Christian Living Blog

by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola

Let’s go back to the first century and take another look at our Lord. “Come and behold Him.” We bless and are blessed as we simply “behold Him,” not as we boast of talents or do great things, but as “we look full in His wonderful face.” Everyday “beholding” releases Jesus, especially when that beholding is done by a community.

Watch Him at a wedding in Cana. According to the custom of that day, the bridegroom was responsible for supplying the food and wine. You know the story. The wine ran out. This represented a social disgrace – a grave oversight on the part of the bridegroom.

Behold your Lord’s first miracle. He turns water into wine – but no ordinary wine. He creates a wine that is finer than the wine that had run out. In one brilliant stroke, Jesus Christ removes the bridegroom’s shame. He supplies the lack. He covers the mistake. He removes the disgrace. He reverses the failure. And He makes the bridegroom look like a champion.

What a Christ.

Watch Him as He encounters a battered, abused, shamed, and forgotten woman. She’s a Samaritan of ill repute – a five-time divorcée. Your Lord breaks all social conventions by talking to her in public. But that’s not all. He shares with her one of the greatest truths that a human being can know. In addition, He breaks Jewish custom by using her utensils and eating with her friends in a Samaritan village (something Jews were forbidden to do). Here is a Lord who embraces a dejected woman and woos her and her friends to Himself.

What a Christ.

Watch Him as He allows a prostitute to love Him in the house of a Pharisee. She pours expensive perfume on His feet, unbinds her hair and uses it as a towel to anoint his feet. Such an act is scandalous (for a woman to unbind her hair in that day was akin to publicly removing her bra in our day). The Pharisees move into high-octane-judgment mode toward Jesus and the woman. And what does the Lord do? He accepts this woman’s extravagant act of love and adoration and rebukes the finger-pointing Pharisee for his self-righteousness, saying, “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.” To the woman He said, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”¹

What a Christ.

Watch Him as He sits before a woman caught in the act of adultery. See her with bleeding cuts on her body, dragged like a rag doll before a hungry mob of judgmental men, waiting for the first stone to crush her head and bring her to a death that she justly deserves. Behold your glorious Lord. He asks one question, a question that pierces the heart of every man who is ready to send this woman to her grave. Mesmerized by the Lord’s words, each man drops his stone and walks away. Christ’s parting words to the guilty woman? “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”²

What a Christ.

As we read the Gospel accounts, we cannot help but be awestruck by the wonderful person they present. Yet the startling reality is that this same Radiance that we marvel at in the pages of our New Testaments has come to continue His life in and through us.

Genuine Christianity is learning to live by an indwelling Christ. Consequently, the Christian life should be reframed as God’s life come to earth and displayed visibly through human beings. The Christian life is the outflow of “Christ in you,” the breaking forth of God’s uncreated, indwelling life – the radiating of God’s own energy in fallen, human vessels.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not us.³

Seeing Christianity from this perspective changes everything.

Excerpted from Jesus Manifesto by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola, © 2010 Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola (Thomas Nelson).

¹ Luke 7:47,50
² John 8:11
³ 2 Cor. 4:7

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to interview Max Lucado about his newest book Outlive Your Life. Outlive Your Life is different from many of Max’s other books. It’s a call to action. Max issues a challenge to the church to help feed and clothe the world’s poor. He follows the Book of Acts to show how the early church made an impact on the 1st century world, and wonders if it might happen again.

I think the most compelling thing about Outlive Your Life is the message that we ordinary folk, can make an impact on our world. I know I’m no Moses, or to give a female equivalent, no Esther. I probably won’t save my nation from extinction by an evil tyrant or deliver a new commandment, but I can help a few people.

When Jesus gave the disciples their mission as recorded in Acts 1:8, he says, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Similarly, in Outlive Your Life Max wants to know “Who is your Jerusalem, Samaria, and ends of the earth?”

I have some ideas about who these people are in my life, how about you?

Clear here to listen to my interview with Max Lucado.

I believe in supernatural healing. There, I’ve said it.  I know there are Christians who struggle to accept the more “unusual” manifestations of God’s power and even believe that the time for these things ended centuries ago. They believe that healing, etc. was a gift God gave to the apostles when the church first began, so it would spread more quickly, but has since stopped.

I wasn’t raised in a Charismatic or Spirit-filled church. I was raised in Maine at a nondenominational church that emphasized Bible Study, prayer, and loving your neighbor. We weren’t quite the “frozen chosen,” we mixed our hymns with contemporary chorus songs, but we didn’t discuss the gifts of the Spirit either.

However, I’ve come to believe it happens for two reasons.

1. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. His nature and power haven’t changed. He spoke to people individually in the days of Moses and Jacob, sent angels to bring messages, healed leprosy, raised the dead 2,000 years ago, and he does it now.
2. I’ve seen healing happen. At a revival service, here in Massachusetts, I watched a woman’s spine straighten, evidenced by the growing length of her leg. God undid years of damage and pain she had suffered from a herniated disk.

It’s also hard to ignore the dozens of books and stories that have  surfaced lately. Supernatural manifestations and healing are no longer only something you hear about happening at house churches in India, or revivals in Kenya. God is afoot right here in the good old United States of America.

Here’s a short list of recent books where regular people have encountered the life-changing power of God:

Raising the Dead: A Doctor Encounters the Supernatural by Chauncey Crandall

The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven by Alex and Kevin Malarkey

Flight to Heaven: A Pilot’s True Story by Capt. Dale Black

Encountering Heaven and the Afterlife: True Stories from People Who Have Glimpsed the World Beyond by James L. Garlow and Keith Wall