How radical was Jesus Christ, our Savior and our rightful king, the King of kings?
He was this radical:
“Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister. And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.” (Matthew 20:25-27)
In the ancient Near East, it was common for rulers to claim to be gods, and for their subjects to worship them as gods. Pharaoh was a god. Alexander the Great was a god. Augustus Caesar objected to being made a god (“How am I supposed to cure gout!” he cried).
But Our Lord Jesus Christ, who really was God, washed His disciples’ feet.
To this day the world’s most ferocious, insane, and arbitrary tyrants insist on being worshipped as gods. Communists call it a “cult of personality” when anybody else does it. America’s nooze media all but proclaimed that inchworm Obama a god: came as close to doing it as they could without getting laughed out of the room.
You know the old proverb, “All that glitters is not gold.” Our leaders and our rulers are a lot of glitter. Some are decent. But our world would not look the way it does if most of them were decent.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took the form of a servant and died on a cross like a despised criminal. He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven. He shall return, and establish His throne upon the earth.
He is minister to us!
A point worthy of a very great deal of thought.
What made Jesus so radical was He kept God’s Law perfectly – He never sinned, not even once!! Fallen man does not like perfection because it is a threat to them, plus it exposes his own imperfect condition. Man cannot free himself from his sinful condition but invents a plethora of salvation by good works schemes anyway thinking he is so clever.
As the late Francis Schaeffer advocated, “Be a radical for truth.”
Truly, Christ was radical, but radical does not necessarily mean violent. Here’s the definition I’m working from:
a : very different from the usual or traditional : EXTREME
b : favoring extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions
c : associated with political views, practices, and policies of extreme change
d : advocating extreme measures to retain or restore a political state of affairs
Following Jesus example is very different from what was the norm at the time. Jesus favored extreme changes, because the Kingdom of God is an extreme change from what fallen humankind has to offer. The practice of loving one’s God before all others and loving one’s neighbor as oneself is an extreme change from the selfishness and self-worship we see all around us. When God Himself steps into human affairs to end the evil things which happen, that is an extreme measure, but if God acts, not even the strongest efforts of all mankind can interfere. Pretty rad’, this Jesus. 🙂
Indeed “a point worthy of a very great deal of thought.”