadership of our church is ok with Jesus, but only as one option for salvation. They aren't going to say one way or the other if you decide that He's not the option for you. I'm sorry, Jesus isn't optional.

Jesus isn't an insignificant denominational bicker like whether or not women should wear pants. Jesus is it. Without Jesus' incarnation, death on the cross, and resurrection, we're all lost in our sin with no mechanism for atonement and reconciliation to the Father. There is no other option. John 14:6 makes it clear - Jesus doesn't say "I am a way, a truth, a life", He says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." As a Christian, I'm not sure how you read that and think that there are other options. Jesus isn't optional.

But at my church, people are more concerned with being unoffensive, and being told that you're a sinner is offensive. Yet there it is, the stark and unrelenting truth. We're sinners, all of us. And that means that without the grace displayed in the shed blood of Christ we're condemned to eternal separation from God. That, too, is offensive, because it means that we're powerless to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and fix it.

Jesus was offensive when He walked the earth. You don't get stoned, chased from cities, beaten, and crucified with thieves because people like you. Jesus is the Messiah, but He didn't fit the mold of the Messiah that the Jews expected - He was not a martial leader coming in to chase out the Romans and reestablish the reign of Jewish kings. He didn't bring an earthly kingdom, but an eternal one, and since that's not what the Jews were expecting, they were offended. More, however, He was offensive because He brought sin into the harsh reality of daylight - He made them, and us, see that no matter how good a person, how kind, how loving, how accepting we are, we are still unable to be holy on our own. We need atonement. He brought atonement. But He brought it in a way that emphasizes the fact that it's not something we did but rather something we're given. This flies in the face of our nature that so wants to be the master of our own destiny in all things.

To other religions and to those who have no religion, Jesus is offensive, and that makes sense. He shouldn't be offensive to those within the walls of a church that claims His name. And He absolutely cannot be optional.