Wanted: Christians who Look Like Jesus

It’s not very often that you can remember exactly where you were and what you were doing at a certain time on a certain day several years ago. But I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 20, 1985.

I was standing on the tarmac of the Niagara Falls Air Force Base watching the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels flight demonstration team. It was a blistering hot summer day and some of the thousands of people who were at the air show had taken shelter in the shade under the wings of the many aircraft that were on static display.

But not me. I was as close to the action as I could get. With a 200 mm. lens hanging from the front of my Canon A-1, I followed the blue and yellow jets through their paces, eating up lots of film along the way.

One maneuver, known as the blivet, called for the lead and opposing solos to make a high speed inverted pass. The two A-4 Skyhawk jets approached each other at a closing speed of 800 knots, flying upside down just 100 feet off the ground. They flashed past each other, then pulled negative G’s into a high outside loop, over the top and into a 45 degree dive, where they would pass each other again.

Except that they didn’t pass each other. They collided. I watched it all in horrified fascination through the viewfinder of my camera. The nose of one jet sliced through the tail of the other, cutting it off cleanly. The pilot of the crippled airplane immediately ejected, and his parachute opened safely. His tailless aircraft flipped over onto its back and tumbled to the ground like a huge blue leaf, impacting in a ball of orange flame.

Meanwhile, the other jet continued a slow shallow dive toward the ground. The landing gear had been jarred down by the impact. The arrester hook dangled uselessly at the tail. The pilot was already dead at the controls. He had been killed instantly by the midair collision with the other plane. His jet slammed into the ground. Another ball of fire.

It all took just a few seconds, but I will never forget what I saw on that day for as long as I live. The blinding pink flash as the jets collided; the two ugly columns of black smoke hanging over the airfield in the aftermath; the anguish in our hearts as we realized that one of America’s finest had given up his life merely to entertain us.

The indelible quality of that memory comes close to what the Apostle John felt when he thought about Jesus. For two and a half short years he walked side by side with the Son of God. He heard Jesus speak the greatest words ever spoken. He saw him do thing that no one had ever done. Through eyes blurred with tears, he watched him hang on a cross and die. And with trembling hands, he touched the nailprints of his risen Lord. Indelible memories of the time when John was young.

But now he was an old man. He was the last of them, that intrepid band of apostles who walked with Jesus. All the others were dead. Only John was left. They called him, simply, the Elder.

The Book of 1 John is really a letter; a letter he wrote to young Christians. It was written somewhere between the years 85 and 95 AD - sixty years after he had been with Jesus. But the memories burned as brightly as ever. You can tell that as you read the first few verses of this letter…

1 John 1:1-4 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.

Every four years, we celebrate the Olympic games. In 1996, they will be held in Atlanta, Georgia. In the days leading up to the Olympics, one of the traditions has been to light the Olympic torch at Mount Olympus in Greece, and then carry that flame to the site of the Olympic games. Runners will carry the torch along the way, perhaps for a mile, and then pass it to another, who will carry it further. It is a great honor to be selected to carry the torch.

What we are seeing in 1 John 1:1-4 is the passing of the torch. We’re seeing the good news of Jesus Christ crossing a generation gap, from first generation to second generation. John was the last of the men who had actually walked with Jesus, and seen Jesus, and talked with Jesus. From here on in, Christians were going to be people who got the story by word of mouth. They were going to learn about Jesus from someone else. And that raises a question.

Have you ever played that party game where one person starts a story going round the circle, and each person whispers the story in the ear of the next person, and so on? By the time the story goes completely around the circle, you find that it has changed a lot along the way. Important details are left out. New facts are added. In some cases, the story you end up with barely resembles the original.

Could that not have happened with Christianity? Indeed, the critics of Christianity say that that is precisely what has happened: the story has changed along the way. Whether by willful design, wishful thinking, or mere ignorance, Christians down through the ages have turned Jesus into somebody he never was. He has become a legend. Some skeptics doubt that such a man named Jesus ever even existed.

But then you go back to 1 John, which was written by a man who actually knew Jesus personally, and he says “Wait a minute. I was there. I saw him do those things with my own eyes. I heard him say those things with my own ears. I am an eyewitness to these things. And that is why I am writing about them to you. So that there can be no question about whether it really happened or not. It did happen! I saw it. Period. Case closed.”

John says that with the same conviction that I have when I tell you that the Blue Angels crashed in 1985. It’s the conviction that comes from being there.

But John has a rather humble admission to make in v.1. He says “It didn’t all begin with me. Even though it might seem like it, we disciples really weren’t in on the ground floor, so to speak. When Jesus came here to earth, that wasn’t the start of it all.”

When you talk about Jesus, you’re talking about someone who has been around from the very beginning. The beginning of time. We’re talking pre-Genesis. Pre-history. Pre-creation. Pre-human race. Pre-life on earth. Pre-universe. Pre-Big Bang. Pre-time. Pre-everything.

Flip back to the Gospel of John, chapter 1. There are a lot of similarities between John 1 and 1 John 1. Not surprising since they were written by the same guy about the same event.

John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

When John was talking about the Word, he was talking about a concept that meant different things to different people. To the Jews, the Word signified God’s personal authority. In the OT, the Word of God was whenever God spoke in power and authority to accomplish His purpose. For example, in Genesis 1 you have the account of creation. Over and over you read “And God said…And God said…And God said…”

God’s Word is the communication of His will. So God’s word is the perfect expression of his character. It communicates to us all that he is and all that he want to do. The personality of God is tied up in his Word. So when you talk about the Word, you’re really talking about God. That’s how the Jews understood it.

But the Greeks were different. To them, the word, or the “logos”, was not so much a person as a principle. It was the organizing, unifying principle behind the universe. When men like Pythagoras studied math, or Hippocrates practiced medicine, or Plato wrote philosophy, they were tapping into the logos, the truth about how the universe worked. They thought of the word as wisdom, as truth, as understanding. It was what life itself was made of. It was the energizing power behind everything.

You’ve all seen the movie Star Wars. Luke Skywalker becomes a Jedi Knight by tapping into something called the Force. His mentor Obi wan Kenobe says to him “Feel the Force, Luke. Use the Force.” That’s kind of what the Greeks thought of as the “logos”, the Word.

Now John says to the Jews and to the Greeks, “Hey. I’ve got good news for you. You’re both right. You Greeks are right when you say that the Word is the force behind everything; the “logos” is the power through which everything is made. And you Jews are right when you say that that force is actually a person. It is God Himself. ”

“But look at what John says in v.14. “Here’s something that you haven’t considered. This’ll really blow the doors off you!”

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The Word became a man; a living, breathing, flesh and blood human being. He lived here among us, and we have seen him. He came from God the Father. He came as God the Son. We beheld his glory. And the name of that man is Jesus Christ.

Now go back to 1 John 1. You understand now what John is saying there? He is saying that the most extraordinary, unbelievable thing in all of human history has happened. We have been visited by God, the Author of the Universe, the Giver of Life, the Force behind everything that exists. He came here.

When Billy Graham first began to preach at Youth for Christ rallies, ‘way back in the Forties, it was by no means certain that he would become as world famous as he is today. In fact there was another evangelist with YFC at the time named Charles Templeton who many people thought was a better preacher than Billy Graham.

Templeton was intellectual and well-read, an accomplished public speaker who preached powerful sermons and introduced many people to Christ. But then Templeton went to Princeton Seminary, a place where the Bible was not honored and the Gospel not believed. In that climate of skepticism, Templeton abandoned his faith. He turned his back on Christ and became an agnostic - a skeptic - a critic of Christianity where once he had been its champion.

He was still an accomplished speaker, and he went on to become a political commentator in his native Canada; sort of a northern version of William F. Buckley.

Meanwhile in England, another equally brilliant man was undergoing a reverse transformation. Malcolm Muggeridge was a popular commentator in the British press, noted for his acid wit and caustic satire; a modern-day H.L. Mencken - a professional fault-finder and doom-sayer. One of Muggeridge’s favorite targets was the church and Christians.

But then Malcolm Muggeridge began to seriously consider the claims of Jesus Christ and his life was totally transformed. He became a follower of Christ. He began to write in defense of Christianity with all the literary skill at his command.

I tell you all of that to say this: About twenty years ago, I had the privilege of attending a debate, in the city of Toronto, between these two great men - Malcolm Muggeridge and Charles Templeton - on the subject of Christianity. What an experience to watch a converted cynic defending the Gospel against a prodigal preacher who was attacking it!

There was one moment in that debate which is etched on my memory. Templeton ridiculed the idea that a God who was supposedly infinite could ever come in contact with finite beings like us. It was a logical lunacy; a philosophical impossibility.

But Malcolm Muggeridge replied “That is precisely the purpose of the Incarnation. That is why God became a man himself, so that infinite God could reach out and touch finite man.”

And that is the essence of the Gospel. But that is a wild story - so wild, John says, that I wouldn’t have believed it myself except for the fact that I saw it with my own eyes. Jesus was like nobody else who ever lived. And, John says, I want you to know him as I did.

But how is that possible? How is it possible for a second, or third, or fourth generation Christian to know Jesus in the way that John and the other disciples knew him? We cannot possibly know him through our senses as John did. We will never be able to say “I heard, I saw with my eyes, I handled, I touched.”

But we can know him through that sixth sense that we all have - the spiritual sense of faith. Because Jesus is still alive. He is not present here on earth in a physical body as he once was, but he is present nonetheless. And you can know him by faith.

In fact, when Jesus was here physically, he said that knowing him by faith is actually preferable to knowing him in a physical, sensory way. Remember when Thomas, the skeptic, refused to believe the other disciples’ report that Jesus was alive? He said, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side.”

A week later, Jesus came to his disciples and invited Thomas to do just that, at which point, Thomas was convinced. But Jesus said to him “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Christianity is unlike any other religion. It is not a catechism to be memorized. It is not a system of doctrines to digest. It is not a set of rules to try to live by.

Christianity is simply a Person to be known. That person is Jesus. And unless you know him, you are not a Christian. You may know all about Jesus. You may even understand much about his teaching, and know the details of his life. But unless you know him personally, by faith, you are not one of his followers.

This is what old John the Elder is talking about here in his letter to these young Christians. He’s talking about knowing Jesus. He’s talking about having fellowship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ - a fellowship that brings with it deep joy.

John’s first letter is all about knowing Jesus, and the changes that that will make to your life. In fact, John says “If there are no changes happening in your life; then it must be because you haven’t really met Jesus.”

When we talk about the changes that God makes in the life of a Christian, a lot of people get threatened. We don’t necessarily want God to change us, do we? We’re pretty comfortable with the status quo. We’re afraid that knowing Jesus and following Jesus is going to turn us into some kind of religious freak.

But is that what happens? Of course not. The more you get to know Jesus, the more you become like Jesus. And Jesus was the most together person who ever lived on this planet.

We’ve got to get rid of our stereotypes about him. Let’s admit it. We picture Jesus as being kind of a wimpy looking character with long hair and a sappy expression on his face. A fragile kind of guy who was sort of spacey, and never really had any fun. In our mind’s eye, we see all these artists’ renditions of him with a halo around his head.

But I’ll tell you, Jesus was the most robust, refreshing character who ever lived. People wanted to be around him. They wanted him to be at their parties. The sinners loved him to pieces, not because he was like them - we’re talking about the holy Son of God here - but because he made them understand that they could be like him. He offered them forgiveness, and love, and affirmation. and hope.

As a matter of fact, the only people who didn’t like Jesus were the super-religious dudes. Jesus made them squirm, because he exposed them for the hypocrites they really were.

So we’ve got to recapture the Biblical picture of Jesus, and, over the next few weeks as we study the book of 1 John together, that’s what we’ll try to do. With God’s help, we’ll try to discover Jesus as he really is, so that we can learn to be like him, too.

You’ve all seen the ads for the U.S. Marine Corps. The Marines are looking for a few good men. Well, Jesus is looking for a few good men and women to follow Him and get to know Him. Because once you start to get to know him, you’ll start to look like him. And Lord knows, this world needs Christians who look like Jesus.

The world has seen enough of Christians who look like movie stars, and Christians who look like financial tycoons, and Christians who are trying desperately to look like everybody else out there. What the world needs today is to see Christians who look like Jesus. Because they’re the only Christians who are ever going to make a difference. Do you want to be somebody who makes a difference? I do.