Adapted from Leonard Griffith and J. Sidlow Baxter
by Bill Consiglio
e go to the gospels to find the real Jesus. We do not go to the
scholars, the academicians, the intellectuals; especially those who come to the
gospels without the Spirit of Christ having been born in their hearts. For to
come to the gospels without the Holy Spirit is like making bread without yeast;
it is like marrying without love; it is entering a darkened room without any
source of light. Look at the real Jesus of the gospels. Look with your heart of
faith and your experience of Jesus as he has touched your own life. Let us look
with the eyes of his Spirit. By all means, let us bring scholarship and learning
to our search for the real Jesus, but not the learning and scholarship unaided
by the light of the Spirit of God. ho do we see when we come to
the gospels in faith? We see Jesus engaged in four basic ministries which reveal an extra-ordinary, supernatural and divine Person.
e can almost imagine the
evolution which the disciples experienced as they grew in their relationship to
Jesus. For there is the secret of knowing the real Jesus. It is the same for us
as it was for them. Our growth in closeness and intimacy to him comes from
spending much time with him; listening, looking and watching him, receiving and
giving to him. When we speak to him and he to us, this alone brings his love and
the truth of who he really is into the light. And there's the difference between
the secular scholar's approach to Jesus and the man of faith. Ask the secular
scholar to just once, get upon his knees and speak to Jesus, just once, and his
scholarly work will become a window to truth and light! Ask him to suspend his
studies of Jesus and spend 15 minutes in prayer to Him, and all becomes new. His
disciples went through many changes in their view of Jesus. 
t first they may have said that God sent Jesus
, but that explanation did not cover the facts. Then they said,
God is with him . That went deeper, yet as their experience
of him progressed, even that seemed inadequate. Finally we catch the reverent
accents of a new conviction God came in him . He not only
teaches the truth about God ; he is the truth about God, God made visible and
brought within human experience. These days it has become fashionable to revise
our image of God. According to some religious scholars, modern astronomy and
space travel compel us to reject the image of God as a supreme, supernatural
Being who exists in outer space, separate and distinct from the world which he
has made. Yet even this little coterie of avant-garde theologians insist that,
wherever God may be found, he has still revealed himself in Jesus. If love be
the ultimate meaning of the universe, then Christ, who gave himself perfectly in
love, is still the authentic and perfect image of God.
he
Russian novelist Turgenev described how once there came to him in a kind of
vision a swift and wonderful insight into the nature of Jesus. He saw himself a
youth, almost a boy, in a low-pitched wooden church. The slim wax candles
gleamed, spots of red, before the old pictures of the saints. There stood before
him many people, all fair-haired peasant heads. From time to time they began
swaying, falling, rising again, like the ripe ears of wheat when the wind in
summer passes over them. All at once a man came up from behind and stood beside
the Russian boy. He did not turn around, but he felt certain that the man was
Christ. Emotion, curiosity, and awe over-mastered him. Finally he made an effort
and looked at his neighbour. A face like everyone's, a face like all men's
faces. What sort of Christ is this?'' he thought, "such an ordinary, ordinary
man. It cannot be.'' 
ut it can be, and it is. The Christ
who makes himself known through Sacrament and Scripture, who encounters us in
the fellowship of the Church and in the secret place of prayer, the Christ who
still represents to us the image of the eternal God, is not some remote,
supernatural Deity shrouded in the mystery of heaven. He is the same Jesus, the
same ordinary, ordinary man who ate the bread and drank the cup of our human
experience here upon earth. He is God in our idiom, a God whom we can
understand, because he understands us and comes close beside us in all the
common ways of life, so that we can reach out and touch him and know him as our
Friend.
econdly, we see the Jesus of the Gospels as
the man of infinite love and compassion . There is no coherent
picture of Jesus in the New Testament. Each of the Gospel writers, like an
artist, interprets Christ in his own way, painting, as it were, a portrait. Each
brings into bold relief the features of this Divine personality that seem to him
most important. Matthew puts a great deal of his own intentions and motives into
his portrait of Jesus as the Messiah long-awaited by Israel. Mark's Jesus is the
most factual and actual telling. It is the first, seemingly quickly written
factual account of the Savior. Luke is the devotional telling of Christ. It is
full of prayers and personal applications to our lives. John's Jesus is the most
mystical, allegorical, symbolic, and spiritual portrait. Yet from all the New
Testament portraits of Jesus one feature shines most prominently; it is his
compassion. Never did any man care so deeply for people, identify himself with
them so closely and involve himself so completely in their lives. We read that
when he saw the multitude "he had compassion on them''. A crowd invariably
produced that effect upon Jesus. When he looked at people's faces, sometimes
emotionless, hard and even hostile, his X-ray vision probed deeply into the
secret agonies and anxieties of their souls; his great, loving heart went out to
them in sympathy and compassion. His love for others is God's love for all men
and women. 
is miracles expressed this compassion. At the very
outset of his ministry he rejected the temptation to be a mere miracle-monger.
He who possessed the power of God deliberately avoided making displays of
supernatural power ; he did so because he knew that through they might dazzle
people, miracles would not convince people, not convert them, not bring them
into the Kingdom of God. Yet, because he possessed the power of God, he made
that power the instrument of his compassion. It was only right that, having come
to make men whole, he should heal their sick bodies as well as their sick souls
; that, having offered the Bread of life for their spiritual hunger, he should
satisfy their physical hunger as well ; and that, having come to save men from
evil, he should save them from disease and death and all the manifestations of
evil's power. hatever Jesus
did for people-whether to restore their sight or cleanse them from leprosy or
bring their dead back to life-he did because he loved them and had compassion on
them. One of the most impressive statues of Christ ever sculptured is that by
Thorvaldsen, which stands today behind the altar of the Protestant Cathedral in
Copenhagen, Denmark. He worked on it for many months, and at last surveyed the
finished product with satisfaction-a Christ with strong arms outstretched,
raised high in gesturing command, and the fine shaped head thrown back in
triumph. "This is he,'' the artist said, the powerful, majestic Christ.''
Thorvaldsen closed the door of his studio for several days so that the clay
might set. When he returned and opened the door, he stared in horror and
disbelief. There had been a storm. Dampness had invaded the studio and altered
the statue. No longer were the arms outstretched ; now they fell low. The
moisture had caused the once-proud head to bend. The great physique had drooped.
Gone was the triumph of Thorvaldsen's Christ ; he looked defeated now. For a
long time the artist had no heart for work, but finally he went with a friend to
his studio again to see if somehow he might repair the damage and recapture the
likeness of the strong Man of Galilee. They stopped and gazed in awe at the
statue. Bathed in light, the lowered arms no longer depicted defeat; instead
they reached out with the compassion of God, sympathetic arms encircling the
sorrowing and needy. The head no longer seemed to droop ; rather it bowed low
with contrite countenance as if to say, "I understand your travail.'' horvaldsen knew that what had
happened was surely an act of God. Some greater Power had breathed meaning into
the artist's ruined statue, so that it was no longer a majestic Christ or a
defeated Christ, but the Christ of the Gospels. This was the compassionate
Savior, the same Jesus who stretched out hands of pity to sorrowing, suffering
humanity, the same Jesus who, because his living presence fills the world, comes
now to the sick as Healer, to the bereaved as Comforter, to the hard-pressed as
Helper, to the lonely as Companion and Friend . 
hirdly, we see the Jesus of the
Gospels as the man who brought God's forgiveness to the sinful. Of
course, he first made them conscious of their sin. He Judged them sometimes by
his words, as when he called the Pharisees mausoleums, beautifully painted on
the outside, but inside full of dead men's bones ; sometimes by his deeds, as
when Peter, awed by the miraculous draught of fishes, cried out, "Depart from
me, for l am a sinful man, O Lord'' ; sometimcs by his very look, as when his
eyes bored into the soul of that cowardly disciple who denied him in the
courtyard of Caiaphas ; but more often by what he was, by the purity and
perfection of his personality which shone like a searchlight on the moral
blemishes of all who came near him. aving judged men, howerer, having
brought them to their knees in repentance, Jesus then did for them what only God
could do, he forgave their sins. He forgave them radically. He did not merely
cleanse and recondition them but transformed them from sons of Adam into sons of
God, buried their sins, and then resurrected them as sons of God. To a man
paralysed by guilt he said, "My son, your sins are forgiven.'' To a woman
accussed of adultery he said, "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no mere.''
To a dishonest tax collector he said, "Today is salvation come to this bouse."'
To a dying criminal he said even from the agony of his cross, "Today thou shalt
be with me in paradise.'' 
n a prison in the Southern United
States there is an inmate who has already served twenty years of a
life-sentence. He is a commercial artist who has painted hundreds of portraits
of Jesus, all with this strikingly unique feature - they all show Jesus with a
beaming smile. His paintings have gone all over the 'world. He gives them away,
and at present there is a waiting list of nine thousand people. This man's
conversion to Christianity came after he had been in prison for seven years. One
night he fell to his knees in prayer after months of depression and the striong
desire to kill himself. He had heard the chaplain speak about the compassion of
Jesus. He said, "That night I levelled with the Lord for four solid hours of
prayer-talk. I prodded every niche and corner of my brain. I routed out
long-forgotten mistakes and misdeeds. But suddenly I found myself challenging
the Lord. I dared God to give me a chance to do something worthy. I didn't ask
him for any particular assignment. I left that up to him . . .'' The convict
goes on to say, "that night I had a dream. The details are long forgotten,
except for one brief glimpse of a robed, bearded figure who smiled kindly at me,
then turned. It was a simple dream, not a mystic vision.'' The dream filled this
convicted artist with a strong desire to paint that smile, and since then he has
gone on painting Christ smiling, and the Christian world has praised his work.
Recently this man wrote, "I don't know what's going to happen to me, but I
believe the Lord is merciful to convicts who level with him. He sure gave us a
break on Calvary. '' his
same Jesus-it is he who comes to us in the silent watches of the night ; not
some austere judge upon his throne, but the tender, smiling, forgiving man of
the Gospels. He still judges us, still makes us want to turn from our failure,
our pretence and our hypocrisy ; but if we ''level with him'' as the convict
said, if we fall to our knees in repentance, he will speak the gracious words,
"My son, your sins are forgiven'' and we shall know that they are the words of
God. 
ourth, and lastly, we see the Jesus of the Gospels as
the man who claimed men's allegiance. Never had the disciples known such
a magnetic leader. He met them mending their fishing nets by the Sea of Galilee
and said, "Follow me !'' and they dropped their nets and folllowed him. Even
when he set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem, though they lagged behind
on the road, knowing that a certain death awaited him there, yet they could not
desert him, because his irresistible leadership drew them on. This man commanded
the utmost in human loyalty. 
et anyone refuse to give it, let
him hold something back, as the rich young ruller held back his wealth, as
others made the excuse of obligations to business and family, and Jesus simply
excluded them as potential followers. When Christ claimed a man he claimed him
completely. 
o the disciples
rejoiced as they returned to Jerusalem after their Lord's ascension to heaven.
No longer would they see him but they would know his living presence, his same
powerful, magnetic leadership directing them in the campaign for' righteousness
and commanding their ultimate loyalty. we have only to read the New Testament to
be certain that their hopes were fulfilled. In obedience to their Lord, the
disciples marched through the fires of persecution and death in order to turn
the world upside down. In obedience to the living Christ, Paul and his
companions at the cost of their lives took the Gospel beyond the borders of
Israel that the Gentiles might hear it. In all history has any leader claimed
such allegiance as the invisible Christ claimed from Augustine in the garden,
from Francis in thc ruinedchapel, from Loyola, the proud soldier who laid his
sword upon an altar and prayed, "Teach me, good Lord, to serve you as you
deserve; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not heed the wounds; to
toil and not to seek rest; to labour and not to ask for any reward save that of
knowing I do your holy will.'' he great Napoleon once asked a
friend, "Can you tell me who Jesus was?'' When the friend could not answer,
Napoleon said,well, then, I will tell you. Across a chasm of hundreds of years,
Jesus Christ makes a demand which is above all others difficult to satisfy. He
asks for that which a philosopher may often seek at the hands of his friends, or
a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse : He asks for the human
heart. He will have it entirely for himself. He commands it unconditionally.''
hrist upon his throne, whose living presence fills the world, is
the same Jesus who became flesh and dwelt in Galilee and Judea long ago. All
that he was to the people then, so he can be tome and you now-Revealer of God,
Compassionate Saviour, the Forgiveness of our sins, our Lord and Master, the one
we would follow wholeheartedly. All of this he can be to us if we open our
hearts to receive him in faith, if we surrender our lives to him in loving
obedience.
O Lord Jesus, without having seenYou, we love You, and though we do not now see You, we believe in You.We praise You that when You burst the bonds of death, when You appeared to Your disciples, the same Friend, the same Companion, the same Master Whomthey knew in the days of Your flesh. You make the whole world the temple of Your living presence and every human experience a sacred meeting place with You. Grant that we who confess You Jesus as our Lord and Saviour may know the blessedness of Your friendship. Come be close to us in life. Let us feel the touch of Your Living Spirit in us and hear tbe whisper of Your voice. Be so real to us that we know also the truth of your words when You said, "Behold, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.'' For Your own name's sake we pray. Amen.
ADDENDUM ++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++
See this excellent study of the REAL JESUS
hat ia the most important implication of knowing the
real Jesus? For me Jesus is the perfect Image of God our Father. Hebrews 1:3
says, "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of
his being." He is the perfect Son of God. To know the real Jesus, we need to
understand what it is to be a son of God our Father. Sonship is the Bible's
theme from Genesis to Revelation. We are called to be sons and daughters of God.
That phrase "son of God" is a cliché among Christians. It is a neglected
biblical focus. It is spoken of lightly and easily; it has no freshness or
vitality. A platitude! We pass over it without thought and reflection. "Yes!" we
say, "we are all children of God!" But do we really know how precious it is to
be called a child of God and to have God as our Father. Galatians 3:26 says,
"You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus", and Galatians 4:7says,
"So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made
you also an heir." t would
be well if we viewed the whole biblical record as the history of God the Father
creating and restoring humanity to "sonship" with Himself. From first to last,
from Genesis to Revelation, from Creation to Second Coming, our Father God has
been engaged in loving us into sons and daughters to Himself. The fine biblical
author J. Sidlow Baxter says, "The love of God to the whole world, and the
fatherhood of God to each human being, are the crowning revelation of God in the
Bible. The biblical revelation as a whole presents first the power of God - as
seen in the Creation, the Flood, the Babel dispersion, the Exodus; next the
holiness of God - as seen especially in the Mosaic law, dealings with Israel the
ethics of the prophets; and then the love of God - exhibited through the Gospel
of Christ. Not until Jesus came as the culminating self-revelation of God was
the divine fatherhood given prominence. The wonderful truth of that divine
fatherhood is not safe for fallen man to possess without the earlier expression
of God's awesome power and holiness." 
he fatherhood of God is His basic
relationship to all of us. The fatherhood of God is the relationship that
underlies and gives meaning to all others. "Our only true philosophy of God must
make His fatherhood the ultimate relationship. God sustains four main
relationships to mankind: (1) Creator, (2) King, (3) Judge, (4) Father. Take the
fourth: God is Father. Did He not create us to love us and to be loved by us? Is
it not true to say that fatherhood (the fourth) gathers up the other three into
a larger and higher explanation of the universe? Take away that fatherhood and
the universe becomes a vast prison. The fatherhood is the basic, ultimate,
inclusive relationship in which God stands to ourselves."(J.S. Baxter, Majesty:
The God You Should Know: HERE'S LIFE PUBLISHERS, San Bernadino, CA) he main reason the Bible was written
was to explain how God is creating His own family, the sons of God. It is
amazing how few people grasp this incredible truth, yet it is so plain in the
Bible. At the beginning of the Bible is the account of the creation of Adam and
Eve. All human beings are their descendants. We are, by natural descent, their
great, extended family. Adam was, according to his natural parentage, a son of
God (Luke 3:38). Therefore, in our natural descent, we are all the children of
God. He is our Father by physical creation. ut God's purpose is far greater than
the creation of corruptible and perishable human beings. God is in the process
of creating His own spiritual children who will be incorruptible-children with
eternal life; children who have His divine nature or character. Paul refers to
this new creation in terms of "the old man," in contrast with "the new man," who
is "renewed in the spirit of [his] mind" and is "created according to God in
true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:20-24). he apostle Paul defined the new
creation as a spiritual transformation, at first a change only in a person's
nature and character, followed by a change into a literal spiritual being with
eternal life. The Bible refers to this process as salvation. The Bible refers to
those who are receiving salvation as the "sons of God" in a sense that goes
beyond our descendancy from our first two human parents. God is accomplishing a
marvelous spiritual transformation in the lives of His followers through His Son
Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit.
aul explained that "the Spirit itself
bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children,
then heirs-heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with
Him, that we may also be glorified together" (Romans 8:16, 17). Do you grasp the
enormous significance of Paul's statement? It explains why we are here, the very
reason for our existence, why we were born. It gives meaning to life itself. It
explains why God wants all human beings to come to the knowledge of the truth.
God is creating a family, His own family. We have the priceless opportunity to
be a part of that family. That family relationship-our becoming children of God
the Father-is the heart and core of God's great plan for humanity. Notice how
Paul expresses it: "In bringing many sons to glory [salvation], it was fitting
that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of
their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy
[Christ] and those who are made holy [converted human beings] are of the same
family" (Hebrews 2:10, 11, New International Version). rom the beginning of the Bible, this
is the clearly stated purpose of God. "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our
image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the
sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over
every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' So God created man in His own
image ..." (Genesis 1:26, 27). Both men and women are created to be like God.
The Bible often speaks of physical children as "sons" because that was the
custom at the time the Bible was written, and has been in many languages,
including English, over the centuries. In the Hebrew and Greek languages, in
which the Bible was written, "sons" was used to mean "descendants." When used in
this sense, the Hebrew and Greek words for "sons" refer to male and female
descendants alike. Today, we use the words mankind and brethren in a similar
sense. Both men and women are God's children. 
ow to the point of
Genesis 1:26, 27, which tells us we are made in God's image and likeness. At the
first mention of human beings in the Bible, God declares His intent to make us
like Him. But to what extent are we made like Him? God's purpose is to make us
fully like Jesus Christ! In Ephesians, Paul says in verse 13, "we all come to .
. . the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." Paul's statement in
Galatians 4:19, "My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until
Christ is formed in you," expresses the same concept in different words. Do you
grasp the significance of Paul's statement? We are to become fully and
completely like Jesus Christ. His character is to be formed in us. As Jesus is
God's Son, we will also be God's sons. The apostle John is explicit: "Behold
what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called
children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know
Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what
we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we
shall see Him as He is." (1 John 3:1-3). (Roger Foster, God's Family: The Reason
You Were Born, in The GOOD NEWS, May 1996, UCC). o understand the full impact and
vital meaning of the Father-son relationship I'd like you to grasp this
three-point outline of biblical history. I'd like you to understand that the
whole biblical record can be viewed as having these three phases:
First,
Jesus came to reveal God as "Father". God always was Father. All of the Old
Testament record is the story of a loving (yes; holy, powerful, severe,
disciplining) Father. Behind all the OT record is a Father building his family
and seeking intimacy with his children. Second, Jesus came to exemplify sonship
(and subsequently ours) to the Father. His Sonship is the ultimate model of
humanity in correct relationship to God. He invites us all to share in his life
and relationship to the Father as a sons and daughters. Third, Jesus came to
restore each of us to sonship to the Father. If you will allow God's Spirit to
walk you through this understanding meditatively and spiritually, you will be
blessed and greatly rewarded. My own realization of my sonship to the Father
was, for me, a turning point in my walk with God, my discipleship with Jesus,
and a personal spiritual revival by the Holy Spirit. That sonship depends
greatly upon who Jesus is. This is why we ask to know the real Jesus.
Leonard Griffith, God's Time and Ours, Abington
Press, 1964.