エピソード

  • Did Jesus Establish Christianity?

    Did Jesus Establish Christianity?
    2026/04/21
    Writers Note: This is a question with the power to set you free — or make you deeply uncomfortable. Maybe both at once, Please stick with us till the end. It’s a crucial discussion. Thanks for helping us spread this conversation widely so we can help others ground their faith.Did Jesus Found Christianity?Most people assume the answer is obvious. Of course he did. His name is in the title. But at the risk of being misunderstood, I still want to make the case that the answer is no — and that this is one of the most liberating thoughts you will ever consider as a devoted follower of Christ.I say this as a lifetime insider. I believe with everything in me that the life and teaching of Jesus is the most extraordinary gift ever given to this humanity. The principles he embodied are the very foundations of the civilization we inhabit today. The chaos we see in the world now is not caused by those principles. It is caused by our abandonment of them.But whether Jesus founded a religion called Christianity? That is a different question. Here are three reasons I believe he did not.Reason #1: History Simply Doesn’t Support ItThere is no historical evidence that Jesus founded any form of external religion. What the records show, consistently, is a man pushing against almost every institution of his day — family structures, Roman political arrangements, and most dramatically, the Temple of Judaism itself.He did not model how to build the best religion. He modeled a new way of living. Everything he said and did was about humans living in a direct, unmediated, loyal relationship with their Creator. His conclusion, demonstrated over and over, was that religion can actually become a barrier to the very God it claims to represent. When pious performance, priestly clothing, and theological gatekeeping replace direct encounter — Jesus doesn’t just disagree. He despises it.He was not anti-structure as an ideological position. He was anti-anything-that-comes-between-humans-and-God. That is not the posture of a man building a new religion. That is the posture of a man tearing down the walls that keep people from the presence they were made for.Reason #2: His Mission Was a War of Liberation, Not Institutional FormationJesus was not building an institution. He was fighting a war.He believed this planet had come under the influence of an intelligent, malevolent heavenly being whose strategy was hateful and relentless: push the leaders of every major pillar of society toward the accumulation of wealth, the abuse of power, and a fascination with physical pleasure at the expense of everything higher. The result is what we know well: disease, broken relationships, injustice, cruelty, death.Jesus spent his public ministry tearing down that kingdom piece by piece. He cast out demons. He healed people in the streets. He raised the dead. Every act of human restoration was a declaration of war.Does that sound like someone primarily concerned with founding a religion with creeds, hymns, ceremonies, temples, rituals, and liturgical practices?He didn’t build a religion. He didn’t teach his followers how to build one either.What he did build was people. An inner circle of three. Twelve. An outer network of five hundred. Community? Absolutely essential. A ceremonial structure of institution? Probably not. In his own words, those systems in Judaism had become tools of the enemy. He said the Pharisees’ determined religious efforts actually produced people who were twice the children of hell they were.Structure is never satisfied. It always wants more structure. Over time, the life gets squeezed out by the effort to control. That is why Spirit movements keep arising — hermits in the desert, prophets in the wilderness, reformers nailing documents to cathedral doors. Jesus himself regularly walked away from civilization into uninhabited places to be alone with God. That is not the behavior of an institution builder.Reason #3: “Christianity” Doesn’t Exist as One OrganizationThere simply isn’t one central thing called Christianity. There are more than 47,000 separated Christian groups — each with their own doctrines, mandatory practices, and expectations. Some believe Jesus is the only way. Others that he’s a noble example but that any sincere path will lead equally to God.Some believe Jesus was virgin born and raised from the dead. Others believe neither. Some believe in salvation based on works. Others through faith only. Others that it’s through mystical grace flowing through the sacraments. Some look for an eternity in the clouds. Others doubt there is an afterlife at all.Which of these did Jesus found? The answer, I believe, is none of them.Here is the formulation I keep returning to: Jesus is the standard. The Christianities are the attempts.The way of Jesus is not something you do alone — it demands community. To follow Jesus we have to build communities that align with his values and mission. The problem...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    36 分
  • Question & Response #2

    Question & Response #2
    2026/04/14

    Hi! Hope you’re having a great week!

    Since our last episode, we’ve got more great questions. I will answer three of them in this episode.

    The first one is: “What if someone has suffered so deeply in abuse from a church that they have difficulty separating Jesus from the abuse?”

    I will address this directly and offer to anyone wounded by their experience in a church or Christian organization the only path to healing I have ever discovered.

    We’re into a really great discussion, and I hope you’ll join us inside this week’s grounded podcast question and response session.

    If you send me your questions and comments, I will do my best to respond to each of them.

    Every Blessing!

    Chuck

    PS: I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but our Substack has this really cool feature so that if there’s even a sentence or paragraph that you like in a newsletter like this, you can highlight it and then right-click to share. It will create a really cool looking way for your friend to receive your message. Please help us grow the reach of this newsletter. No algorithm pushes it out. It depends on the people who read it to share it with their friends. Thanks so much!



    Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe
    続きを読む 一部表示
    17 分
  • How Do You Even Define Christianity Anymore?

    How Do You Even Define Christianity Anymore?
    2026/04/07
    Writer’s note: I want to give my personal thanks to the 20 of you who recently signed up as paid subscribers. I really appreciate your support. It’s encouraging to know that people find value in the work, and it helps me build the team I need to continue and grow the podcast. Thanks again! Hi Friend! The hardest thing in discussing how to fix dysfunctional elements within Christianity is simply determining what Christianity even is today. What even is Christianity?It’s a question that sounds simple until you try to answer it. Most people assume the answer is straightforward. “Christianity is the religion about Jesus.” That seems clear enough.But when you begin to look closely at the actual landscape of Christianity, the answer becomes far more complicated.Christianity today is not just a religion, it’s also a cultural identity, a global movement, a massive institutional network, a political influence, and a sprawling economic ecosystem. It contains sincere discipleship movements, centuries-old traditions, humanitarian organizations, political activism, and millions of business ventures, to name a few elements. Let’s unpack this.The WarehouseIn my upcoming book ReJesus Everything, I describe Christianity as a giant warehouse.Picture the largest warehouse on earth — a building stretching miles in every direction. Inside are countless aisles, stacked floor to ceiling with everything associated with Christianity.Yes, Christianity is a Family of Religions If you walk into the section labeled Religions, you will find an astonishing number of shelves. Scholars estimate that there are roughly 47,000 distinct Christianities around the world.Walk the aisles and you’ll pass * Roman Catholicism * Eastern Orthodoxy* Greek Orthodoxy* Ethiopian Orthodoxy* Coptic Christianity* Lutheranism* Calvinism* Methodism* Presbyterianism* The Mennonites* Baptist denominations in every variety* Pentecostalism* non-denominational Christianity* Prosperity gospel churches* Liberation theology* Christian nationalism* Progressive Christianity* House church movements* Emerging church movements, and many moreThen you hit the fringe religion section (which grows every year): Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, Seventh-day Adventism, Christian UFOlogy, and hundreds of radical cult groups that claim Jesus while holding beliefs most traditional Christians would flatly reject. (Heaven’s Gate and Jonestown mass suicide cults had a Christian theology as their base).And if you keep walking, you’ll run into ancient Christian spiritual systems like Gnosticism, which portrayed Jesus as a messenger from the gods revealing a radically different version of the biblical story where the serpent is the good guy, the creator is not to be trusted, and Jesus is sent by the gods to be the one who reveals all this to us and delivers secret knowledge that helps us ascend to join the sky gods as spirit beings freed from our human shell. This group almost took over early Christianity. It’s still out there.All of this sits inside one section of the warehouse labeled Religions where* Every group claims the name of Jesus.* They read the same Bible.* All believe their understanding is correct.Christianity as a National IdentityChristianity is more than a religion. For hundreds of millions of people, Christianity is a national and cultural identity that has nothing to do with personal faith. This is the case in Europe. Those with a Christian cultural identity may have never prayed directly to God and only attend church for funerals and weddings. But they live in a historically Christian nation, and that makes them Christian in the same way it makes someone Iranian or Greek. Many nations enshrine this idea in their constitutions with the naming of a state religion. The King of Great Britain is authorized to rule by the Anglican Church. This is Christianity as ethnicity and civilization. To draw a parallel from largely agnostic modern Israel, Naor Narkis says, “What defines us (Jews) is our language, and our heritage, but doesn’t involve faith in a god.” 3.5 Million Parachurch OrganizationsThen there’s the parachurch universe. According to research from Gordon-Conwell University, there are 3.5 million Christian agencies worldwide — organizations addressing everything from lack of access to the gospel, to clean water, to inclusion of LGBTQ in clergy, to homelessness, drug addiction, human trafficking, orphan care, right to life, legal reform, and political action. It’s an industry. It’s hard to know where to draw the line on what is and is not part of Christianity. For example, is an orphanage run by Christians part of Christianity? Sure. How about the non-profit that runs the fundraising that runs the orphanage? Okay, that also. How about the Christian credit card processor that serves churches and non-profits so they can receive donations? Is that Christianity? How about the Christian investment company that ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    21 分
  • Special Question and Response Episode

    Special Question and Response Episode
    2026/03/31

    Well, we are almost ten episodes into season two of the Grounded Podcast. By now I’ve been getting a lot of questions, both privately and in the comments sections. I wanted to take time and have a special episode in which to respond to two or three questions.

    Grounded Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

    One of our main objectives is to create a context for a healthy discussion about where we’re at as Christian people and how we can take our movement into greater alignment with Jesus. An aligned church is a healthy church, and that’s what we all want. I hope you enjoy this episode. Please share it with your friends.

    Please send me your comments and questions. I really want to know what you’re thinking about and how I could be helpful to you in your own journey with Jesus.

    Thanks again for everything, and thanks to all of you who have converted from free members to paid members. You are helping fuel this initiative, and we thank you deeply. If anyone wants to know more about Emerge Missions, you can check our website at emergemissions.org.

    Every Blessing,

    Chuck & Sherry



    Get full access to Grounded Podcast at www.quinley.com/subscribe
    続きを読む 一部表示
    22 分
  • Our Malleable Messiah. How Christianity has customized Jesus

    Our Malleable Messiah. How Christianity has customized Jesus
    2026/03/24
    Writer’s note: As I mentioned last time, the newsletter version of this podcast will no longer be a straight transcript. I will summarize it in about a thousand words for those who prefer to read. There’s a lot more content in the video, so I hope you’ll enjoy that version also.We are gaining traction, but we still have not broken the thousand subscriber mark, so please share this episode with your friends to help us reach a broader audience. Thanks!!!From Lord to logoWhen I was a child growing up in Georgia (the state, not the country), our family had a Bible that sat on the coffee table more as symbol than book. It was a way of declaring that we were a Christian family. On the cover was a romanticized painting of Jesus — The colors were muted and earth tone. Jesus was tanned, lovely, serene, and glowing with golden light.If I had grown up in Africa, the cover would have shown a different Jesus. Latin America or China, yet another. Jesus, you see, is customizable in Christianity.The problem is so extreme that a few years ago, MacLean’s magazine ran a cover story showing a traditional image of Christ surrounded by labels ranging from “revolutionary” to “”a mad priest” to vengeful prophet” to “ordinary guy.” (These are the various ways different forms of Christianity and scholarly coverage characterize Jesus.) The headline declared, “Jesus has an identity crisis.”That headline captures something real. Because across 2,000 years of Christian history, in every culture and every century, the very person of Jesus has been edited so he will match our cultural expectation. A History of CustomizationAfter Emperor Constantine converted in 312 AD and the Roman church stepped into the power vacuum left by a crumbling empire, Jesus appeared in paintings wearing ecclesiastical robes, his hand raised in the pose of priestly benediction. He was the divine endorser of hierarchy — the one whose authority legitimized bishops, kings, and popes. That Jesus served the system. He didn’t challenge it.During the colonial era, Jesus was presented to enslaved Africans as the one who taught, “Slaves, obey your masters.” But something remarkable happened: when those same enslaved people learned to read the Gospels for themselves, they found a completely different Jesus. They found the brown liberator, the fulfillment of the Exodus story, the one who came to set captives free. Same Gospels. Same person. Two opposite Jesuses — because each group encountered him through the lens of what they desperately needed him to be.In Latin America, Jesus became the face of Communist liberation theology in some places and a pro-establishment, anti-communist figure in others — sometimes within the same country.In America, he’s been recruited by both political parties. For one side, he’s pro-military, anti-abortion and anti-tax. For the other, he’s woke, empathetic, pro-environment, and pro-immigration. How can the same person endorse completely contradictory agendas?Honestly, he can’t. But a logo can. Somewhere along the way, in culture after culture, Jesus as become more logo than Lord.A Lineup of Compromised Customized ChristsEvery version of Jesus that Christianity has produced contains something real, a genuine aspect of who he is. That’s what makes each one so convincing. The problem isn’t that people found something true about him. The problem is that they stopped there, and in stopping there, lost the rest of him.Prosperity Jesus is wealthy and wants you to be wealthy too. He preaches abundant life and his most devoted representatives fly private jets to demonstrate the blessings available to the faithful. Is it true that Jesus cares about our wellbeing? Yes. Does he promise abundant life? He does. But the abundant life he describes in the Gospels looks nothing like a private jet. It looks like a cross. That part gets quietly left out.Warrior Jesus is fierce and powerful, commanding authority over darkness and promising socioeconomic victory to those who follow him. Jesus is the one who will fight the devil so you can rise in society. Is it true that Jesus has authority over evil? Absolutely, but Jesus used his power to deliver others, not just to win a position on the top of the pile for himself.Friendly Neighbor Jesus wears jeans and a hoodie and drops by with golden nuggets of wisdom to make your week a little better. He’s warm, encouraging, and never says anything uncomfortable for more than thirty seconds. Is it true that Jesus is approachable? Yes — children ran to him. But this is also the man who took a whip to the bankers and kicked their tables over in the temple yard. That part tends to get softened.Therapeutic Jesus is your personal life coach and heavenly encourager. He meets you right where you are and never asks you to go anywhere else. He validates your feelings, affirms your worth, and ensures you leave every encounter feeling good. Is it true that Jesus heals and ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    26 分
  • Doctrinal Chaos: How Theology Replaced Jesus

    Doctrinal Chaos: How Theology Replaced Jesus
    2026/03/17
    AUTHOR’S NOTE: I want to say thanks again to everyone who has been sharing our posts with your friends and relatives. These are important discussions, and entering into them in a spirit of humility will help churches in many places. Please share the content and help us break the 1,000 subscribers mark. I deeply appreciate it. So, someone comes to me — usually a young person, and they say, “I’m confused. I’ve been reading the Bible seriously, and I’m getting completely different answers depending on who I ask. My church says one thing. My friend’s church says the opposite. I found a theologian online who says something else entirely. And they’re all quoting Scripture. How is that possible?”My answer is always the same: “Welcome to Christianity.” Christians disagree on almost everything that matters. And they don’t disagree quietly.The Bible BattlefieldLet’s run through the list. Salvation — are you saved by faith alone, or does obedience matter? Can you lose your salvation? Is it available to everyone, or only those God predestined? Baptism — infant or adult? Immersion, sprinkling, or pouring? Does it save you, or is it just a symbol? The role of women — can they preach, pastor, teach men, serve as elders? Politics — is Jesus conservative or progressive? Should the church be involved at all? The nature of Scripture — is every word literally and historically accurate? How do we handle the parts of the Old Testament that seem morally troubling? The mission of the church — is it to save souls, transform society, care for the poor, make disciples, or plant more churches?On every single one of these questions, sincere, Bible-believing Christians who love Jesus and take scripture seriously arrive at completely opposite conclusions. They fight about it. They split churches over it. They declare each other heretics over it. Throughout history, people have literally died over it — tens of thousands of lives lost in the name of theological conviction.This is doctrinal chaos, theological anarchy. And it didn’t happen by accident.Jesus Doesn’t Divide UsAfter 45 years in ministry, I’ve come to a conclusion that the doctrines that divide us do so because they are built on the work of theologians other than Christ himself. Practically nobody argues about what Jesus meant with his words.The issues that have fractured Christianity into 47,000 denominations: predestination, free will, baptism, the role of women, the proper church governance system, etc. are not primarily arguments about what Jesus said. They’re arguments about what Paul said, what Augustine concluded, what Calvin systematized, what Luther insisted. These are brilliant men. Serious men. Men who loved God and gave their best efforts to understanding him. But they are not Jesus.Jesus spoke in what you might call bumper stickers. “Follow me.” “Love your enemies.” “Seek first the kingdom of God.” “The greatest among you will be your servant.” Christ made no effort to create neat theological packages tying together everything about life and God. He didn’t produce a systematic theology. He didn’t deliver a creed to memorize or five pillars to observe though he was clearly competent to do so.He gave us a life to follow.Jesus Was Not a Theologian — On PurposeThe religious leaders of Jesus’ day were professional theologians. The Pharisees and Sadducees were deeply divided in their theological positions, and they constantly tried to bait Jesus into their endless sparring — about the law, about divorce, about Roman authority, about resurrection. They wanted him to pick a side.Which side did Jesus join? He refused. His only concern with their disputes seemed to be showing them how foolish it was to spend their energy warring over words while neglecting their personal actions and their walk with God. He wasn’t interested in the debate. He was interested in alignment with God.Jesus understood something that centuries of theologians have worked hard to obscure: human beings don’t need more correct thinking. They need a different way of living. The ways and teachings of Jesus are primarily concerned with human actions, not human thinking — because human actions are the cause of everything beautiful and horrible on earth. We are our planet’s greatest problem. We are also its only hope.Becoming a Child. Consider how children learn. They don’t learn to walk by reading biomechanics textbooks. They don’t learn to love by studying psychology. They learn by watching. By imitating. By following. Jesus trained his disciples exactly the same way — not with a systematic theology, but with a life. “Come and see.” “Follow me.” He showed them how to pray, how to serve, how to forgive, how to face opposition, how to die. Then he said, “Go and do likewise.”That’s the entire curriculum. Follow the Father’s ways every day. As Jesus put it: “I only do whatever I see the Father doing....
    続きを読む 一部表示
    20 分
  • The Everything Religion

    The Everything Religion
    2026/03/09
    Writer’s Note: Starting with this episode, the newsletter version will be a summary of the video, not a transcript. There’s lots more in the video. Feel free to listen to it at 1.5 speed if your time is short. (That’s what I always do with podcasts.) Please help us grow this podcast. The crisis facing our faith is a crucial issue, and we’ve got to build a better church going forward. The Everything Religion: Christianity’s Crisis of No CenterImagine walking into a restaurant and being handed a 200-page menu with 847-items — breakfast, sushi, tacos, French cuisine, barbecue, Moroccan, African, and Chinese cuisine. Maybe you’d love it, or maybe you’d turn around and walk out. A kitchen that tries to make everything usually does nothing well. There’s no identity, no specialty, no standard of excellence. Just an overwhelming array of options designed to keep everyone happy. Would you trust it? Probably not.That’s what Christianity has become.It is the world’s largest spiritual buffet. Walk in and take whatever you like — grace without repentance, heaven without hell, Jesus without the cross, community without commitment. You can construct a Jesus who endorses your politics, blesses your lifestyle, and never once asks you to change. And nobody, anywhere, is in charge of the kitchen.A City Without a GovernmentIn my book, ReJesusEverything which is coming out in about a month, I describe Christianity this way: if Christianity were a city, it would be Tokyo.If you’ve ever been to Tokyo, you know it’s overwhelming. It’s the largest metropolitan area on the planet — 40 million people. Ancient Shinto temples sit in the shadows of glass skyscrapers. Buddhist monks in robes walk past businessmen in suits. Robots clean floors while women serve tea in traditional kimonos. It’s simultaneously ancient and futuristic, orderly and chaotic, beautiful and bewildering.Christianity is like that.Christianity holds one-third of all humans on earth. It’s richer in money and history than most nations. Long ago it overwhelmed the boundaries of being a religion and became something else entirely — a global enterprise, a civilization, a culture, a political force, a business ecosystem.But here’s the critical difference: Tokyo has a government. Christianity doesn’t.Tokyo has a mayor, a city council, laws, courts, and enforcement mechanisms. When disputes arise, there is a system to resolve them. Christianity has none of that. There is no global authority. No universal council. No mechanism to resolve disputes or enforce standards. And the result is that Christianity has become whatever anyone wants it to be.Whatever You Practice Is a Minority PositionHere’s something that may surprise you: whatever version of Christianity you practice is followed by no more than 25% of the world’s 2.4 billion Christians.Think about that. If you’re a Pentecostal, your understanding of baptism, salvation, church governance, and spiritual gifts is shared by a small minority of global Christians. The same is true if you’re Catholic, Baptist, Reformed, Eastern Orthodox, or Non-denominational. There is no majority position. There is no standard version.Simply said, there are many Christian faiths — all using the same name, all claiming the same founder, all reading the same Bible — and all arriving at dramatically different conclusions. Christianity today encompasses every denomination you can name, plus seventh-day Adventism, Universalism, Christian Science, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and dozens of other groups that claim the name of Jesus while holding beliefs traditional Christianity would consider heretical.Is Jesus the chairman of the board of all of this? Honestly, no. He’s the logo on the letterhead, but he’s not running the organization — because there is no organization. There aren’t two or three Christianities. There are 47,000, and they contradict each other in doctrine and lifestyle, even on foundational questions like: how does a person come into a right relationship with God?The Buffet ProblemThe buffet metaphor cuts deeper than it first appears. A buffet feels like freedom. It feels like you’re being respected, like your preferences matter, like you’re not being forced into a box. But what it actually produces is a faith with no spine.A Christianity constructed from a buffet line can’t challenge you, because you’ve already pre-selected everything that confirms what you already believe. It gives you a Jesus who endorses your existing lifestyle rather than calling you into transformation.The Apostle Paul warned Timothy that a time would come when people would not endure sound teaching, but would accumulate teachers to suit their own passions and turn away from truth. That time has arrived. Most people standing in the buffet line don’t realize what they’re doing. They think they’re being discerning. They think they’re following their conscience. But they are ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    18 分
  • How Jesus Got Demoted in His Own Religion

    How Jesus Got Demoted in His Own Religion
    2026/03/03
    What’s in this Newsletter:Christianity is fracturing under the weight of 40,000 denominations, burned-out leaders, and mass exodus — and most diagnoses focus on the symptoms while missing the root cause. In this episode, I’ll make the case that the real crisis is a stolen microphone: Jesus, the founder and only true authority of the faith, has been systematically subordinated by 2,000 years of brilliant but competing voices. If you've ever sensed that something is deeply off in modern Christianity but couldn't name it, this episode will give you the diagnosis — and point toward the only cure.There’s a moment in the Gospels that should settle forever the position Jesus should have in our lives.Jesus is on the Mount of Transfiguration, radiating the glory of God. Moses and Elijah appear beside Him. And Peter—good old Peter—starts nervously yammering about building shrines for these holy men, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing.And then the Father interrupts. A voice from heaven shouts: “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him!”Not “Listen to Moses.” Not “Listen to Elijah.” Not “Listen to the prophets” or “Listen to the religious leaders.”“Listen to Him.” To Jesus. Alone.But here’s what’s happened over the last 2,000 years: we’ve stopped listening to Him alone. We’ve added other voices. Lots of other voices. Important voices. Brilliant voices. Voices that have shaped Christianity for centuries.The Apostles. Paul. The Church Fathers. Medieval theologians. The Reformers. Denominational founders. Celebrity pastors. Theologians. Authors. Podcasters. And in listening to all that noise, Jesus has been reduced from THE voice to ONE voice among many.He’s become an elective rather than the core curriculum. A consultant rather than the CEO. One opinion among thousands.And that’s the root of our crisis.Today, we’re beginning Act II: The Noise. My goal is that we will start paying attention to the noise. We will notice the noise and decide to silence it. We start here: with how Jesus went from being the singular teaching authority to being subordinated by a chorus of competing voices.Jesus has been subordinated. Despite all of our songs and nice words about him, he’s no longer the central authority of Christianity. He’s one voice among many. And when there are multiple voices claiming authority, you get chaos which leads to fracturing. Today we have 40,000 versions of Christianity.Let’s trace how this happened. In the Beginning, There Was One VoiceWhen Jesus walked the earth, there was no confusion about who had authority.Jesus spoke, and people listened. He didn’t quote other rabbis to establish His credibility. He didn’t build elaborate theological systems. He didn’t defer to the religious authorities of His day.He simply said, “You have heard it said... but I say to you.” That phrase—”but I say to you”—was revolutionary. It was scandalous. Because Jesus was claiming authority above all other voices, an authority that belonged to God alone.The religious leaders noticed this. They said, “Who does this man think he is? By what authority does he say these things?” And Jesus’ answer was clear: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Not some authority. Not shared authority. All authority.When Jesus taught, He spoke with clarity and simplicity:- “Follow me.”- “Love your enemies.”- “Seek first the kingdom of God.”- “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”- “If you love me, you will obey my commands.”There was no theological maze. No complex systematized theology. No endless debates about predestination or free will or the role of women, or the nature of the atonement. Just Jesus. One voice. Clear. Authoritative. Uncluttered. His sheep hear His voice. And for a brief moment in history, that’s all there was:* Jesus and His disciples. * The Teacher and His students. * The Shepherd and His sheep.But then Jesus ascended. And other voices began to speak. The first of the new voices belong to the Apostles. Peter, James, John, and others were personally trained and discipled by Jesus himself for almost four years. He empowered them to extend the movement that he had founded so we expect and deeply need their voices. Jesus was a speaker, not a writer, so it was left to the apostles to record his words for us in the gospels and Acts. (Imagine what Christianity might be today if we had absolutely no written records of the life of Jesus!)After Jesus ascended, the apostles took on the role of spreading His message. And they were crystal clear about their secondary role. They were disciples of Jesus, not His colleagues. They traveled around repeating Jesus’ words, describing His practices and lifestyle, and calling people to repent and follow Him as Earth’s rightful King. As the faith spread, their role included sharing what they felt Jesus’ position would be on ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    21 分