Almost Bible

For a number of years after his retirement, Fred Craddock led preaching seminars up in Blue Ridge, Georgia at Cherry Log Christian Church twice a year. Along with several of my preaching friends, I tried to attend as many of those Monday morning preaching seminars as possible. They were never disappointing.

Among the more memorable lectures I heard addressed the topic of “the challenge of preaching today.” At the top of Dr. Craddock’s list that day was what he called “almost Bible.” Simply put, he suggested that one of the real challenges preachers in our age must face is to be sensitive to the fact that there is a lot of “almost Bible” out there in the public understanding of Scripture.

I remember thinking that morning that one of the places where that is certainly true is in the “almost Bible’s” civic Jesus, as compared to the Bible’s Jesus.  There often is a little truth attached to the civic Jesus, but by and large he is a creature made in our own image and tends to think that our way of life is pretty much what God had in mind when He made Adam and Eve.

On the other hand, the Bible’s Jesus is not a Jesus we would likely have made up. He calls us to live “in the world, but not of the world.” He thinks that “denying self, taking up a cross, and following after Him” is the ideal way to act as a disciple. And, in shocking ways, He seems to think that the most appropriate response to Him when we meet Him is summarized in one word – Repent! And He seems to enjoy saying “repent” to the very religious.

In some ways, the most glaring “almost Bible” stuff we hear in our culture is that the whole Jesus story is simply designed to mean that when we die, we go to heaven! Certainly it can’t be overlooked that the coming of Jesus did deal with the fact that we were alienated from God in ways that we can’t correct on our own. But all of that is only part of the story – not the whole story.

He not only rescues us from our hopeless situation before God – he transfers us into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. In Colossians 1:13,14, Paul encourages the believers in Colossae to give thanks to God the Father because “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (ESV) We haven’t exhausted the Jesus story when we celebrate that we have been rescued from the power of sin and death – as huge a story as that actually is. We are a “rescued and transferred” people who are called to live out the implications of our rescue – and it is that reality, rescue and transfer, that Paul describes as “redemption, the forgiveness of sin.”

As I think about what I want my own life to look like in this new year we have been given, I’m thinking that I ought to commit myself to living a “transferred life” before God. I won’t let the “almost Bible” I hear lead me astray into thinking that the Christian gospel is only about dying and going to heaven. 

Actually – it ought to be obvious from the way Jesus taught us to pray – “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” “Transferred people” are working to fulfill that prayer every day!