The Case for the Real Jesus

by Lee Strobel

  “Furthermore,” he said, “the question of oppression is a separate issue from that of truth. Does truth necessarily oppress? Truth-claimants can, but it doesn’t have to. Religious people can oppress, but so can nonreligious people—look at Marxism and Stalinism. But is oppression consistent with what Jesus taught—the Jesus who sat down with the hated tax-collectors, prostitutes, and the forgotten of society? Jesus actually came to the marginalized. He taught his followers to love all people. Christians may not always fully live out those principles, but this is the ideal Jesus tells us to strive for.”

  “But can we, as a world, avoid the violence that can come when a religion, like Christianity, says it’s the only way to God?” I pressed.

  “When we talk about religion and the potential for violence, it’s instructive to look at the origins of Christianity versus Islam,” Copan said. “It’s quite a contrast. For the first several centuries, the Christian faith was spread through people being radical in their love for Christ and others. The church didn’t grow as a result of a military campaign, as you see taking place within Islam, which grew by the sword. So when you ask whether religion oppresses—well, it depends on which religion we’re talking about. With Christianity, unfortunately, there are periods of oppression that did come later. But we need to ask whether this was the sort of thing that Jesus espoused, or whether these were people giving Jesus a bad name.

  “Truth doesn’t necessarily marginalize people. You can still respect someone who disagrees with you. Sometimes religion gets the blame, but we just saw in the twentieth century how secular systems—like Communism, for example—oppressed and murdered millions and millions of people. So it’s not necessarily religion that does the oppressing; it can be any viewpoint that takes an intolerant stance, does not allow for any sort of disagreement, and has political and military power to enforce the official position.

  “As for Christianity, Paul says in Romans 12:18, ‘If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.’ He rules out revenge and says we should overcome evil with good, just as Jesus taught.31 And Acts portrays Christians as honorable, respectable citizens, who aren’t creating chaos and turmoil, but on the contrary are the ones who take the law seriously.”

  “I think what upsets some people is that there are certain Christians who sound morally superior when they talk about their faith,” I observed.

  “Yes, unfortunately that happens. But as Martin Luther said, when Christians are evangelizing, they’re like one beggar simply telling another beggar where to find bread. It’s not as though we are sharing the Christian faith from a position of moral superiority—like saying, ‘I’m better than you because I’m a Christian and you’re not.’

  “Let me give you an example. My wife and I like a restaurant called the Macaroni Grill. When we tell people about it, we’re not saying, ‘I’m better than you because I know about the Macaroni Grill and you don’t.’ No—we’re merely happy to pass on the news about the place. And that’s how it should be with the Christian faith. Our attitude shouldn’t be, ‘I’m better than you,’ but, ‘I found something really good; I urge you to check it out.’”

  WHATEVER BECAME OF SIN?

  One thing I’ve noticed among people who customize their own religion is that one of the first doctrines to go is sin. We may see ourselves as making mistakes, committing errors, or having a lapse of judgment, but few people envision themselves as sinners. Said journalist Bryan Appleyard: “Sin doesn’t really exist as a serious idea in modern life.”32

  In fact, we live in a blame-shifting culture, where we tend to evade responsibility for our actions and point the finger at everyone else—especially society or our early childhood trauma—for our behavior. As one scholar noted, therapists “make it a point of professional honor never to express moral judgments, so the word ‘fault’—let alone the word ‘sin’—will never pass their lips.”33 British theological consultant Alan Mann said the phrase, “It’s not your fault,” has become a major theme in the way we tell the contemporary story of human responsibility.34

  I raised the issue with Copan. “If there is no such thing as sin anymore,” I said, “then people wouldn’t need a savior like the Jesus of the Bible, would they?”

  “One of the problems of relativism is that it denies there’s any moral standard to shoot for,” he replied. “Consequently, there’s no failure in meeting that standard—so then why, as you’ve asked, would you need a savior? Why do you need to be rescued? Why do you need redemption?

  “But despite a lot of our therapeutic attempts to deal with human nature, the problem of evil in the human heart is something that keeps making realists of us. G. K. Chesterton talked about sin as being a fact as practical as potatoes. He said the doctrine of original sin is the only Christian doctrine that can be empirically verified—just look at the evening news on any given day. The Christian faith talks about human sinfulness and rebellion against God, which we readily see demonstrated throughout the world.

  “If you take the therapeutic approach, then you’re going to treat the killings at Columbine or the 9/11 terror attacks as being perpetrated by those who are aberrations. The killers failed to reach their full potential, which is why they were prompted to commit these atrocities. Some Eastern philosophies might say the problem is ignorance.”

  Copan shook his head. “Well, those are such hollow explanations for the depths of evil that exists around us,” he said. “To simply gloss over these evil acts by using psychological categories is utterly inadequate to account for them. A better explanation is sin, which is being preoccupied with ourselves and doing things the way we want rather than as God wants, which produces destructive results.

  “Until we bring sin back into our vocabulary, we’re not going to take the depths of evil or our moral responsibilities—or God—seriously. We don’t simply need more therapy to resolve our issues in this fallen world. We need to acknowledge our own guilt and humble ourselves in asking for forgiveness. Otherwise, the therapeutic mind-set relieves us from making any sort of moral judgments about ourselves or others. It relieves us of taking responsibility for our actions.

  “There is a moral gap—an ideal we have fallen short of—and we need outside assistance to bridge it. We don’t merely need therapy; we need someone to break into our human situation who can bring forgiveness, who can bring healing, and who can assist us in living the lives we ought to but can’t on our own. So we need to recover this idea of sin in order to make better sense out of the evil we see in the world, rather than just papering it over.”

  To make sure we were both on the same page with our terminology, I asked, “What’s the biblical definition of sin?”

  “The Westminster Confession talks about sin being the lack of conformity to, or any kind of transgression of, the law of God. Basically, it’s a violation of the character of God. It’s something that falls short of what God desires for us. I guess if you want to put it in contemporary jargon, sin is doing what you want. Sin is having attitudes that are self-absorbed and self-centered, rather than being God-centered.”

  “It certainly is a word that has dropped out of our culture.”

  “It has. The title of psychiatrist Karl Menninger’s popular book thirty years ago asked Whatever Became of Sin?35 The doctrine of original sin has a lot of explanatory power, but the fact that we are born with a self-centered tendency is not the whole story. There’s also the story of redemption—that Christ has come to bring relief and resolution to a problem that, when left to ourselves, we simply aren’t able to address.”

  COSMIC CHILD ABUSE?

  That brought me to my next topic. “Christians say Jesus died on the cross to pay for their sins, but is this concept of the substitutionary atonement outmoded?” I asked. “Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong said, ‘A human father who would nail his son to a cross for any purpose would be arrested for child abuse.’”36

  “We have to be careful about this notion being outmoded,
” came Copan’s reply. “C. S. Lewis rightly warns us against chronological snobbery—saying, ‘Oh, they used to do things that way, but we know better now because we’re more enlightened.’ Sometimes there is a mind-set that if no one believes something anymore, surely it has got to be false. G. K. Chesterton said if you take that view, you may as well say that on certain days of the week something is true and on others it’s not. The question should be: Is there anything to this notion of substitutionary atonement?”

  “Well, is there?” I asked. “Why can’t God just say he forgives the sins of the world?”

  Copan’s answer came swiftly. “Why can’t judges just forgive criminals? Why can’t they let rapists and thieves back on the street and just say, ‘It’s okay, I forgive you’? For God to do something like this would be an insult to his holiness. It would look like he was simply endorsing rebellion against himself and his character. He is a righteous judge, and therefore he must find us guilty of sin because the truth of the matter is that we are guilty. We have fallen short of how God wants us to live. We violate even our own moral standards, so certainly we violate God’s higher standard. To pretend otherwise would be a lie—and God is not a liar.

  “Also, if God simply forgives, then he hasn’t taken human responsibility with much seriousness at all. To simply let people go does not hold them accountable to the standards that people know they’ve transgressed. And he would be denying the gravity of sin, which we take far too lightly but which God takes very, very seriously.”

  That last remark made me think of a comment in a book I had been reading on the plane to Florida for the interview. As James R. Edwards, a professor of biblical languages and literature as well as a Presbyterian minister, said in Is Jesus the Only Savior?:

  The doctrine of atonement obviously hangs on the doctrine of sin. A physician who removes a leg because of a splinter is a monster. A physician who removes a leg because of cancer or gangrene, on the other hand, is a hero who saves his or her patient’s life. It all depends on the nature and seriousness of the problem. Spong and others see sin as a splinter; the New Testament sees it as a cancer that is fatal if left untreated. And that accounts for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on a cross of cruelty and shame. The cross is indeed an outrage—an outrage of grace. If this is the kind of world in which we live—and I believe it is—then the death of God’s Son for the sins of the world is the only way the world can be reunited with its Maker and Redeemer.37

  Nevertheless, I continued to press the issue about why God simply couldn’t magnanimously forgive people without having to sacrifice his Son. “What about the story in Matthew 18 about the king who forgave an enormous debt that was owed to him by his servant?” I asked Copan. “He seemed capable of forgiveness without sacrificing anyone on a cross.”38

  Copan’s eyebrows went up. “Ah, but notice what happens in that parable: the king doesn’t just forgive; he also absorbs the debt,” he said. “The king basically says he’s going to bear the burden of the loss even though the servant owes the money. Similarly, Jesus pays the cost of our sin on the cross. It’s sort of like a child who breaks a neighbor’s window. He may be too young to pay the price himself, so his parents pay it for him. Or when a small corporation is bought out by a larger one, the new corporation has to assume its debts.

  “There’s a cost to sin: Romans 6:23 says it’s death, or eternal separation from God.39 That’s the penalty we owe. That’s the cost we incur when our sins separate us from God. But Jesus willingly paid the price in our place, as our substitute—and offers forgiveness as a free gift. There’s nothing illegitimate about that kind of representation. If we aren’t able to handle our situation, what’s wrong with someone who’s willing to assume our indebtedness?

  “From one perspective, Jesus’ death was the very low point of God’s career—he is crucified as if he were a criminal, exposed naked to the world, cursed on this tree, and tortured though he was innocent. But despite this ultimate degradation, John talks about the Son of God being ‘lifted up,’40 which is a double entendre. Yes, Jesus was physically lifted up on the cross, but this is also the point of God’s exaltation. The crucifixion turns out to be a high point of God’s career. The point is, Jesus was willing to go this low for our salvation—to be humiliated, to be degraded, to be insulted, that through this selfless act he was able to rescue us, bring an end to the powers of darkness, and bring about the restoration of a fallen world into a new creation.

  “God isn’t guilty of cosmic child abuse. It’s not as though the Father consigns the Son to this humiliating death on the cross; it’s something Jesus does voluntarily. Jesus says in John 10 that he lays down his life of his own accord.41 It’s important to see the Trinity being involved in this whole process. As 2 Corinthians 5 says, God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.42 God the Father and God the Spirit suffer along with the Son as he hangs on the cross. The Father isn’t pitted against his Son; this is something the Son willingly takes upon himself in order to pay the debt that humankind could not pay on its own.”

  “Some people say this seems utterly drastic,” I observed.

  “Well, yeah, if this were to happen to you or me, we would be terribly embittered and completely overwhelmed. But Christ bears the punishment perfectly. As British theologian John Stott said, ‘For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.’”43

  “The atonement, then, is not illogical or unfair,” I suggested.

  “That’s right,” Copan agreed. “Remember, the scriptures have a number of different pictures or metaphors for what was accomplished on the cross. But the substitutionary aspect of the atonement is deeply significant in that Christ our representative accomplishes for us what we can’t do for ourselves.44

  “So what should our response be? Gratitude—the Christian faith is a religion of gratitude. Why would we be reluctant to humble ourselves and receive the free gift of forgiveness that Christ purchased through his death—and also receive the gift-giver himself as the leader of our life?”

  SOLO SPIRITUALITY

  Copan’s description of Jesus’ sacrifice was moving. Yet this love and grace isn’t always the message that people hear from Christians. Often, they get a far different sermon. Along those lines, I quoted to Copan the words of emergent church leader Dan Kimball: “Today, Christians are known as scary, angry, judgmental, right-wing finger-pointers with political agendas.”45

  I asked Copan, “In light of that, isn’t it understandable that people wouldn’t want to hear about their Jesus?”

  “Absolutely,” Copan said. “Jesus said in John 13:35, ‘All men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ Well, frankly, we can look around and see a lot of people who are not acting like Jesus’ disciples. Instead of being able to say, ‘Yes, look at us Christians and how we’re living exemplary lives,’ many times we have to say, ‘Sorry, look at Jesus, not at us.’ At the same time, though, some people can use this as an excuse not to take Jesus himself seriously.”

  I noted to Copan that the title of Kimball’s book sums up the attitude of many people today: They Like Jesus, but Not the Church. As the rock star Bono said: “I’m not often comfortable in church. It feels pious and so unlike the Christ that I read about in the Scriptures.”46

  “Consequently,” I said, “spirituality is very individualistic for a lot of people. They say they can worship God better while walking alone in the woods than in church. Can a Christian be divorced from Christian community?”

  “I’m not sure Bono’s concern about the church is a totally new phenomenon,” Copan replied. “Even in the early Christian communities, you would probably have felt some discomfort.”

  “In what way?”

  “If you were to visit the church in first-century Corinth, for example, you’d find division, spiritual arrogance, putting up with immorality in their midst, and a class-conscious mind-set. The apostle Paul wrote them
to point out all these problems—but does he give up on them? No, Paul was writing to say, ‘Get back on track.’ He deals with them as a loving father would.

  “Frankly, you can’t live out the Christian life—with all of its commands about dealing with ‘one another’—without being part of the church. As the author of Hebrews says, we need to stimulate one another to love and good works. He says we shouldn’t abandon the gathering together as believers.47 The church isn’t perfect, but then neither are we as individuals.”

  “So solo spirituality is not something you’d recommend?” I asked.

  “No, certainly not. Despite all of our failures, we cannot live the Christian life apart from one another. In fact, the fruit of the Holy Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—requires community living.48 These are community virtues that need to be cultivated in a way that can’t be accomplished in isolation.”

  THE RADICAL JESUS

  The postmodern mind-set that has set the stage for so much syncretism has come under fierce attack in recent years. Critics have not only pointed out its philosophical inconsistencies, but also have deplored its effect on morality and ethics. One of its most vocal opponents has been Christian philosopher J. P. Moreland, who called postmodernism “an immoral and cowardly viewpoint that people who love truth and knowledge…should do everything they can do to heal.”49

  I read Moreland’s critique to Copan. “‘Immoral and cowardly’—those are strong words,” I said. “Is he being too harsh?”

  Copan thought deeply before answering. “I love J. P., because he speaks forthrightly,” he said, himself sounding a bit diplomatic. “Postmodernism is a nuanced movement, and I don’t think either of us would want to paint it with a broad brushstroke. And as I said earlier, I do think postmodernism can remind us of some important things.”