Make me a Christian? Make me a whitewashed tomb...

Tonight on Channel 4 George Hargreaves introduces some people to 'Christian life'. The programme blurb suggests that those involved are "not obvious candidates for such an experiment". But it sounds to me exactly like the kind of people Jesus would be revealing himself to, exactly the kind of people he lived for and died for, exactly the kind of people who should be welcome in our church:

• a biker who's a tattooist and a militant atheist,
• a young man who was brought up Christian until he was 12, and now has a girlfriend who is 10 weeks' pregnant,
• a lap-dancing manager who can't live without continually acquiring expensive designer shoes, middle-class parents who are so professionally busy that they have hardly any time to spend with their children
• a man in his 20s who, unbeknown to his girlfriend, goes out every week drinking and womanising
• a man who found Christianity unfulfilling and has converted to Islam
• a lesbian who sometimes sleeps with men.

Christian Party leader George Hargreaves invites them to read the Bible and take it seriously. The problem is that Revd George leads with lifestyle rather than leading people to Jesus first. I fear that this lifestyle first approach obscures the truth and seems to lack compassion. Nice one for trying it, but this Christianity comes across as an anti-sex moralism makeover show. The approach seems to be to break people by taking out the sin - it's sad to observe what happens to the lapdancer - George removes doing that and she runs to her boyfriend as an alternative help for her self-image struggles. Kevin tries to resist drunkeness and flirting and more - self-reformation fails quickly. This smells of a law-first approach. This smells pharisaic and looks about as effective.

Could we just start with Jesus? Let his light shine and expose things that need to change, starting with 'you're not a Christian' and then getting on to life transformation, by the Holy Spirit, one step at a time.

Like the atheist Martin says - persuade me, explain why the Bible is true. Reading the Bible for three weeks has the potential to help, but with all these mentors around someone might want to do some apologetics and Bible teaching that could engage his questions and direct him to Jesus rather than imposing 'make me moral and religious'.

Charlie Brooker from The Guardian notes: "the broadcast will doubtless be accompanied by the percussive sound of thousands of Christians enthusiastically smashing their foreheads against the wall with delight at the way they're represented."

More at Channel4.com - Make me a Christian. Also on C4 at the moment Tom Price highlights The Genius of Dawkins. Articles & mp3s arguing for the truth and reality of Christianity can be found at bethinking.org

Proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ

The preaching of the Old Testament is not a dirge that must end with a happy chord. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the melody of the scriptures from beginning to end. Apostolic preaching will always demonstrate this.

Acts 9v22 - Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ.

Acts 17v2-4 - As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. "This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ"

Acts 18v28 - For he vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.

This was Paul's evangelistic approach. Paul with his Old Testament proving, reasoning, refuting, explaining and proving that their true meaning is the gospel of Jesus.

It could be argued that this is his approach among Jews - which it was. And granted at Athens he seems to argue more from creation and culture. But when we consider his approach to the Gentiles of Galatia he says he 'portrayed Christ crucified'. He promptly goes on to spend several verses reminding them about Abraham and the law. It seems he'd quickly shown them that the gospel preached to Abraham 'all peoples will be blessed through you' was the meaning of Christ crucified.

If we only operate with a 27 book Bible we rob ourselves of the roots and foundations on which the gospel stands. Our gospel will be flimsy and appear 'new' when it is rooted in everything God has ever said, the God who reveals all this plans. Amos 3v7: For the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. That's spoken into a context where God's people were silencing their prophets, and so robbing themselves of the life-giving knowledge of God. We do the same to ourselves if we silence the law and the prophets by not permitting them to sing their true melody, about the Christ.

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Posted by Dave Bish. More thoughts on how to read the Old Testament as about Jesus can be found at The Biblical Theology Briefings.

The Old Testament is about Jesus.

That's what Jesus said to the Pharisees. They were missing it. Not because they were stupid but because they didn't believe in Jesus. And if they did they'd see that Moses writes about Jesus. It's a bit of a circular thing but what isn't. The key to understanding the Old Testament is not intellect but faith in Jesus. Through faith in him the eyes of our hearts are opened to see him clearly in all 66 books of the Bible. The question really is how did Moses write about Jesus. He didn't write the name 'Jesus' anywhere in his five books. Is it a magic trick, like those sermons we think of where someone talks about a passage for 30mins and then tacks Jesus on the end - or like the story that describes a squirrel in sunday school but the kids conclude it must be a description of Jesus because it's sunday school. Such stories are fairly apocryphal though clearly have some basis in reality. Seems to me that the way the Old Testament is about Jesus is a multifaceted thing.

• The OT is about Jesus because it's about God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
• The OT is about Jesus in that Israel is a shadow of Jesus. The OT is about Jesus in that Jesus is Abraham's seed - and so the life of Isaac points to Jesus (Galatians 3)
• The OT is about Jesus in that he is the wisdom of God that all wisdom points to (Colossians 1)
• The OT is about Jesus in that the law has shadows and models that are shadows and models of Jesus (Hebrews 8-10)
• The OT is about Jesus in that what happens to Israel is a warning to take Jesus seriously (Hebrews 1-2)

The reference points for this come from the New Testament which is fine - both volumes have the same divine authorship. In all these ways and many other ways. The answer is never predicatable or lifeless. It's not that we have to teach or read a passage and then tack Jesus on the end, each one has something to reveal of him from beginning to end. So much so that a Christian reading of the OT will be disagreeable to a (non-Messianic) Jew or a Muslim. Prayerfully as we read it, ask how does this testify about Jesus? How does this feed my heart to believe in him more?

On Squirrels and such like

Mark Driscoll writes in his 'On the Old Testament' :

"The opening line of the scriptures introduces us to its hero. Through the pages of this scripture God is revealed. In the closing line of the New Testament scriptures we are reminded that the God who is the hero of the scriptures is Jesus Christ" (p34)

Yet, for all the screaming obviousness that the Bible is about God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) somehow we miss it.

In the New Testament Jesus makes some very bold claims about the Old Testament.

1. The books of Moses are about Jesus (John 5v46) and the way to respond is to believe.

2. All the promises are fulfilled in Jesus (2 Corinthians 1v20) - however unreliable people are God's promises are firm.

3. The books of Moses and the prophets are about Jesus (Luke 24v27) and if we're reading it right our hearts will be burning within us.

Moreover - the apostles in Acts seem to focus their activity on proving that Jesus is the Christ from the Old Testament scriptures. It's nice in theory, the question is how.

For more on this see: BeginningWithMoses.org and Thoughts on some of the "Five Festal Garments" at TheBlueFish.org