Jesus Is Not Just Another Good Man

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

August 27, 2017

Matthew 16:13-22

Jesus Is Not Just Another Good Man

In the name of the Father

and of the ☩ Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen!

Children saving the world from evil is a common idea in books and films these days, but I suppose in 1963 it wasn’t. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle Iin Time is about children saving the world. They travel through space and time, fight an evil brain, and save the world from evil.

It’s mostly make-believe, but the Madame L’Engle identified herself as a Christian. She wanted her writing for children to indoctrinate them into a certain way of understanding Christ. So cut to about the middle of the book and you get this dialogue between the characters explaining how there is a cosmic battle between good and evil, light and darkness, and how people on our planet have been fighting against the darkness. Quoting the Gospel of St. John, a sort-of angelic fairy godmother called Mrs. Whatsit explains to the kids that Jesus is one of these fighters:

“And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”

“Jesus!” Charles Wallace said. “Why of course, Jesus!”

“Of course!” Mrs. Whatsit said. “Go on, Charles, love. There were others. All your great artists. They’ve been lights for us to see by.”

“Leonardo da Vinci?” Calvin suggested tentatively. “And Michelangelo?”

“And Shakespeare,” Charles Wallace called out, “And Bach! And Pasteur and Madame Curie and Einstein!” . . .

“And Schweitzer and Gandhi and Buddha and Beethoven and Rembrandt and St. Francis . . . Euclid . . . And Copernicus.”

(A Wrinkle in Time, Bantam Doubleday Dell, Yearling Edition, April 1973, page 89)

Who is Jesus? According to the author of A Wrinkle in Time Jesus is a good light fighting the darkness, just like Leonardo da Vinci and Gandhi and Buddha and Madame Curie and Einstein. Artists and philosophers and scientists who were—giving them the benefit of the doubt—trying to make the world a better place. Jesus is a nice guy who teaches us to be nice. And if you’re already nice, how to be nicer.

We could make-believe that if Madeleine L’Engle were to travel back in time to the moment Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say I am?” I have no idea what she would have said. But in her writing, this notion that Jesus was some kind of Yoda or Mr. Spock comes through loud and clear.

Who is Jesus?

He is not just another good man, another artist, another philosopher, another scientist, another prophet.

He stands alone because He is

the Christ, the Son of the living God.

MATTHEW 16:16 NIV

Christ means that He is the anointed Savior, sent by His Father to save spiritually dead sinners by living and dying for them.

He was sent by His Father into the world at Bethlehem, He was anointed by the Holy Spirit at the River Jordan, and He was put to death for our sin upon the cross of Calvary. Indeed it’s worth noting that although at this point Jesus had done many miracles in the presence of His disciples, He was now going to clearly lay out why God was among them. Just after this dialogue between Jesus and His disciples, Matthew reported that for the first time,

Jesus began to explain to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

MATTHEW 16:21 NIV

Jesus is the Light that shines in the darkness, but He doesn’t save us by inspiring us to be good or creative or charitable. He rescues us by being punished for our evil and the destruction our evil causes. By means of His cross and baptism He inspires, breathes, into us His completed promise that our sins are forgiven.

This is what He means when He promised Peter that the Christian Church would be built on these words that Peter had been given to speak. Because of Jesus, heaven is opened to you and He brings you into His heaven. Heaven is where Jesus is, and He is already with you and with His Church.

If Jesus was just another good man, you would just be another bad person. Happily Jesus is not another Einstein or Shakespeare or Albert Schweitzer.

Children will not save the world.

Science will not save the world.

Art and literature and music will not save the world.

Humanitarianism will not save the world.

But Jesus does save you, because He is God in the flesh, who died and rose, for you.

For even the Son of Man

did not come to be served,

but to serve,

and to give His life

as a ransom for many.

Mark 10:45