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This is part of our e-vo journey through the Gospel of John. Today is from John 3.
I’m hyper-sensitive about making Christianity an emotional decision. The flowery altar calls and emotional appeals to people to “give their hearts” to Jesus that almost always follows with tears and a full range of emotions. I’ve seen a lot of people decide to follow Jesus that way and I’m always a bit nervous when it happens.
I know at some point they are going to have to grow beyond just an emotional decision. It’s got to be a mind/will/intellect decision for it to be a long-term union. It’s kind of like marriage. The dating and the wedding and the first year is awesome. Then it gets hard.
What is really striking for me is how unemotional Jesus was when he told people about the Gospel. Like today’s passage - it’s an intellectual, philosophical discussion with one of Israel’s most educated people. Jesus had these kinds of conversations all the time. We don’t see appeals to the heart as much as we do appeals based on logic and intelligence.
To the Jew he said “Compare me to your Scriptures. Don’t be enthralled with just the miracles or the movement - read the Scriptures and test to see if I am the One.” To the Greek he said “Compare me to your gods, compare my thoughts to your great philosophers.”
It’s somewhat shameful what we’ve done to John 3:16. Somehow we’ve emotionalized and minimized it to merely a sign held by a man in a rainbow afro at sporting events. It’s got to be completely insulting to how it first sounded to Nicodemus. As a theologian and philosopher, Nicodemus would have known that since Genesis 1, God was a lover of his creation. That God had promised throughout scripture he was going to redeem and restore creation because of his love.
Nicodemus had studied the scripture enough to recognize the fingerprint of God on Jesus. That’s why he pursued Jesus to ask him some questions. His mind and logic demanded that Jesus be of God. Jesus’ answer in John 3:16 was the logical explanation as to WHY God was going to redeem creation.
So here’s to us developing our mind as well as our heart.
4 responses so far ↓
1 jlo // Apr 30, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Good post Grant. I haven’t really thought about how Jesus knew how the miracles pulled at people’s emotions but yet he urged them to intellectually come to believing who he is. I think sometimes we as believers are too preoccupied with the emotional side of the faith and too uninterested in the intellectual side.
2 Grant // Apr 30, 2007 at 11:11 pm
The more I study, the more I think Jesus did the miracles for the mind/intellectual side.
Rarely do you see Jesus focus on the emotions - we’ll see this on our journey through John.
3 kris // May 1, 2007 at 7:45 am
now THIS is a post!!!
excellent observation - i don’t know that i’ve ever heard anyone speak about Jesus’ words/emotion before - i think it’s a good point you make.
i have always been rather ‘anti-altar-call’ myself, so i appreciate your perspective on this and the challenge to put it to the test in our own lives.
oh, and you didn’t mention the broncos once, which is always a plus in my book!
4 the G sides » You’re Talking To Who??? // May 8, 2007 at 10:09 am
[...] the place of money in that man’s life that was evil. True worship is about spirit and truth (see last week’s thoughts). Race, heritage, and social status are idols when they take priority over Jesus and the story [...]
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