The New Testament and Jesus

Whether we can trust the New Testament is crucially important, because if we can’r trust what the authors of its documents claim, Christianity as anything more than an ethical code falls apart.

Among the strongest argument for trusting the New Testament is that at least ten different authors wrote its documents, and a few almost certainly didn’t know each other. Yet, they all reached the same conclusion: Jesus is Lord.

Although the term Lord would have been familiar to people living in feudal societies, it can sound alien to modern ears Terms like master and commander each have their place when applied to Jesus, but they do not convey what, in this context, the English word does. To the authors of New Testament books, Lord implies Supreme Ruler of the Universe.

This is an astonishing and counterintuitive title to apply to someone who was brutally beaten and then executed as a common criminal. What, it is reasonable to ask, led them to this stunning conclusion?

Incited by the Jewish authorities, the previously adoring masses quickly turned against Jesus, perhaps because he was not the political leader they hoped would overthrow their Roman oppressors. The regional authorities operated at the behest of the Romans, who at any point could depose them. They appear to have worried that Jesus would do something to destabilize their sometimes tenuous rule and unleash the wrath of Rome on them.

If the saga of Jesus ended with his crucifixion, faith in God through Christ would have died with Jesus on the cross. But that’s not what happened. Instead, and against all odds, God restored Jesus to life.

What made Jesus’ resurrection especially astonishing was how this man, severely beaten, bloodied, and put to an excruciatingly death, soon showed up seemingly healthy, in a room occupied by his closest disciples. Jesus did this once when Thomas was absent, and again when Thomas determined for himself that God raised Jesus from the dead.

Not long after this, a zealously devout Jew named Saul was on his way to persecute those be considered to be lapsed Jews in Syria. They had become followers of the Way. Reports of the resurrection had become so widespread that these Jews risked ostracism, which had serious social, economic, and if Saul had his way physical consequences.

Christ confronts Saul on the road to Damascus and asks the pointed question, “Why are you persecuting me?” Temporarily blinded, Saul becomes the Apostle (messenger) Paul, Christianity greatest evangelist and author of most of the letters in the New Testament. In them, he eloquently explains the monumental significance of Christ. He also reports in one of his letters that many people who were still alive had seen the resurrected Lord.

If you read much of the New Testament, you may be surprised by how long some of its documents are and therefore by the amount of time and effort that went into writing them.

You may also become persuaded that it is unlikely that reports of the resurrection were part of a conspiracy, since there is no evidence that any New Testament authors ever changed, denied, or watered down what he wrote. An event of singular significance shocked them into belief, and this was the resurrection and all that it implied.

For a variety of reasons, it is far-fetched to suggest that Jesus never died but only appeared to, and that his followers overpowered those guarding his tomb and made off with the body.

There is a sense in which the New Testament is self-validating. Some people are open to its claims and find them persuasive. Others are willing to accept them provisionally, in the hope that God will show them whether or not the claims are true. Still others have decided they could not possibly be true, in which case we might ask on what basis they reached such certainty.

No one knows the extent to which God takes an individual’s experiences and circumstances into account. Nor how God responds to a person’s beliefs and what shaped these beliefs, and in many cases therefore to someone’s faith or lack of it. Each of us is influenced in countless ways to think, feel, and act as we do—to move toward, against, or away from God.

There may be surprises coming. People who are smugly persuaded of their personal nobility and moral excellence may end up gravely disappointed. Surprises may await those who, having many nudges to accept God’s love, refuse to respond to it and cling to their own virtue for justification, rather than acknowledging, as revealed in Jesus, the difference between their hearts and God’s.

Some people may never have had anyone show them Christ’s face and they therefore they may never have had the chance to see God. Some may have grown up in high-crime areas and been recruited by gangs. It may turn out that the hearts of some raised in such circumstances are closer to God’s heart than the hearts of people living comfortably in large houses situated in affluent neighborhoods with manicured lawns and well-funded schools.

No one knows for sure the extent to which God may factor in someone’s opportunities, and whether that person, had he or she been presented with the gospel in a credible way, may have responded to it. God, however, knows.

The New Testament, more than any other book or set of books, contains what we need to know to establish an ongoing relationship with God through Christ. Those who spend their time fretting over whether to trust, or how exactly to interpret, a particular passage in the New Testament are in danger of becoming distracted and missing what God wants to communicate to us—what Jesus taught and personified.