Jesus IS of Man

“…And He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own…”

This is a line in a song I have heard my whole life. You may have heard it in church, or in the multiple renditions it has been through over time. I’m sure by now it has made it into a Carrie Underwood performance somewhere.

The name of this blog is “Untrained Christian.” I will explain that more in depth at another time. Although I claim to be “untrained,” I have always known Christ is truth. If I were to be completely honest, however, I have never seen Christ as someone who would actually want to walk with me or talk with me. Sure in nostalgic song it sounds awesome and like literal heaven, but would He really want to come down to earth to walk with me? Talk with me? There are so many other people on this planet! We are adding and losing people at an alarming rate every day too. What makes it such a realistic expectation for me (one tiny person in a huge sea of people) to walk and talk with the creator of all things?

Are you ready for the truth? The life changing piece of information that brings with it the answer for everything? Well here you go: He has already been here…and while he was here, he actually was walking and talking with us…in fact, he was here in such an intimate way as to call himself human. What would the creator of ALL THINGS be doing walking around on earth with a bunch of sinful people who have a horrible track record for listening? That’s our truth though. God’s son was here! His feet walked on the earth. He shed skin cells here that turned into dust just like the rest of us. Heck, maybe he even got hair in someone’s soup. Yes, I am proposing that God’s son’s hair occasionally fell out. I imagine he broke fingernails, got bit by a bug once or twice, and stubbed his toe on a table leg (I am guessing he didn’t swear when that happened though?). It’s possible he snored and drooled or twitched in his sleep.

Throughout my many years of believing in God and knowing His son as the savior of the world, I recently realized I had never seen Jesus as He was. In childhood, we learn about the baby Jesus who can’t so much as feed himself. There are samplings of stories between infancy and adulthood, but then the focus turns suddenly toward His death at the ripe old age of 33. As a young child, 33 sounds old. It doesn’t sound old when you’ve already passed that age, but as a child a 33 year-old man could be your last art teacher. I don’t know about you, but my art teacher was cool – Mr. Wilson. Even with as awesome as Mr. Wilson was though, I never saw him as someone who would want to walk and talk with me. He was someone who walked and talked with other teachers. He did adult things that were not applicable to my life perspective at that time. Long story short, whether it was a teacher or our savior, a 33 year-old just seemed out of reach as a real friend who I would hang out with.

Today, at 35 years of age, I had my first ever experience of understanding just how real Jesus was. It wasn’t one of those moments where you accept truth from what you read because you just believe it. It was one of those moments where something I had been told forever actually came to life. Jesus was one of us. In fact, there was a time when Jesus knew he was going to die, and in his humanness he was kind of hoping for that last minute ending where the hero swoops in and saves the day.

Jesus Prays in Gethsemane

³⁶ Then Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and he said, “Sit here while I go over there to pray.” ³⁷ He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed. ³⁸ He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

³⁹ He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”  (Matthew 26:36-39)

Now that is a human right there! Overwhelmed, crushed with grief, desiring companionship in his time of unstableness? He prayed a prayer so many of us have prayed in one way or another. “If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me.” What?!?! It sounds like, although willing, Jesus was really not looking forward to saving the sins of the world because he knew it was going to be painful…and not just physically. It sounds like he was a little scared, possibly questioning why it had to be him? Yes, this is where that untrained part of me comes in. I don’t know biblically where that is supposed to put my perspective. In my opinion, the bible is meant to guide us in different ways at different times. As of today, what I get out of that is that Jesus was just as real as you and me. He had uncertainties, worries, fears. What a relief! We are such a messed up world that even the perfect Son of God had reason to stop for a minute, look around, and say, “are you sure you want me to do this?”

Jesus was strong. He was stronger than any of us would have been. There have been many, might I say too many, people who have given their lives for others. Jesus’ death was the most meaningful of all sacrifices though. Because Jesus didn’t back down, death lost. God did not send his son to come to the world to walk around and shed some skin cells. Jesus came to save the world! What a huge job. I am sure Jesus wasn’t working with a clear timeline, strategies, objectives, and some nice charts to tell him when he was getting close to fulfilling his goals. He did it though! By the grace of God we are saved!

In the end, Jesus IS. He was, He is, and He is to come.

Jesus IS – I: Is; S: Salvation.

When you see the tag line in this blog say day-after-day that Jesus IS, remember that rooted in everything we are saved from in this world, Jesus Is Salvation of man; He was man.

“…And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known…”