Luke 2:34-35 “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”

Before Jesus arrived, the religious scene in Israel was rather tame. You had various Jewish sects like the Pharisees or the Sadducees competing for a following among the people. They were little more than variations on the same theme, different shades of the same color. They were slightly different flavors of the religion of “save yourself.”

But when Jesus appeared, he introduced a radically different way of looking at the human dilemma and God’s solution. He offered a radically different way of looking at God and man themselves. Actually, he represented a return to the God of their fathers, the God of the prophets, so passionate in the demands of his law that no one could actually keep them, so passionate in the promises of his grace and mercy that not a single soul was beneath them.

It was Jesus’ unrelenting and uncompromising preaching of this God, especially his grace and forgiveness that extended to even the lowliest of sinners, that could not be ignored by the religious establishment of his time. They had to declare themselves either for or against– and most of them chose against. Jesus’ preaching of grace cut them open and exposed their hearts.

The Jesus of Scripture has the same effect on people today. I’m not talking about the sanitized, politically correct version of Jesus, one whose message has been watered down to an anemic, “Can’t we all just get along?” I’m talking about the Jesus who didn’t mince words about sins like divorce, lust, worry, or greed; who could publicly judge and condemn the prayers and the charity of the hypocrites; who could call his enemies blind guides and whitewashed tombs, and even call one of his own disciples Satan.

I’m talking about the Jesus who wrapped himself in our skin. He “learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for his milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross and died whispering forgiveness on us all” (Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel).

You can’t be neutral about that Jesus. His message and person are like a swinging sword that cuts us open and exposes our hearts. That is the Jesus, and that is the God, that Thomas Jefferson once denounced as “a monster, and not a God.”  

But that is also the Jesus, and the God, that once led a man in Bible class to announce that he and his family were looking for another church after studying the story of God calling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mt. Moriah. In response to questions of “Why?” the man said, “Because when I look at that God, the God of Abraham, I feel like I’m near a real God, not the sort of dignified, businesslike, Rotary Club God we chatter about here on Sunday…. I want to know that God” (Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel).

When Jesus words expose our hearts, may they reveal the same sort of passion for knowing him that he had for saving us.