WEEKLY FOCUS ARCHIVE

The Ladder vs The Bridge

March 30, 2005

Hitler, Manson, Bill Clinton, Billy Graham, Mother Theresa; where would you place each of these on the moral ladder? Upon which rung would these or others be placed by God Himself?

What if your ladder differs from the ladder of others?

Can you say enough prayers, do enough good deeds, fast enough, repent enough, or do anything "good" enough to earn your acceptance before God? Can you climb the metaphorical moral ladder up to God? How many rungs must one climb in order to reach the heavenly realms?

Who decides, ultimately, where the standard for human accomplishment and moral excellence is determined?

Which of us knows anything about the inner life, thoughts, and motivations of any of those listed above or any others? Is there a standard? What is it? Who is it? Where is it?

The questions above bring us to a sobering and ultimately life giving reality; we cannot climb our way to God. That is the Easter message, friends. We will never agree on the height or width of the proverbial ladder to God. God has not intended to allow each of us to decide how we "reach" Him. Jesus is God's plan to reach us. Rather than climbing some never ending moral ladder, God intends for us to walk with Christ across the bridge of the cross. The cross stands as God's clear message that only sinless perfection will do because He is Holy and we can never hit that mark. Only Christ, the perfect one, lived a sinless life and died in our stead to make a way "across" for us. He bore the wrath of God's fury against the sin of humanity and the sin in our hearts. In ourselves, we could not bear that wrath or atone for it. And we cannot measure ourselves against others around us in order to find our moral quotient, for "all have fallen short of God's demand for moral perfection". If we look at others we may feel more or less "moral" depending upon the relative moral character of those to whom we compare ourselves. But Jesus told even the most devoted religious people of His day that they fell far short of what God was calling them to. Yet He offered life to ANY who would humbly accept this truth and climb off the ladder and cry out to God for a genuine transformation of the soul.

If we have any hope of truly connecting with God and living an authentic Christian life we must abandon our hope in our own goodness and trust that God, through Christ, extends His grace to cover our sins and offer us a life of abundant grace before Him. This Jesus, yes the historical Jesus, is alive and well and active in this world in the hearts of believers. History tells us that the grave was indeed found empty. And despite all the attempts of so called "academics" to debunk the Resurrection event, it stands today as the most important event in the History of the world. It is the reality of Jesus' resurrection from the grave that promises us God's activity in our lives. Paul said that without a real, physical, historical resurrection we would be without hope. This Jesus, who fulfilled over 300 Old Testament prophecies which were spoken of the Messiah hundreds of years prior (those odds make the lottery look like a slam dunk), and who healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, and cast out demons, is the same Jesus that restores lives and gives clarity, purpose, meaning and significance today. Let us not doubt that Jesus was indeed who He said He was. Further, let us abandon any suggestion that this historical figure was little more than a good guy or a moral teacher. He was more, much more.

C.S. Lewis, "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to".

Jesus was inded who He said He was, God in the flesh. As such, He was and is the Bridge to God.

The bridge calls us to Himself. Not to defeat, boredom, ignorance or blind faith, but to life, abundantly, meaning, virtue, significance, and purpose. He is our way and our example. He shows us how inept our attempts to find life in the trinkets of this world are. He reminds us that at the end of this game called life, all the toys get left behind. Like the game of Monopoly, at some point, the game is over and all the real estate, money, possessions-it all goes back in the box. And once we get placed in our "box" and get put six feet under, the toys really lose their appeal.

Malcolm Muggeride writes, "Reaching after perfection by dying in order to be reborn, sloughing off the old man, our fleshly being, as a snake does its old skin irrespective of whether it is frail or robust, ungainly or comely, drab or dazzling. In giving the blind back their sight Jesus made us understand that we are all anyway in need of seeing eyes. When the crippled and even the dead rose up at his behest, they illustrated a truth more ineffable than any miracle-that in suffering and dying we live, while in living and abounding for life's own sake alone we sicken and die".

Jesus, the man, the living Christ, was and is real and offers us our only way to connect to God in a real and meaningful way. He told us that He came to give life and to give it abundantly. He was born, lived, died, and rose again to demonstrate this truth to us. He is your ticket to meaning, purpose, and healing.

Bruce Smith (Rev.)
Director of Development, Teaching Pastor
bruce@uptownchurch.net

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