Part II: The Focal Point - Revising Our Theology Based on the Testimony of Jesus Christ

"On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand." - Edward Mote

Theology is the study of God.
Most Christians happen to believe that our God descended to earth in human form a little more than two-thousand years ago and interacted with us directly in a more intimate manner than ever before.

Jesus Christ revealed the nature of God to us with remarkable clarity.
Even today, this clear vision of what God is like still has the power to surprise us.
Because oftentimes God does not conform to what we petty and capricious human beings imagine He should be like.

Who is Jesus to Us?

Jesus also changed the level of our discourse with God. He broadened our comprehension.
He revised portions of the Law. He even changed how we worship.
In effect, Jesus changed everything about how we relate to God.

But is that statement true? Let's unpack the argument.

Jesus is stated explicitly by Scripture to be the exact image of the invisible God.
(John 12:44-45; John 14:8-9; John 1:18; 1Jn 5:20; Col 2:9-10; Heb 1:1-3)

The Greek word χαρακτήρ (charakter) used in Hebrews 1:3 implies the stamp or tool than an engraver would use in the function of their trade to make an exact replica or copy.
According to these verses, Jesus equates seeing Him with having seen the Father,
is listed as being the only way of knowing the Father, being the complete essence of God in physical form, and being the perfect representation of God's nature.

All pretty strong statements and concepts to chew on.

The Relevance of Jesus

How did the early church view Christ and His relevance to their lives? How should we?

Jesus is our savior. (Jude 1:24-25; 1 Jn 4:14; Lk 2:11; Jn 4:40-42; Col 1:10-11; Col 1:14; Eph 5:23)

Jesus is our mediator. (Jn 14:6; 1 Tim 2:5; Heb 9:15)

Jesus is the model for and head of the body of believers.
(Rom 12:4-5; 1 Cor 12:12-27; Eph 4:4; Eph 5:30; Col 1:18; Col 1:24; Col 2:19)

Jesus is our model for Christian behavior.
(1 Jn 2:6; 1 Jn 1:7; 1 Cor 4:6; 1 Cor 11:1; Eph 5:1-2; Phil 3:17; Col 2:6; 1 Thess 1:6; 2 Thess 3:7; 1 Pet 2:21; Phil 2:5)

My last point in how the early church viewed Jesus Christ's relevance is so crucial to Christian discipleship that I placed it under its own subheading.
And that is Christianity as not merely a religion but as a relationship with our Lord and Savior, implies something which can be very uncomfortable to discuss in modern circles,
but which should flow from our hearts as a natural accomplice of love: and that is obedience.

It's non-optional, non-negotiable, and absolutely central to what it means to call oneself a Christian.

(John 15:10-12; John 14:15; John 14:21; 1 Jn 2:3; 1 Jn 5:2; 2 Jn 6; Rev 12:17; Rev 14:12)

My personal favorite among these passages is 1 John 2:3-6, and it underlines the point with unavoidable directness.

By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.
The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

Here we see both principles in union.
We are called to keep His commandments, and walk just as He walked.

Our relationship with God and our witness to others is only as effective as our efforts to emulate and keep the commandments of Jesus Christ.
If we profess that Jesus is Lord and fail to keep his commandments then we are, unfortunately, liars.

In recapping these three points, if Jesus is the exact image and fullness of God, if He is our savior, our mediator, and the perfect standard of Christian behavior and discipleship,
and if we are called to daily take up our cross and follow Him in keeping His commandments

and imitating Him to the world, then we have no other option than to conclude that Jesus Christ is indeed Lord.

What He reveals to us concerning the nature of God should be supremely significant to us in our studies. Having established this basis, what exactly does Jesus reveal, revise or make manifest?

God's Idea of Power

Jesus destroyed human notions of power.

As He begins His ministry as recorded in three separate Gospels, Jesus has a showdown in the desert with Satan himself.

During this confrontation, He is faced with three unique and very real temptations.
As Christians going back and re-reading the Gospels now, I fear that some or all of the significance of these temptations escape us.

First, the temptations were genuine.
Jesus was actually tempted by these alternate routes which were offered to Him.
If He weren't the entire incident would be relegated to the category of anecdotal, and might as well never have been recorded at all.

But it was. The order is changed up a bit from version to version, but the nature of the content remains the same. Jesus is tempted with economic power, religious power, and military power.

He was told to make bread from stones.
This wasn't merely to satiate Jesus' personal hunger during the fast.
In essence, it is the same temptation which was offered again (more subtly) during the feeding of the five thousand in the countryside.

Jesus made converts during the feeding, but it wasn't necessarily for the content of His teachings or the profundity of His message.
It was because He provided bread in a time of extreme economic distress and double taxation.

Jesus knew this, which is why He retired across to the other side of the sea of Galilee. He didn't want followers who had been converted merely by shallow needs of the flesh only.
He wanted followers who clearly understood the full import of what He was saying.
People who comprehended that Jesus Himself was the only way, truth and life.

He was told to exercise the religious power which, for all practical purposes, was His right to do.

In throwing Himself from a high place at the temple and being supernaturally saved from death by the power that was rightfully His to command, He would instantly declare Himself to be the long-awaited Messiah that the Jews had always wanted.

A commander endowed with superhuman powers to crush their enemies under their feet and lead them into an era of prosperity, freedom, and peace. There was no better time for it.

The Jews were constantly being oppressed by the iron fist of the Roman empire.
A simple study of history reveals this to be true.
If anything, this seemed the right thing to do. It was a temptation that was surely repeated

time after time throughout Jesus' ministry as He witnessed acts of brutality against the Jewish people, and as He interacted with passionate people of all stations who yearned for a free nation.

Finally, Jesus was led to the summit of a high mountain and shown all of the kingdoms of the world

laid out before Him. In an incredibly brazen demonstration of arrogance, Satan offered control of all of these kingdoms to Jesus if only He would worship him.
We all know the response, of course.
It is interesting to note, however, that Jesus did not bother correcting Satan about all of the kingdoms of the world lying under his control and domain. What He refused was dominion over them.

And from a decidedly human perspective, shouldn't Jesus have done just that?
Which one of us, looking down through thousands of years of human suffering that included the atrocities of the holocaust and the gulags of Russia would have chosen to lay down the power of government and take up a different kind of power; the power of serving and dying for those who hate us?

But Jesus did not come to usher in a kingdom synonymous with the kingdoms of men;
the kind that Satan ultimately manipulates.

This is because the kingdoms of the world (in virtually every possible incarnation) are built upon a foundation of idolatry and coercive force. Idolatry because at their core every nation is concerned with protecting its own selfish interests and ambitions at the expense of all others, and coercive force because no government regardless of construction is capable of creating true change from within its subjects hearts. Instead all versions of worldly kingdoms seek to impose change from without by the use of brute strength.

Philip Yancey offers this concept up in a very eloquently worded manner.

I went in November of 1991, when the Soviet empire was crumbling, Mikhail Gorbachev was giving way to Boris Yeltsin, and the entire nation was trying to rediscover itself.
The iron grasp of power had loosened, and people were now reveling in the freedom to say whatever they wished. I remember vividly a meeting with the editors of Pravda, formerly the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party.
Pravda as much as any institution had slavishly served the Communist "church".
Now, though, Pravda's circulation was falling dramatically (from eleven million to 700,000) in concert with communism's fall from grace. The editors of Pravda seemed earnest, sincere, searching---and shaken to the core.
So shaken that they were now asking for advice from emissaries of a religion their founder had scorned as "the opiate of the people."

The editors remarked wistfully that Christianity and communism have many of the same ideals: equality, sharing, justice, and racial harmony. Yet they had to admit the Marxist pursuit of that vision had produced the worst nightmares the world has ever seen. Why?
"We don't know how to motivate people to show compassion," said the editor-in-chief. "We tried raising money for the children of Chernobyl, but the average Russian citizen would rather spend his money on drink. How do you reform and motivate people? How do you get them to be good?"

Seventy-four years of communism had proved beyond all doubt that goodness could not be legislated from the Kremlin and enforced at the point of a gun. In a heavy irony, attempts to compel morality tend to produce defiant subjects and tyrannical rulers who lose their moral core.
I came away from Russia with the strong sense that we Christians would do well to relearn the basic lesson of the Temptation. Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up.

The Temptation in the desert reveals a profound difference between God's power and Satan's power.
Satan has the power to coerce, to dazzle, to force obedience, to destroy. Humans have learned much from that power, and governments draw deeply from its reservoir. With a bullwhip or a billy club or an AK-47, human beings can force other human beings to do just about anything they want.
Satan's power is external and coercive.

God's power, in contrast, is internal and noncoercive.
"You would not enslave man by a miracle, and craved faith given freely, not based on miracle," said the Inquisitor to Jesus in Dostoevsky's novel. Such power may seem at times like weakness.
In its commitment to transform gently from the inside out and in its relentless dependence on human choice, God's power may resemble a kind of abdication. As every parent and lover knows, love can be rendered powerless if the beloved chooses to spurn it.

Jesus chose a different path to herald the coming of the kingdom of God.
A principle made increasingly plain throughout the Gospels as we read the teachings
from Jesus' own mouth. We ought to be able to learn about God's nature from the method(s) He used and from the routes He rejected.

In God's kingdom, petty and shallow human notions of power and importance are shattered and in their place an inverted pattern emerges. The weak become strong. The poor become rich. Those who suffer wrongfully are exalted. The humble and meek are ascribed importance.

Those who consider themselves in a pristine place of religious certainty are cast out to their shock and horror, and those who humbly come before the Lord with a contrite spirit of repentance are graciously accepted in spite of their tarnished lives of sin.

In a clear case of backward power, Jesus tells His disciples that contrary to worldly teaching, in His kingdom those who wish to be great must serve. (Luk 22:24-27)

In yet another instance, Jesus became outraged when His disciples lacked the understanding to allow small children to come and touch Him. He said that the kingdom of God belongs to those who are like children, and whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child does, will not enter in at all. (Mar 10:13-15)

Why a child? Because children are largely lacking in the arrogance and duplicity of adults.
They have not yet been broken by the wheel of life and been made to understand that they must behave in this manner.

Children have little power or authority. So children inherently are poised to better understand the servant spirit of the kingdom of God.

They trust easily and speak from the heart. Perhaps I take some liberties of elaborating here, but I am sure that you can see the point of my statements.

Jesus made it clear. His way is not our way. He did not come to destroy, but to save.
In the kingdom that Jesus came to usher in the poor are rich (Luk 6:20), the last are first (Matt 20:16), the weak are strong (1 Cor 1:27-29; 2 Cor 12:9-10), and our reception into it is graded on our lack of
power.

Those who see coercive power and strength as the way into the kingdom of God are in for a rude awakening when they stand before their Lord.

Putting Religion in Its Place

Jesus severely castigated the religious hierarchy of His time for two primary reasons.

One was that they had assigned more importance to symbolism than they did to actual spiritual truth.

The second was that they had cleverly devised methods by which they could benefit from a convoluted labyrinth of religious laws.

It is interesting that Jesus borrowed the Greek word 'hypocrite' (hupokritēs) for the religious leadership of the time. (Mat 23:25-28)

Hypocrite was originally a word used for Greek actors who played roles. It is now commonly used to describe duplicity or being two-faced. Why would Jesus use this word to describe the scribes and Pharisees?

Because though they practiced extreme adherence to the Torah and the surrounding oral laws, inwardly they were filled with evil.
Their religiosity meant nothing to God because the ritual and routine did not flow from a deeper law
of love for God and for their neighbor. Jesus exposed them for the frauds they were.

In the context of the times in which the Gospels were written, there was practically no group that put the Torah and the oral tradition into practice like the Pharisees did. The Midrash, Mishnah and Talmud, all oral traditions and commentary which grew up surrounding the original Torah, gradually had begun to be considered just as important as the law itself.

The Mishnah alone had in excess of seven-hundred pages of fine print, and was passed on as a memorized oral tradition among scribes. Those who think that some of the doctrines of modern society wax overly legalistic might reconsider the standard by which they grade had they lived during Jesus' day.

There were laws governing virtually every single facet of human existence.

Can laborers on top of a tree or wall offer a prayer? Can one open up quarries or wells during a sabbatical year? If one is naked and makes a dough offering from barley in one’s house, does that make the offering unclean? Is tying a knot considered work which violates the Sabbath?
Can a man divorce his wife for burning a meal? What’s the proper death penalty for someone who blasphemes— burning, stoning, beheading, or strangling?
Is a man ceremonially unclean if he touches a mouse? If an unclean bird sits on the eggs of a clean bird do the eggs remain ceremonially clean? If a dog eats the flesh of a corpse, then lies at the door of a house, does that make the house unclean?

Kraybill, Donald B (2012-11-21). The Upside-Down Kingdom (pp. 142-143).

The so-called 'bleeding Pharisees' were something of a celebrity group, named after the wounds they received from bumping into walls and objects because they refused to even look at women, lest their passions be inflamed. In light of this, it seems all the more revolutionary that Jesus says:

"For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven."

When he spoke this to the crowd on the mountain, every single person knew exactly what He meant.

He was setting the standard impossibly high!
Who could surpass the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees?

Fortunately for the rest of us, Jesus was drawing attention away from rigid adherence to the symbolism which was an archetype of the spiritual reality, and to the spiritual truth itself.
He could not have said it any more plainly than this:

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me."

The power and potency of the kingdom of God does not emanate from righteous deeds, but from a heart fervently dedicated to God's will and to God's kingdom and to God's person.

The scribes of Jesus' time were not merely guilty of 'piling heavy burdens on men'.

They had also engaged in no small amount of craft and guile in finding loopholes in the legalistic traditions by which they might benefit.

Once again, allow me to quote from 'The Upside-Down Kingdom' as my quick reference in citing a couple of examples.

Ingenious devices were created to bypass Sabbath legislation. The law dictated that people weren’t allowed to walk more than 3,000 feet on the Sabbath.
However, to circumvent this, they could “establish residence” at the end of their Sabbath day’s walk, a day in advance. They established residence by carrying two meals to a place 3,000 feet from their home. One meal they ate there and another they buried— thereby “establishing residence.”
On the Sabbath day, people could travel the 3,000 feet from their permanent home to their “newly established residence” and then go an additional 3,000 feet. This legal detour doubled the length of Sabbath-day journeyrs. 9

Kraybill, Donald B (2012-11-21). The Upside-Down Kingdom (p. 146).

A religious vow called corban illustrates how even good things had been perverted (Mark 7: 10-13). Through the corban vow, the Pharisees encouraged adult children to consecrate their property to the temple rather than to use it to support their elderly parents.
After the property was dedicated to the temple, it could no longer be used to support elderly parents. Cutting off financial support jeopardized the welfare of the elderly.
Jesus condemned the corban vow which promoted piety at the expense of human suffering. Human words and traditions superseded the supreme law of loving one’s neighbor. The religious system operating in the name of God had ironically, obscured God’s law of love.

Kraybill, Donald B (2012-11-21). The Upside-Down Kingdom (p. 149).

Particularly irksome is the accumulation of wealth beneath a veneer of pious slogans.
When Jesus sanitized the temple, he struck at profiteering that oppressed the poor in the name of religion. “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations. But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11: 17; Matt. 21: 13; Luke 19: 46; John 2: 16).
The merchants operating in the temple weren’t acting illegally. They were exchanging “pure” money for offerings and selling animals for sacrifice at a high profit.
They had concocted a “legal” system that robbed the poor. Jesus called them “robbers,” for they engineered a system that exploited the poor in the name of religion.

Kraybill, Donald B (2012-11-21). The Upside-Down Kingdom (p. 107).

Jesus struck at the heart of these unjust actions.
And in so doing made Himself enemy #1 for the religious leadership of His time.

No Stereotypes in God's Kingdom

Jesus broke down the walls of separation.
Everything in Jewish culture was steeped in an atmosphere of clean vs unclean.

The book of Leviticus in many ways reads like an ultimate 'Eat This Not That' supermarket handbook. There are purity laws for everything.

As time progressed, the purity laws continued to evolve as discussed above and passed down through oral tradition.
Unfortunately, when we categorize human beings like they are inanimate objects, we tend to treat them as if they are inanimate objects.

The law of love is discarded in favor of purity.
Let's look at some of the categories of people during Jesus' time and discuss.

First, there was an intense spirit of misogyny in the air.

Women were regarded as being at the bottom of the caste system with children and slaves. In a very real sense, they were powerless (or viewed as such).

Says Kraybill:

One of the six major divisions of the Mishnah is devoted entirely to rules about women. None of the divisions, of course, deal exclusively with men.
The Mishnah section on uncleanness has seventy-nine legal paragraphs on the ritual contamination caused by menstruation! Women were excluded from public life. They belonged at home. When walking outside the house, they covered themselves with two veils to conceal their identity.

A chief priest in Jerusalem didn’t even recognize his own mother when he accused her of adultery. Strict women covered themselves at home so even the rafters wouldn’t see a hair of their head! Even in public places they were to remain unseen. Social custom prohibited men from being alone with women outside the home. Men dared not look at married women or even greet them in the street. A woman could be divorced for simply talking to a man in public. Public life belonged to men.

Young girls were engaged around twelve years of age and married a year later .
A father could sell his daughter into slavery or force her to marry anyone of his choice before she was twelve. After this age she couldn’t be married against her will.
The father of the bride typically received a considerable gift of money from his new son-in-law. Because of this, daughters were considered a source of cheap labor and profit...

...Considered the same as a Gentile slave, a wife was obligated to obey her husband as she would a master. If death threatened, the husband’s life must be saved first. Under Jewish law, the husband alone had the right to divorce...
There was joy in the home at the birth of a boy. Sorrow greeted a baby girl.
A daily prayer repeated by men intoned, “Blessed be God that hath not made me a woman.” 8
A woman was subject to many taboos in the Torah. Girls couldn’t study the Holy Law— the Torah. Women couldn’t approach the Holy of Holies in the temple.
In the temple plaza, they couldn’t enter the Court of Israelites— the exclusive domain of men.
During their monthly purification from menstruation, they were excluded from even the Women’s Court on the temple plaza. Women were forbidden to teach. They couldn’t pronounce the benediction after a meal.

They were barred as witnesses in court for they were generally considered liars. Even linguistic structure reflected the low status of females. The Hebrew adjectives for
“pious ,” “just,” and “holy” do not have a feminine form in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Then we have the Samaritans and Gentiles.

Bitter tension divided Jews and Samaritans. Samaria, to the north of Jerusalem, was sandwiched between Judea and Galilee. The Samaritans emerged about 400 B.C.E. from mixed marriages between Jews and Gentiles. The Jews regarded them as half-breed bastards.
They had their own version of the books of Moses. They had constructed their own temple on Mt. Gerizim north of Jerusalem.
They even claimed their temple was the true place of worship. Samaritan priests traced their bloodlines back to the royal priestly line in Hebrew history.
To the Jewish mind, the Samaritans were worse than pagans, because they at least knew better. Samaritans , hated and despised by Jews, were at the bottom of the social ladder. 5
The Scripture attests to the belligerent racism between the two groups. John (4: 9) reports that Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. When some Samaritans refuse to give Jesus lodging , James and John are so angry they beg Jesus to scorch the village with fire (Luke 9: 51-56).
Jewish leaders call Jesus a “Samaritan,” a derogatory nickname for the demon-possessed (John 8: 48).

Jews would not eat unleavened bread made by a Samaritan, nor an animal killed by a Samaritan.
One rabbi said, “He who eats the bread of a Samaritan is like one that eats the flesh of swine.” 6 Intermarriage was taboo.
Jews considered Samaritan women perpetual menstruants from the cradle and their husbands perpetually unclean. The saliva of a Samaritan woman was unclean.
A whole village was declared contaminated if a Samaritan woman stayed there. Any place a Samaritan slept was considered unclean, as was any food or drink which touched the place.
Another rabbi said the Samaritans, “have no law or even the remains of a law and therefore, they are contemptible and corrupt.” 7
Samaritans frequently attacked Galilean Jews walking to Jerusalem.
To devout Jews, Samaritans were worse than the Romans because the halfbreeds mocked Jewish faith by practicing a rival religion amid God’s Holy Land. Samaritans, in short, were not even on the purity grid— they were fully polluted.

Gentiles were little better. They were regarded as unclean and were referred to as 'dogs'.
For the Torah to dwell in the mouth of a Gentile was an abomination.
In all ways the Jews envisioned an exclusive membership club of religiosity and salvation,
but Jesus would have none of it.
He came to preach the Gospel to all sinners, a line of thought which has far more in common with the covenant promise of God to Abraham when He said that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through Israel (Gen 12:3; 22:18). 

Jesus refused to discard people as if they were garbage, treat them with hatred or disgust,
or ostracize the unclean. He infuriated a crowed in His own home town when he told them that the message of Jubilee and the kingdom of God was to be proclaimed to all people
by using an analogy from the lives of Elija and Elisha the prophets (Luke 4:23-29).
Jesus interacted with people of all stripes.
He traveled with and was supported by women (Luke 8:1-3).
He conversed with the lowest of the low and treated them as equals even though He was God (John 4:7). He dined with prostitutes and tax collectors; the worst of sinners (Luk 15:2).
In complete contradiction to the codes of purity, Jesus touched the unclean and was not made unclean by them. Rather He made them clean.

The Revolution of Love

Wherever He went and whatever He did, Jesus continuously engaged in a quiet revolution of love by revolting against the injustices of His time, whether economical, social, or religious.
He taught that the primary two commandments were love for God and love for your neighbor; and promptly proceeded to define who the neighbor is as the most unclean and low social category possible in the eyes of His listeners (Luk 10:25-37).
When the hero of His parable turned out to be a Samaritan, the Jews knew exactly what the point was. You love your neighbor. Nothing separates us from the love of God (Rom 8:38-39).
Why do we love this way? Because our Father in heaven loves this way; indiscriminately.
For he graciously gives from the rich storehouses  of His mercy to the just and unjust alike (Mat 5:44-45).

In place of the law of reciprocity which had been commonplace since the dawn of civilization (Gen 9:6; Ex 21:23-25), Jesus instituted a new law of grace and commanded us to submit to it (Mat 5:38-41). God's law of reciprocity involves us forgiving others unconditionally (Mat 6:14-15), because when we consider the magnitude of what we ourselves have been forgiven, we should be humbled into the only reply that those who condemned the woman caught in adultery were able to give: silence (John 8:7-11).

Finally, in painting the most vivid picture of what the Father is like for us in the Gospel of John,
Jesus uses the most inappropriate and outrageous terms to describe a father that were possible.
The prodigal son grievously wounds and injures his father in every way imaginable.

He asks for his inheritance in advance of his father's death.
This is the equivalent of declaring 'You're dead to me already'.

He leaves home, squanders his father's money and ends up tending swine and lusting after the food that they ate because of his poverty.

How does the father respond when his repentant son returns home? One would expect that most normal people would have disowned their son, or at the very minimum exacted a harsh punishment upon his return. Not this father, however.

He doesn’t wait for the son to knock. His compassion compels him to run. It was considered undignified for an older person to run. The father had no idea what the son would say. Running to him would surely signal endorsement of his vices.

Then the father hugs the boy, breaking another rule of social etiquette. Embracing was disgraceful for an aged person. He was welcoming a rebellious son covered with dung.
A kiss— the biblical symbol of forgiveness— follows.

The father wipes the slate clean. He welcomes the son back from the pigpen, not as slave, not as hired servant— but as a son. In fact, the next sign of welcome heralds the son as an honored guest.

The best robe swirls around him. This fine garment was a mark of high distinction. It was reserved for royal guests, not disobedient sons.

The son receives a signet ring symbolizing authority. He returns not as a stigmatized parolee but as one worthy of power and prestige.

The shoes the servants place on his feet also signal his high status. Free men wore shoes. Slaves went barefoot. This reclaimed son would return as a free person.

The servants would serve him. A fat calf was killed. Steak was reserved for special occasions. The son, who only yesterday ate with pigs, dines today on steak...

Kraybill, Donald B (2012-11-21). The Upside-Down Kingdom (pp. 169-170).

Would any of us have viewed God the Father in this light without the revelation of Jesus Christ?

I can only speak for myself and the answer is a resounding 'No'.

In considering these points, how must we as diligent servants of the Living God look at our discipleship? How does the revelation of Jesus cast the rest of Scripture?
Does it appear different than it would have without Him?

I would have to argue that it does.

Closing Thoughts

Not all of the commandments of Jesus for us are easy or convenient. In fact most of them are not.

Sacrifice is involved. Daily love and relationship with God and with our fellow man is involved; something which is not so easy when one looks around at the corrupt and violent world by which we are engulfed.

But nonetheless, we must embrace and accept the commandments of Jesus Christ as being normative for Christian living, or shrug them off as being outdated, unfashionable, inappropriate, or impractical.

Some have said 'Well those are very noble teachings, but a person just can't live that way in the real world.'

Unfortunately for those who make this argument, Christ proved them wrong by practicing what He preached, during a time period when His teachings were very unfashionable, inappropriate, and impractical. He practiced them to the point of death; even the death of the cross.

We may attempt to show the world our faith without works. But Jesus Christ showed the world His faith by His works (Jas 2:17-18).

I'll close with a final quote from Philip Yancey as I move on into the next chapter.

If I use a magnifying glass to examine a fine painting, the object in the center of the glass stays crisp and clear, while around the edges the view grows increasingly distorted.
For me, Jesus has become the focal point. When I speculate about such imponderables as the problem of pain or providence versus free will, everything becomes fuzzy.
But if I look at Jesus Himself, at how He treated people in pain, at His calls to free and diligent action, clarity is restored...