THE RIGHT APPROACH

3. 1 THE RIGHT APPROACH

4. The Right Approach • God takes the initiative. The Bible reveals a God who, long before it even occurs to men and women to turn to him, while they are still lost in darkness and sunk in sin, takes the initiative, rises from his throne, lays aside his glory, and stoops to seek until he finds them.

5. Right The Approach • God takes the initiative. • God makes himself known to us. God has spoken. He has taken the initiative to make himself known. The Christian concept of revelation is essentially reasonable. The idea is that God has ‘unveiled’ to our minds what would otherwise have been hidden from them.

6. The Right Approach • God takes the initiative • God makes himself known to us. • But it isn’t enough! It isn’t just that we are ignorant but also that we are sinful. This is why it isn’t enough for God simply to reveal himself to us and dispel our ignorance. He must also take action to save us from our sins.

7. The Right Approach • God takes the initiative • God makes himself known to us. • But it isn’t enough! • How to look for God and find him. God keeps his promises. He honours all earnest searching. He rewards all honest seekers. The undertaking given by Jesus is very clear: ‘Seek and you will find.’

9. 2 WHO CHRIST IS: The Claims of Christ

10. The Claims of Christ • Begin with Christ. Who Christ is and what he has done are the rock upon which the Christian religion is built. If he was not who he said he was, and if he did not do what he said he had come to do, then the foundation is undermined and the whole thing will collapse.

11. The Claims of Christ • Begin with Christ. • Trust the Gospels. We don’t need at this point to go along with the Christian view and accept the Gospels as the inspired Word of God. All we need to do is take them seriously as the undeniably historical documents that they are.

12. The Claims of Christ • Begin with Christ. • Trust the Gospels. • Admire... and worship. We are persuaded that Jesus was a historical person who possessed two distinct and perfect natures, one divine and one human, and that this makes him absolutely and for ever unique. In short, we believe him to be worthy not just of our admiration but also of our worship.

13. The Claims of Christ • Begin with Christ. • Trust the Gospels. • Admire... and worship. • Jesus: “It’s all about me”. This self-centredness of the teaching of Jesus immediately sets him apart from the other great religious teachers of the world. They point people away from themselves, saying, ‘That is the truth, so far as I understand it; follow that.’ Jesus says, ‘I am the truth; follow me.’

14. The Claims of Christ • Begin with Christ. • Trust the Gospels. • Admire... and worship. • Jesus: “It’s all about me”. • Jesus’ claims to be the Son of God. He is not just another signpost, but the destination to which the signposts have led.

15. The Claims of Christ • Begin with Christ. • Trust the Gospels. • Admire... and worship. • Jesus: “It’s all about me”. • Jesus’ claims to be the Son of God. • Just ‘a great teacher’? We simply can’t go on treating Jesus as a great teacher if he was completely mistaken in one of the chief subjects of his teaching—himself.

17. 3 WHO CHRIST IS: The Character of Christ

18. The Character of Christ • The greatest man who has ever lived? It’s not simply that he is better than others, nor even that he is the best human being who has ever lived, but that he is good—good with the absolute goodness of God.

19. The Character of Christ • The greatest man who has ever lived? • The man who never did anything wrong? Everyone else was a lost sheep; he had come as the Good Shepherd to seek and to save them. Everyone else was sick with the disease of sin; he was the doctor who had come to heal them. Everyone else was trapped in the darkness of sin and ignorance; he was the light of the world.

20. The Character of Christ • The greatest man who has ever lived? • The man who never did anything wrong? • What his friends thought about this. Peter first describes Jesus as ‘a lamb without blemish or defect’ and then says that he ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth’.

21. The Character of Christ • The greatest man who has ever lived? • The man who never did anything wrong? • What his friends thought about this. • What his opponents thought about this. So when Jesus was on trial for his life, his detractors had to hire false witnesses against him. But even then they were unable to agree with one another. In fact, the only charge they could come up with was not moral but political. Time after time, his court appearances made it clear that he was blameless.

22. The Character of Christ • The greatest man who has ever lived? • The man who never did anything wrong? • What his friends thought about this. • What his opponents thought about this. • The character of Jesus. The moral perfection which was quietly claimed by him, confidently asserted by his friends and reluctantly acknowledged by his enemies, is clearly shown in the Gospels.

23. The Character of Christ • The greatest man who has ever lived? • The man who never did anything wrong? • What his friends thought about this. • What his opponents thought about this. • The character of Jesus. • Explaining the paradox. It is this paradox which is so amazing, this combination of the self-centredness of his teaching and the unself-centredness of his behaviour.

25. 4 WHO CHRIST IS: The Resurrection of Christ

26. The Resurrection of Christ • What the resurrection of Jesus proves. The argument is not that his resurrection establishes his deity, but that it fits with it. It is only to be expected that a supernatural person would come to and leave the earth in a supernatural way.

27. The Resurrection of Christ • What the resurrection of Jesus proves. • Evidence to examine. We may not feel able to go as far as Thomas Arnold who called the resurrection ‘the best attested fact in history’, but certainly many impartial investigators have judged the evidence to be extremely good.

28. The Resurrection of Christ • What the resurrection of Jesus proves. • Evidence to examine. • An empty tomb. The tomb was empty. The body had gone. There can be no doubt about this fact. The question is how to explain it.

29. The Resurrection of Christ • What the resurrection of Jesus proves. • Evidence to examine. • An empty tomb. • Undisturbed graveclothes. What did Peter see which made him believe? The story suggests that it was not just the absence of the body, but the presence of the strips of linen and, in particular, the fact that they were undisturbed.

30. The Resurrection of Christ • What the resurrection of Jesus proves. • Evidence to examine. • An empty tomb. • Undisturbed graveclothes. • Seeing Jesus. It is unreasonable to dismiss the appearances of Jesus as hallucinations being experienced by people with disturbed minds. The only alternative left is that they actually happened. The risen Lord was seen.

31. The Resurrection of Christ • What the resurrection of Jesus proves. • Evidence to examine. • An empty tomb. • Undisturbed graveclothes. • Seeing Jesus. • A big change. It was the resurrection which transformed Peter’s fear into courage, and James’ doubt into faith. It was the resurrection which changed Saul the Pharisee into Paul the apostle.

33. 5 WHAT WE NEED: The Fact and Nature of Sin

34. The Fact and Nature of Sin • Talking about sin. Sin is an unpopular subject, and Christians are often criticized for going on about it too much. But they only do so because they are realists. Sin is a fact of human experience.

35. The Fact and Nature of Sin • Talking about sin. • Sin - how far it spreads. ‘We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way’, and ‘All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags’.

36. The Fact and Nature of Sin • Talking about sin. • Sin - how far it spreads. • Sin - what it really is. It is either an ideal which we fail to reach, or a law which we break. ‘Anyone who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins’, says James. That is the negative aspect. ‘Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness’, says John. That is the positive aspect.

37. The Fact and Nature of Sin • Talking about sin. • Sin - how far it spreads. • Sin - what it really is. • Using the Ten Commandments. So much takes place beneath the surface of our lives, in the secret places of our minds, which other people do not see and which we manage even to conceal from ourselves. But God sees these things.

39. 6 WHAT WE NEED: The Consequences of Sin

40. The Consequences of Sin • Sin and God. If the curtain which veils the indescribable majesty of God could be drawn aside—even for a moment—we too would be unable to bear the sight.

41. The Consequences of Sin • Sin and God. • Captured into slavery. It is not so much particular acts or habits which enslave us, but rather the evil infection from which these spring. This is what lies behind the New Testament description of us as ‘slaves’.

42. The Consequences of Sin • Sin and God. • Captured into slavery. • Sin and other people. Human sin or self-centredness is the cause of all our troubles. This is what brings us into conflict with each other. If only the spirit of self-assertion could be replaced by the spirit of self-sacrifice, our conflicts would cease.

44. 7 WHAT CHRIST HAS DONE: The Death of Christ

45. The Death of Christ • His death - our freedom. Sin caused a separation between us and God; the cross, the crucifixion of Christ, has brought us back together. Sin made us enemies; the cross has brought peace. Sin created a gulf between us and God; the cross has bridged it. Sin broke the relationship; the cross has restored it.

46. The Death of Christ • His death - our freedom. • Why Jesus had to die. What the Bible teaches concerning the centrality of the cross has been recognized and celebrated by the Christian church from the very beginning. The cross is the symbol of our faith. The Christian faith is ‘the faith of Christ crucified’. There is no Christianity without the cross.

47. The Death of Christ • His death - our freedom. • Why Jesus had to die. • Light from the Old Testament. The Old Testament sacrifices are a visible symbol which points forward to the sacrifice of Christ.

48. The Death of Christ • His death - our freedom. • Why Jesus had to die. • Light from the Old Testament. • Just an inspiring example? An example can stir our imagination, kindle our idealism and strengthen our resolve, but it cannot remove the stains of our past sins, bring peace to our troubled conscience or restore our relationship with God.

49. The Death of Christ • His death - our freedom. • Why Jesus had to die. • Light from the Old Testament. • Just an inspiring example? • Why can’t God just forgive us? We are not to think of Jesus Christ as a third party wresting salvation for us from a God who is unwilling to save. No. The initiative lay with God himself. ‘God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ.’