01.03. What Shall I Do Then With Jesus Which Is Called Christ?
What Shall I Do Then With Jesus Which Is Called Christ?
Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? — Mat 27:22. A THIRD GREAT QUESTION of the Bible is found in the first gospel of the New Testament. It is the cry of Pontius Pilate, Roman procurator of the province of Judea, when he was faced with the alternative of crucifying or defending Jesus of Nazareth. Nobility of conscience led one way; world expediency led in an opposite way. He was caught between the two conflicting appeals. In futility he turned to the leaders of the mob and desperately asked, "If I choose the release of Barabbas, what shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" This cry of Pontius Pilate has come down through the centuries as a personal question confronting every soul. If one is inclined to deny this confrontation, he may ask: "Why think any more about Jesus than about Jupiter? Why feel constrained to face Christ any more than to face Caesar? Why have anything to do with Him? Why not bow Him out?" The answer is most obvious. The coming of Christ into this world is a decisive act of heaven, an intervention of God in human history. We have to reckon with the fact of God and with the fact of Christ. The fact of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, is inevitable and inescapable. THE MATERIALIST AND JESUS The secularist, the materialist, the agnostic, the atheist, the cynic, the infidel, is the foremost to deny vigorously and vehemently that he has anything to do with Christ. He says, "I have gotten rid of Him." Like Pilate, he is a man who has washed his hands of Christ. He has nothing to do with Jesus, no more than he has anything to do with the dead Pharaoh, Ramses II, who lived thousands of years ago in Egypt. Having made this positive declaration and having got rid of Christ, he then goes to his office and writes a letter and dates it April 2, 1958 — "Anno Domini" — "in the year of our Lord." Is that getting rid of Jesus?
He closes his financial business on Lincoln’s birthday; he closes it again on Washington’s birthday. Is he open for business on Christmas Day? Surely he does not observe Christmas, for he has got rid of Christ, and Christmas is His birthday.
He goes to the coronation of the Queen of England, but he has no interest in such an event because it is a church service and a Christian religious ceremony. He attends the inauguration of the President of the United States, but he cannot enter into the true spirit of that meaningful occasion because the President takes his oath of office on a Bible and lifts his hand to swear before the Lord of Heaven.
He reads the great literature of the race, but he must blind his eyes to the great surge of immortal prose and poetry because it is filled with the name and the ideals and the spirit of the prophet of Galilee, and he has got rid of the prophet of Galilee.
He listens to the great music of the masters of all time but stops his ears lest he hear the wonderful oratorios of Easter and of Christmas. They have to do with Jesus, and he is rid of Jesus.
He deals with the fundamental problems of civilization, and here again he meets the inevitable Christ. It is the principles of Jesus of Nazareth which have made this a Christian civilization. How could there have been a Christian civilization without Christ? When he plays with his boys, he says to the big one who is pushing the little one around, "Here, son, remember the Golden Rule." He learned that rule from Jesus.
Whether it is at a wedding or at a funeral, whether it is in a cemetery or on the spire of a church, the whole world and whole procession of time and history point to Jesus. He shines in every star; He speaks in the conscience of every day. Wherever we turn, whatever we do, we meet the form and figure of this despised Nazarene, this lone Galilean. He looks at us from childhood, from the cradle of Bethlehem where He humbled Himself and took upon Himself the form of a man. He looks at us from the Horns of Hattin, in the Sermon on the Mount, in the great ethical principles of the Kingdom of God. He looks upon us from the brow of Olivet, weeping over a lost world. He looks upon us from the Cross in agony and in blood, dying for the sins of humanity. He looks upon us from Heaven from where He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. We meet Him down every road. Wherever we turn, wherever we are, there stands this inevitable Christ. Whether in life or in death, we have to do with Jesus. THE PSEUDO-SCIENTIST AND JESUS
There is another kind of man who stands up to say: "But I am a scientist; I am interested only in facts. I have nothing to do with fiction or fable or religious superstition; therefore I have nothing to do with Jesus." But, sir! The most amazing fact that ever happened on this planet is Jesus. A life that has changed the whole calendar, a life so tremendous as to cause the world to date everything from Him, is a considerable fact, is it not? He was a peasant child, born in a cattle shed. Brought up in a carpenter’s shop, He worked at a humble household trade until He was a full-grown man, taught His people a few months, and died at thirty-three years of age. Is it not an amazing fact in itself that such a man of such humble origin should have so influenced the destiny of the world? He raised no armies. He organized no political institutions. He held no office. He wrote no books. He composed no music. He was poor and unbefriended. He was called a traitor to His nation. He was ordered outside the walls of His capital city and was crucified between two felons. Yet, two thousand years later, men and women by the millions would gladly lay down their lives for His name. Able, gifted, trained, and educated young people by the thousands cross the seas and the deserts and the mountains to tell the glad story of the hope they have in Him. Are these not facts to be considered?
What of men who call themselves scientists, who pride themselves on sticking to the facts, yet shut out from their consideration the major fact and derive from them the science of geology. They say that stars are facts and deduce from them the science of astronomy. They know that fossils are facts, and they arrange from them whole chapters on the changing history of the earth. But they say nothing, deduce nothing, from the dominant and towering fact of all human history; namely, the fact of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of God. What of men who base conclusions on the heavenly bodies, but can base no conclusion on the Heavenly Character? Have they not blinded themselves to the really great and unique fact of the universe? THE WORLD’S RELIGIOUS TEACHERS AND JESUS
There are many people who are willing to receive Christ as a great teacher and religious leader, but who are at the same time willing to receive Him as only one of many such wise and good men who have come into the world. They place Him in the Pantheon of noble religious expounders along with Confucius, Gautama the Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, and others. Many books have been written in which are gathered together the lives and the stories and the religions of these different historical characters. On the jacket cover of the volume will be pictures of these several men and among them, of course, a supposed likeness of Jesus. In comparison with Christ, however, other religious leaders are as the darkness of the night compared to the light of the sun. They are as the Philistine god, Dagon, who fell broken before the Ark of the Covenant of Israel.
Confucius was a political philosopher, who assembled the teachings of ancient people for the good of his nation. He made no claim to the office of prophet or of messiah.
Gautama the Buddha ("the enlightened one") was a teacher in search of truth who at last found the secret of happiness in the annihilation of desire. The ultimate goal of his "Nirvana" is to come into the bliss of nothingness.
Hinduism, with its many gods and reincarnations (of which Krishna is one), is a religion that has cursed India for thousands of years. What can you do to help a country and a depressed people where every swine is a devil, every cow is a god, and every wooden plow is a fetish of religious worship? The desert leader, Mohammed, with his convenient visions and revelations, allowing to himself and to his followers four wives at a time, propagating the faith by the edge of the sword, looking forward to a heaven of harem delight, has been a weight and a millstone of degradation to the womanhood and manhood of Islamic civilization.
There is no place for Jesus of Nazareth in any religious pantheon, either in the ancient or the modern world. He does not fit. He does not belong. He is separate and apart, as high above other religious teachers as the heavens are high above the earth, as far removed as the east is from the west.
INSPIRED GENIUS AND JESUS
"What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" There are many who rise to say, "Let us accept Him as a great, inspired genius. Homer was such a genius; so were Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton. Let us place Jesus among them." But you pass from one world to another when you go from Homer or Shakespeare to Jesus. As gifted as were these authors, they would be amazed to find themselves named in the same breath with the Son of God. Shakespeare, the greatest of them all, worked and toiled and saved in order to be financially able to be buried in the chancel of his church. On the stone covering his grave are written these quaint words:
"Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forebeare To dig the dust enclosed heare." In his will and testament, the dramatist wrote: "I commit my soul to God, my Creator, in humble belief through the merit of Jesus my Saviour to obtain everlasting life."
One of the most famous stories recounted in English literature concerns Charles Lamb and a group of literary men who began to surmise what they would do if the noble and gifted and great of the past were to enter into the room. Charles Lamb said, "If Shakespeare were to enter, we would rise to our feet in admiration; but if Jesus were to enter, we would kneel and worship in adoration."
How different is this Man of Galilee from all other men of our times and of recorded history! Limitations are a grief to men everywhere, but Jesus never mentions the word. The winds and the waves are subject unto Him. The blindness of the blind, the deafness of the deaf, the uncleanness of the leper, the withered hand of the cripple, all are subject to Him. He could feed the five thousand just by breaking bread. There is no limit; there is no struggle. He even speaks to the dead, and they live. When someone asked, "Why did Jesus use the name of Lazarus when He called that dead man from the grave?" the answer was made, "Had He not said, ’Lazarus come forth,’ the entire cemetery would have arisen to answer the call of our Lord." For everyone death waits — for the greatest, the strongest, the noblest, the wisest. All fall into the arms of corruption. But this man says, "I have power to lay down my life and I have power to take it up again." Deep in the sepulchre He picks up His graveclothes, folds them carefully, and lays them apart. He walks out of the tomb, the full-orbed God of the first Easter resurrection morning. Who is like unto Jesus among all the sons of men?
JESUS ACCEPTED AS LORD
We have no ultimate answer to the question of Pontius Pilate, "What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" until we receive Him for all that He said He was and for all that He promised to do. Open the door of your Bible, and you will find that He fits perfectly the three hundred Old Testament promises concerning the coming of the Messiah. Open the door of your home, and you will find that He will sanctify every day, He will enrich every life, He will bless every meal, He will guide and sustain every holy and worthy decision. Open the door of your heart, bow down before Him, call upon His name, and you will know what it is to have God, Himself, come into your soul. "I bow one knee before thee, O King, my liege lord," said an old hero; "I bow two knees before God, my Saviour alone."
Look up into His face; open the door of your heart; give Him the love and trust and faith of your life; crown Him King and Lord of time and eternity. He will be your all-sufficient, all-adequate Saviour.
If you are tired of the load of your sin, Let Jesus come into your heart.
If you desire a new life to begin, Let Jesus come into your heart.
Just now your doubtings give o’er;
Just now reject Him no more;
Just now throw open the door;
Let Jesus come into your heart.
"What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" I shall receive Him as Lord and Saviour, as the King and Hope of my life in this world and in the world that is to come.