Great persons arrive with much ceremony. Their advance people come, making preparation. Security is heightened. Heralds report as the VIP nears. Fans, hangers-on and wannabe’s buzz around the event like flies. Yet God Himself chooses to arrive as an infant born into a common family. However much He seems to shun pomp and circumstance, Jesus does know how to make an entrance. Just before His ascension, He simply materializes, no doubt scaring the wits out of his closest friends. While they were re-hinging their jaws, Jesus asks them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?

I’m sure they thought, “Are you kidding! You nearly gave us a heart attack! In the future, please knock!”

But Jesus isn’t searching for missing information when He asks questions. He already knows what’s in our hearts—yet He asks. Jesus is always asking us questions—trying to jump-start our heart-reasoning. He knows His are important questions and that we need to answer them for ourselves.

To assure them He was not a specter, He permits them to examine him—whom they had abandoned in Gethsemane only to be nailed to a cross. By touching His scars, they verified it was in fact Jesus. The body that had just popped into the room was made of flesh and bone just like theirs were. If they had been on their heels before, they were now completely floored, possessed by the wonder standing before them. God was now alive and present! Over the years hope and joy were no doubt rekindled as they learned, first hand (in the working out of their own salvations) the implications of Jesus’ resurrection.

In our passage, we see another way Jesus can sustain and rekindle our inner fire. He can open our minds to understand the scriptures. God had arranged that men would record their experience with Him and one day give those accounts to us in the format of a book—the Bible. Inspired by the Spirit, the scriptures are God’s words to us. They are God-breathed and are therefore related to the new life He breathed into His sons and daughters—making them into sanctuaries of God’s Spirit on earth.

The scriptures contain inspired words of God, but they do not contain the Word, who is God. So many evangelicals, including myself, have viewed the Bible as the Word of God—essentially everything He would ever have to say to man. We have been told that by mastering the holy texts we are following the Master. This is not completely true. Pharisees and scribes had accomplished this much. The disciples (like most of us) were not scholars, but they turned the world upside down within a few generations. How could this be? They had no Bible (nor a few dozen other things we understand as essential to doing Church and fulfilling the Great Commission).

They did it by being filled with God’s Spirit and advocating repentance for the forgiveness of sins. We reason with our minds, “Their passion and success is understandable. They saw and even touched Jesus. Of course they believed.” But we must ask, what has sustained the millions of others who have embraced the gospel, who would not get to see or touch the resurrected body? Has it been our growing and refined intellectual grasp of God? No, there is another explanation.

 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. (Romans 8:14)

There is no foul in studying the scriptures as long as we don’t err by missing the Spirit who authored them. The great evangelical error has been making our understanding of God—god. If we are depending on our knowledge, we have made a golden calf of our learning. We are then in trouble because we were commanded to have no other God’s before Him.

Jesus’ first followers did not have seminaries or Bible study reference materials. All they had was the Holy Spirit. When Jesus opens a disciple’s mind to understand the scriptures, it’s not to add to their base of knowledge. It’s to bridge the chasm between their minds and their hearts, between their knowledge and their wills. This is how He jump-starts our heart-reasoning. When this gap is bridged (courtesy of God’s Spirit), the Word becomes flesh again. Life then finds new expression. This is the normal Christian life.

 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (II Corinthians 5:17)

It has never been scholarship that caused the gospel to take root. It has always been the kingdom’s righteousness, peace and joy on display in a new race of men. New creations in Christ give essential credibility to the gospel. Changed hearts and lives, not knowledge, are the evidence of His resurrection. Without transformation, the claims of the gospel are static, hollow, and unbelievable. The gospel is validated when the Body of Christ is actually living out of God’s resurrection life, in Christ. This is a great mystery, but it the one we live in.

Unfortunately, the kingdom gospel is too often rebranded and marketed as a “get-out-of-hell & into-heaven” (so you better be good) proposition. This is a massively truncated gospel. While forgiveness and eternal security are great news, they are still only partial news. Being saved in a moment from hell was never meant to be an end-in-itself. It was intended as the port-of-entry into the kingdom of God. The kingdom is a now-domain, bringing with it now opportunities and now-responsibilities. These are overlooked when “getting-out-of-hell-&-into-heaven” (and being good) are the main points.

When Christians see through the kingdom-lens, many dots get reconnected. His eternal life finds new and now expressions in the lives of His offspring. Great preaching in itself does not give ultimate credibility to the gospel. Transformed lives alone validate Christ’s resurrection. There is no other hope for the world outside of Jesus’ prayer being answered: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Father, allow us to encounter your Spirit afresh—He who is Your promise, who clothes us with power from on high, He who will heal our troubled and doubtful hearts. Open our hearts fully that we may understand Your kingdom and the now implications it has for us. Make your entrance into this world, as You intended, through our new hearts. In the here and now, may the world witness Thy kingdom coming and Thy will being done, in us. Amen.

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