The Boldness of Christ

The Boldness of Christ

"The high priest said to him, "I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the
Christ,the Son of God."

"Yes, it is as you say," Jesus replied. "But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of
Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."

Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, "He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any
more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy."

Mathew 26:63-65
When Jesus said He is the "way, truth and life" (John 14:6) and that no one
comes to God except through him, he was consciously setting off a relentless
worldwide battle.

Although Jesus, who was also called the Prince of Peace, said He came to the
world so that we might have life, and when leaving this world to meet the Father
He has given his followers His peace (John 14:27), He has also made it clear in
Matthew 10:35-37 that, in order to actually there be peace and life in the world,
it was necessary first that a distinction between the children of God and the
children of the world was done:

“For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her
mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law a man's enemies will be
the members of his own household.'

"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me;
anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

Obviously Jesus was not here allowing His followers to declare a holy war
against the infidels, or to set about any kind of persecution of their opponents.
He said only that this distinction would happen naturally, through the freedom of
choice of each man, because whoever does not take his cross and follow Him is
not worthy of Him. (Matthew 10:38).

How is it possible however, in a world with such a cultural diversity, that one
single religion can become so absolutely hegemonic among so many all others?
If it is difficult to conceive of this hegemony within a single nation, how to expect
that people with histories and cultures as essentially different from the history
and culture of the Jewish people would be willing to recognize Christ as the one
true Messiah, the Savior of the world? How to accept the fact that God has
singled a historically insignificant nation, born from long struggles against the
enemy nations around her, out of so many greater nations of her time, to be the
cradle of the spiritual redemption of the world?

The idea of facing a single valid choice can be daunting and unsettling for most
people in our time, raised in a culture which main feature is the multiplicity of
choices. However, God revealed himself to mankind only once, through Israel,
and that is why Christianity is the only true expression of this revelation.
Christianity is the first and only true spiritual teaching, revealed by God to the
world. God spoke to the world through men, who wrote down His redemptive
message under the inspiration of His Spirit, and not inspired by any
philosophical ideas or by any spiritual beings, as happened with the world's
religions.

There are two kinds of faith: the unstable, sterile and subjective human faith,
and the genuine faith that produces conversion of life and salvation, which is
freely given by God to those who sincerely seek Him. This true faith is available
to all who humble themselves before God, acknowledging His sovereignty and
perfect will, and their total dependence on Him:

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you
up in due time.” (1 Peter 5:6)

Christianity has accomplished, over the centuries, the wondrous feat of

becoming a universal religion, professed not only in Western countries, but in
many countries of the East as well. Many would quickly attribute this hegemony
initially to the political imposing of Christianity as the official religion of the
Roman Empire by Constantine and, later, by the Roman Catholic Church, at the
height of its power. Although this is partly true, and unarguably many
"conversions" to Christianity were due to mere political reasons (as in the case
of Constantine himself), or to social motives, as still happens today, it is also
undeniable that Jesus’ Gospel has produced, since the dawn of Christianity,
many significant conversions, motivated by a genuine expression of faith.

Most people are typically familiar only with the dark ages of the Roman Catholic
Church, but not with the benefits bequeathed by Christianity to Western
civilization. Thomas E. Woods, who holds a bachelor’s degree in history from
Harvard and his master’s, M. Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University,
retrieves this memory in his How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization
(Regnery, 2005). Woods reminds us that Christianity was responsible not only
for most of the ethical foundations that shaped Western civilization, but also for
the first steps of science and of the academic teaching institutions, for the
fundamental principles of law and for the first charitable institutions. The merit of
the hegemony achieved by Christianity throughout history however, should not
be credited to the efforts of the Catholic Church, whose methods were often
questionable, but to the power of truth inherent in the Christian doctrine.

Most people discuss religion the same way they talk about philosophy; that is,
based only on superficial knowledge. Few people take the time to deepen their
knowledge of the many religions of the world and of the history of Christianity.
The spiritual ignorance of man leads him to instinctively reject the idea of the
Christian hegemony. Regardless of the ideological conflict caused by the
Christian Gospel, which points out the natural human tendencies, produced by
self-centeredness and hedonism as forces in outright opposition to spiritual
salvation, man has always rejected as absurd the notion of the existence of an
absolute truth. Thus, the Christian exclusivity, intrinsic to his own doctrine, is
always regarded with distaste by the followers of other religions and also by
those who claim not to profess any religion.

However, this antipathy is largely misplaced, since at no time a true Christian or

Christian church claims to be himself the "bearer of truth", but that the gospel of
Christ and all the Scriptures are the expression of the absolute truth concerning
the spiritual life, as revealed by God to his prophets. Understanding this truth is
an ongoing enlightenment process that every Christian undertakes in their
spiritual walk. On announcing the Gospel, the Christian is not being narrow-
minded, arrogant, intolerant, he is only accomplishing the so-called "great
commission" given by Christ to His disciples, as written in the Gospels of
Matthew (28:19), Luke (24:47) and Mark (16:15): "Therefore go and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit." What might be questionable, therefore, is the way this
evangelistic mission is carried out, but not evangelism itself.

Furthermore, the natural man, still in his spiritual immaturity, is unable to grasp
the fullness of the nature of the biblical God, which from a humanistic and
materialistic worldview appears to him like an unjust, arrogant, inconsistent,
discriminatory and cruel God. Anyway, how could a God who claims to love the
world to destroy his own creation, condemning people to eternal suffering and
deny salvation to those who have not heard of Christ? Even the mere idea of a
personal God sounds narrow-minded for most educated individuals, who prefer
the complex notion of God as present in Eastern religions; as an abstract Being,
absolutely inaccessible to human reason, a kind of energy that permeates all
the creation.

According to those religions, Christ was just one of the many high spiritual
masters who came to the world to teach men one single and same path of
spiritual fulfillment. Well, this is absolutely not true. The path Jesus pointed out
to men is essentially different from all other spiritual paths taught by the spiritual
mentors of the religions of the world. Actually, Jesus did not teach a spiritual
path, but he said He was himself the path and that no man could reach God
unless he was led by Him (John 14:6). This means that even if one of the great
spiritual masters had taught exactly the same teachings of Jesus, yet these
teachings could not save a single one of his disciples. Only Jesus had the
power not only to teach, to heal and to set the people free from the bondage of
evil; but above all, the power to forgive sins and to save the broken, because
only He is the Savior.

The human-centeredness and pride prevent those who abhor the one true God,
revealed to man through Israel, of recognizing that it is because of the hardness
of their heart that they have become unable of understand the nature of God
and his truth, revealed to man through the Scriptures. The same human pride,
which prevented the Jews from recognizing Christ as the so long awaited
Messiah, has always been, after sin, the greatest barrier between man and
God. As Paul said:

"And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god
of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the
light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." 2 Corinthians
4:3-4

Most people see Christianity through the facades of their churches, and judge it
by what they see behind them. However, the thousands of existing Christian
denominations are not the true expression of Christianity. The true Church of
Christ on Earth is formed by his approved disciples, which are scattered amid
those denominations, in the midst of false Christians. Even if a particular church
were composed only of authentic Disciples of Christ, it would not be perfect. It
would still have many flaws, for the simple fact that it would still be composed of
human beings. The Christian is not sanctified in a single day. Just like the
understanding of the message of God in Scripture, which is a continual learning,
thus preventing any particular Christian denomination of claiming to have
reached the full understanding of Truth; the sanctification of every Christian is
also an ongoing process, which will only be completed in the spiritual world,
when they can reach the full stature of Christ.

Christianity is an entirely different path in its essence, from the other spiritual
paths shown by the religions of the world. There are three basic concepts in
Christianity, among others, which make it a doctrine absolutely unique and
distinct from all other spiritual doctrines: the principle of the spiritual fall of man,
the principle of sin and the principle of one single life for every individual. These
principles essentially contradict the teachings of other religions, that mankind is
not irreparably doomed to spiritual death because of sin, but only separated
from the Unity or from the Dao, to which they must return. Christianity also
states, contrarily to the other doctrines, that every man lives a single life, after
which comes the judgment of his works and his resurrection, and not an
indeterminate cycle of existences, along which he would eventually evolve to
perfection.

Christ says that only who believes in Him can be saved. This means that we
can not, by our own means, to achieve our spiritual fulfillment, but only by God's
grace through the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus, we receive salvation and take
hold of the eternal life that only Him can give. This is a completely strange
concept to all other religions, who claim that the individual must build, through
his works and the devotion to their gods, the path of his own spiritual freedom. It
is clear therefore that the common idea that all paths lead to God is absurd.
Either is Christ who reconciles man with the Creator or are the world's religions
that lead man to God. This is a realization that brings in a high existential,
cultural and even political stress, and therefore the human ideology that rules
the world prefers to ignore it, insisting on the isonomy of all religious creeds.

This ecumenical, universalistic and conciliatory attitude however, will not stand
for long. Christ demands of every man to decide on a position with respect to
their spiritual life. There are no uncompromising positions, the choice is clear:
with or against Christ, as He said: "He who is not with me is against me, and he
who does not gather with me scatters." (Matthew 12:30). To believe that Jesus
is the only way to God means believing in the whole Bible. One cannot believe
some things in it that we like but not in others, which we dislike. One cannot
mutilate the Gospel as do many spiritual and ecumenical doctrines. Either we
believe God is powerful enough to preserve the integrity of his message
throughout the centuries, in spite of human interference, or we become atheists,
agnostics or even worse, take false spiritual paths or still, as many do, make up
our own God and our own customized religion.

The Kingdom of God has already come to the world and in the end times the
angel of the Lord will harvest the fields and set apart the weeds and the wheat.
The citizens of the Kingdom of God will reign with Christ, but the citizens of the
world will perish by their own choice, with the Prince of this world.