Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4)
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The False Filter |
The Biblical Filter |
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The word OR the Word |
The Word THROUGH the word |
Because BJ has twisted every Scripture he
has used to say things they don’t say, and because he is now trying to convince
everyone that Scripture is a collaborative “hybrid” made by mixing God
inspiring a man and the man exhaling what God gave him in his own custom
humanness, and because this is to set the stage for BJ’s “another Jesus” to correct the Scriptures BJ doesn’t like, I want to give an illustration of how
men “were carried along by the Holy Spirit” to write the breathed out words of
God into Scripture.
Man was created in the image and likeness of
God (Genesis 1:26-27). God is Triune, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The interactions
between the persons of the Godhead are in perfect harmony so that they do everything
together willingly. They used themselves as the blueprint to design our
relational dynamic so that we find our ultimate satisfaction in attachment to
the Triune and their people.
Not only were we created in the image and
likeness of the Triune God, but we are distinctly created in the image and
likeness of Jesus Christ the Son who is the image of God. Let’s look at how
Paul describes Jesus as the image of God in Colossians 1:15-20.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
The reason God breathed out the description
of Jesus as, “by him all things were created,” and, “all things were created
through him and for him,” is that he is explaining Jesus in his relationship to
the Triune. He is the Son. Because the Son is the image of God, “the radiance
of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3), we can agree
with what Paul says that Jesus created all things, and yet the Father created
all things through his Son. As John wrote the breathed-out words of God, “All
things were made through him (Jesus the Word), and without him was not any
thing made that was made” (John 1:3).
This interrelatedness of the Triune God,
particularly the way the Father does everything through his Son, gives us a
glimpse into what it means for us to be in the image of God as the image of Jesus
Christ. We are the sons of God. Jesus is “the firstborn over many brothers” (Romans
8:29). “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are
being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For
this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (II Corinthians 3:18).
So, even though we say we are in the image
and likeness of God as described in the creation account, we understand this to
mean that we are the sons of God who are distinctly like the Son of God.[1]
And the way we understand God breathing out his word through men is by looking
at how Jesus communicated his Father’s word and work in his life and ministry.
One of the most influential scriptures in
helping me understand my relationship to God as “our Father in heaven” is what Jesus
explains about his work in John 5. He was once again in trouble for healing a
man on the Sabbath. As Jesus saw how the religious elite were stirring up
persecution against him, he answered them with this explanation: “My Father is
working until now, and I am working” (vs 17). Jesus sets the scene with his
relationship to the Father. He wants everyone to know that what they witnessed
or heard about in him healing a man on the Sabbath was because his Father (the Yahweh/LORD/Adonai
these Jews believed in) was working, and that meant Jesus had to be working as
well. And no, this is not correcting Scriptures from the Law that called for
resting on the Sabbath!
As the Jews realized that Jesus was claiming
equality with God, and they were all the more eager to kill him because of
this, Jesus continued,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing” (vss 19-20).
Jesus’
explanation for what he was doing was that it was what the Father was doing.
I draw attention to this because we are made
in the image of Jesus Christ. We learn about our relationship to God our Father
by looking at Jesus’ relationship to God as his Father. We gain understanding
of how God worked through men in history by looking at how he worked through
his Son who is our Firstborn brother. And what we see is that Jesus did NOTHING
apart from his Father, he did ONLY what he saw the Father doing, and this was
because of the love-relationship between the Father and the Son. The Father’s
love for his Son meant that he wanted his Son to be in fellowship with him in all that he did. That’s simply the way their relationship worked, and it is the
pattern of our in-the-image-of-God relationship with the Triune.
Now let’s connect what Jesus said about his relationship
with the Father in his ministry with what the Scriptures say about Jesus in his
relationship with the Father in creation. Both are telling us that the way the
Father and Son relate is that the Father does his work through his Son and the
Son does whatever the Father is doing. That is what it looks like for human
beings to be in the image of Jesus Christ. The Father does his work through us and we do whatever the Father is doing. When God works through someone, it is never
a hybrid mix of God’s part and our part. Rather, it is 100% God’s part through
our 100% joining him in his work.
In other words, through Jesus’ relationship with
his Father, and what we see in the breathed-out Scriptures of how he worked
through people, we do not see any room for thinking that we contribute the best
we can do at reaching up to God and God contributes the rest in reaching down
to us. We do not imagine such foolishness as thinking that Scripture is a
hybridization of God inspiring a man with his (God’s) thoughts and the man
exhaling those thoughts in his own words and understanding of what God meant
(which needs correction at times from BJ’s “another Jesus”).
With this in mind (that Jesus showed how a
Son did nothing apart from his Father and did only what the Father was doing),
how does that apply to the biblical writers’ relationship to God as God breathed
out his words through them? Well, let’s take this one step further and look at
what Jesus said about himself in communicating God’s breathed-out words to the
world. That will give us a very clear picture of how God speaks through his
word, the Bible, in an “in the image of God” way that is seen in our Savior.
Just as we see that Jesus created all things
means that the Father created all things through his Son, we can also see that
when Jesus kept saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you…” that this was in
fellowship with “I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father
taught me” (John 8:28). Jesus can freely say what he wants to say because he
was always saying what the Father gave him to say just as all the creating he
did was the Father creating through him. This is what the Triune God is like,
and we were made in their image. Let’s look at the ways Jesus expressed how it
worked for him to speak what the Father gave him.
In John 8:28, Jesus said, “When you have
lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do
nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.” Jesus put
what he could “do” and what he would “speak” in the same picture of doing and
saying what the Father gave him to do and say. Whatever Jesus did and said was what
the Father was doing and saying.
In John 12:49, Jesus continued explaining
this, “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me
has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.” For Jesus to
not speak on his own authority meant that the Father gave him “what to say and
what to speak.” Jesus was in such fellowship with his Father that it was fully
him to speak the same things the Father gave him to speak. The relationship is
always the Father working and speaking through the Son, which is a huge
indicator of how the Father works and speaks through his servants, the men through
whom he breathed out his word.
In John 14:10, Jesus continued, “Do you not
believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say
to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does
his works.” Jesus did not allow the people to think there was a disconnect
between him and his Father. Jesus always wanted everyone to know that it was
his Father doing his work through his Son. In other words, if Jesus said it,
the Father said it. This might remind you of how often the prophets would introduce their teachings with, "Thus says Yahweh..." They were not speaking on their own authority, but speaking what the Father taught them.
In John 16:13, Jesus applied this to the
Holy Spirit, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the
truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he
will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” So, the
Holy Spirit (who is the one who carried men along to write the Scriptures as
the breathed-out words of God) also did not speak on his own authority, but
spoke what he heard from the Father. He then carried men along in the writing of the Scriptures so that they were also not speaking on their own authority, but declaring what they were given by God.
What I’m trying to show from this is that,
when we simply read the Scriptures and let them speak to us we discover they
answer the question of how authoritative they are. Both Jesus and the Holy
Spirit did not speak on their own authority because they were always in
fellowship with the Father who was the authority. What anyone heard from Jesus or the Holy Spirit was always "the word of God", or, the words from Father.
This all applies to the Scriptures because
they “all” (the entire thing) are “breathed-out by God”. They are consistently
called “the word of God”, “the word of the LORD (Yahweh)”, “the word of Christ”,
because it is all God’s words to be received and honored as
authoritative because God is the authority behind them all. To be the word of God meant that the speaker or writer communicated precisely what God taught them to say.
This means we cannot let the BJs tell us to
imagine different scenarios that might work for how God and man came up with
this hybridized way of communicating that was as much man’s contribution as God’s.
We can’t let the BJs tell us that the Jesus BJ wanted to find in the Bible says
he needs to correct things that Jesus’ Father declared to be his word. It is so
clear that when God carried men along by his Holy Spirit, it resulted in people
hearing exactly what God said, writing it down as God gave it to them, and now
we can read exactly what God breathed out into Scripture (as translated into
all our languages, that is).
I hope I can pick up the pace in the next
section by simply exposing how BJ is continuing to promote his false teaching
that it was the biblical writers who were inspired and then they exhaled their
best understanding of what God was getting at, and showing the truth that it is
the Scriptures themselves that were breathed out by God and the men carried
along by the Holy Spirit communicated the words of God in both spoken and then
written form, just as Jesus and the Holy Spirit communicated what they were given
by the Father.
Now here’s a note to show how delightful it
is to simply be like the noble Bereans who “received the word with all
eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts
17:11). Notice even here that “the word” and “the Scriptures” are used
interchangeably because people knew what the Scriptures were, the word of God. I
have not received BJ’s word with “all eagerness” because I already knew he was
a false teacher from hearing him during some interviews on Christian TV.
However, I always receive “the word” with all eagerness, and so our examining
of the Scriptures has shown that what the Scriptures say about themselves really
is the truth, and the BJs are exposed for saying quite different things than
God breathed out in his word.
With that in mind, in looking through these
Scriptures about Jesus’ relationship with the Father, I noticed that John 5
continues into one of BJ’s arguments about how the Scriptures speak about Jesus
from beginning to end (I don’t argue with the sense of that, only with the way
BJ applies this to his “another Jesus” who corrects the Scriptures that speak
of him!). What stood out is this challenge from Jesus to the religious elite: “For
if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do
not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:46-47).
Now, here’s the thing: BJ wants us to believe
that some of what Moses wrote must be corrected by his “another Jesus”. But the
Jesus of the Scriptures said that the people needed to believe Moses to believe
him (Jesus). BJ says that all Scripture points to Jesus, which includes Moses,
and Jesus said that Moses wrote of him (without adding any correction to
anything Moses wrote), but BJ wants us to believe that his “another Jesus”
needs to correct things Moses wrote, which means he is correcting what Moses
wrote about Jesus!
The application is simple: those who believe
Moses as is recorded in God’s word will believe in the true Lord Jesus Christ revealed
in the Scriptures. However, if people are convinced to “not believe his
writings” (as BJ is teaching) how will they believe the words of Jesus in the
gospels? Once the BJs convince people not to believe what was written by Moses
(and whichever other writers they think got it wrong about Yahweh), they will
end up believing in the “another Jesus” Paul warned about, trusting in “another
spirit” of understanding, and following “a different gospel” than the gospel of
the kingdom.
I share this note because we must see how BJ
keeps contradicting the breathed-out words of God, even the direct quotes from Jesus’
own mouth. His hybrid-Jesus of the hybrid scriptures is not the true Lord Jesus
Christ. And I hope we will remember these wonderful truths from Scripture as we
head out on our next day’s journal journey to see what else we will be asked to
believe that just ain’t so!
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt
Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com
Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the
Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.
Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible Systems
[1]
I hate that I have to clarify
this, but the modern translations that put “sons and daughters” instead of what
God breathed-out as “sons”, and “brothers and sisters” in place of what God
breathed-out as “brothers” are stealing, killing, and destroying people’s
understanding of the glorious oneness of the body of Christ with Jesus Christ the
Son. All believers are “sons of God” in the Spirit, and we are all “brothers”
to Jesus and one another. There are not two distinctive groups in the kingdom
(sons and daughters), but only sons who are brothers to our Savior. All the
earthly and physical distinctions of being male and female apply at the same
time just as God breathed out in his word, but in our understanding who we are “in Christ”,
all who have been born again by the power of the Spirit, through the power of
the gospel of the kingdom, are God’s sons, as God breathed-out through Paul, “in
Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (Galatians 3:26). This is
HUGELY important in our understanding of what it means to be like Jesus, and to
relate to God and one another as sons and brothers.
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