The Concrete Christ

One of the things that makes Jesus utterly unique is that He didn’t just teach truth; He is the Truth. Jesus was not theoretical. He didn’t just talk about a good idea; He is Himself good; He Himself is goodness. 

Jesus was not abstract. He’s the truth embodied in concrete form. That’s what John’s biography of Jesus tells us. God became flesh and lived among humans (Jn. 1:14).[1] 

Jesus did not just know the truth or teach the truth. He Himself is the Truth. Jesus doesn’t just know the way; He is the Way. Jesus didn’t just live a good life; He is the Life (Jn. 14:6). Jesus is the concrete embodiment of all that is good.[2] He is God in flesh; Truth lived out for all the world to see. So, Jesus was different than every guru, every moral guide, every leader of mankind. 

As E. Stanley Jones astutely pointed out, “Many teachers of the world have tried to explain everything—they changed little or nothing. Jesus explained little and changed everything. Many teachers have tried to diagnose the disease of humanity—Jesus cures it.”[3] Jesus is different. “Many teachers have told us why the patient is suffering and that he should bear with fortitude Jesus tells him to take up his bed and walk. Many philosophers speculate on how evil entered the world—Jesus presents himself as the way by which it shall leave.”[4] 

We see the utter contrast between Christ and all others when we consider the crucifix. Compare the meditating guru with Christ on the cross. Christ’s eyes are open, His body torn, and His arms are outstretched to welcome whosoever in. The guru’s eyes are closed, turned inward. His arms and whole body are self-contained. He is not torn. He is unaffected by conflict. Sin and suffering are not solved but dissolved.[5] 

Christ suffers in the concrete struggles of the real world. “Jesus does not stand before the blind and the leper and the poor and the sinner and discourse philosophically on why they are in such condition, but lays his hands of sympathy upon them and heals.”[6] Jesus did not teach in the schoolroom manner the necessity of humility—He took up a towel and kneeled down and washed His disciples’ feet.[7] 

He didn’t merely argue about justice and how the poor should be treated. He brought justice and changed the world. He did not argue, like Socrates, about the immortality of the soul—He raised the dead.[8] 

Jesus didn’t just speculate or talk a good game. He did the thing. He did all the things. It was His eat and drink to do His Father’s will (Jn. 4:34). Jesus did not make a long, eloquent argument that God answers prayer—He prayed, sometimes all night, and in the morning the power of the Lord was present to heal. He did not paint in glowing colors the beauties of friendship and the need for sympathy; He wept at the grave of His friend.[9]

Jesus turned the world upside down. Not because He was a philosopher, ethicist, or charismatic leader. He was all of those things. But He was more. He was the embodiment of all humans were ever meant to be. But He was more than that; He is God in flesh. God in physical form.[10]

Conclusion

Jesus did not love and word and talk but in deed and truth (1 Jn. 3:18). He was concrete. Not hypothetical or abstract. Jesus is the embodiment of truth, goodness, and life, unlike any other being in the universe. While others teach or speculate, Jesus actively demonstrates and brings about.

Notes

[1] He “pitched His tent” or tabernacled. This langauge alludes to God’s dwelling among the Israelites in the tabernacle (Ex. 25:8–9; 33:7).

[2] “Jesus underlies our moral and spiritual universe deeper than the force of gravity underlies our material universe” (E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road, 134).

[3] Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road, 187.

[4] Ibid., 187.

[5] Peter Kreeft, Fundamentals of The Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 93.

[6] Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road, 205. “He did not speculate on why temptation should be in this world—he met it, and after forty days struggle with it in the wilderness he conquered, and returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee. He did not discourse on the dignity of labor—he worked at a carpenter’s bench and his hands were hard with the toil of making yokes and plows, and this forever makes the toil of the hands honorable” (Ibid., 182).

[7] Ibid., 183.

[8] Ibid., 182.

[9] Ibid., 183.

[10] See Phil. 2:6-7; Col. 2:9; Heb. 1:3; Ezek. 1:26-28; Dan. 7:9; Gen. 18:1-3; 32:30 and also what I have written on the Trinity.

*Photo by Jon Tyson