A Weeping King: Worshipping the God We Still Don't Get - Luke 19:28-44 (Palm Sunday)

Thought before worship: “The Church can disturb the security of sinners only if it us not too secure in its belief that is has the word of God. The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.” ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy

Palm Sunday is an exercise in holy ignorance. Its purpose each year is to remind us that we just don’t get God. That we so often fail to understand His purposes, His word, His answers to our questions, or His solutions to our dilemmas. This is an odd story because we know they’re happy now but we also know where this will lead– we’ve seen the end of the movie. So why do we do this every year? Should we pretend that we haven’t read this before? No, of course not. The point, however, is that even on this side of the events surrounding Holy Week, things that are the crux of our faith, Jesus’s final teachings, his death, burial and resurrection, he’s still mysterious, strange, and odd. We watch him weep and almost 2,000 years after the fact we weep too because if we’ve learned anything it’s that we still don’t get it. That’s our final lament this morning the aching truth that we just don’t understand God.

So our Lenten lament is not over, yet. In some ways, it is just beginning as we enter into Holy Week. It will change so fast - from triumphalist to being trumped, from shouts of “Hosanna” to shouts of “Crucify him.” On this special Sunday prior to Easter, what should we finally lament? We should lament that . . .

           1.      We don’t get the God who acts out Scripture – actually, we just don’t get scripture.

It’s important to realize that Jesus is being very intentional with all this business about a donkey, riding into Jerusalem and the disciples know it. What’s happening here is a sort of biblical trivia and charades all rolled up into one – a whole host of unspoken, dramatized Scriptural clues that Jesus’ audience immediately pick up on that most of us don’t. Jesus was declaring himself to be king.

Right off the bat, it’s helpful to ask, “How many texts are at work here?” “How many bible passages are being referenced?” Any guesses? Conservatively, at least 7. Two of the five are explicit:

First, Jesus is acting out Zech. 9:9 – which speaks of a humble king riding into Jerusalem on a donkey to save God’s people, release prisoners – it’s a cataclysmic, apocalyptic description which identifies the messiah – the long awaited king who would bring them out of political domination, rebuild the temple and make Israel great once again. Jesus is deliberately acting out this text. By the way, have you ever read Zechariah?

That the people get this reference is found by their own political cry of praise taken directly from Psalm 118 which heralds the One who comes in the name of the LORD who will cut off Judah’s enemies. It’s a messianic psalm.

But there is more! There are more subtle allusions like Genesis 49:10-11 – Jacob’s blessing of a coming ruler who ties a donkey to a vine; 1 Kings 1:38-40 which discusses Solomon riding to his enthronement on a donkey; 2 Kings 9:13 – which speaks of the people placing their cloaks on the ground for Jehu after the Lord pronounces him king; Is. 55:12 – speaks of the mountains bursting into song and the trees clapping their hands, and finally Zech. 14:4 – tells us of God’s standing on the Mount of Olives ready to fight on behalf of Jerusalem.

So far I’m just talking about the many biblical references that Jesus chose to act out and for which the disciples, in turn, chose to respond with. It’s a humbling array of texts which speak of a people steeped in the Scriptures. But there’s more at play here than just scriptural allusions: I haven’t even mentioned the historical context of Roman domination and occupation in the region; the cultural context of angaria in which a civic leader or rabbi might requests the use of an animal for a specific purpose, nor the messianic expectations that most Israelites held – that the messiah would, at the very least, be a military leader who would usher in the reign of God by first vanquishing Judah’s enemies.

All of this should leave us a bit feeling like a fourth grader in graduate level astrophysics class. We’re simply chewing on our pencil while we wait for lunch or recess. The spiritual response of (move fingers up and down on lips - bbbbbbbbbbbb).

My point is that Palm Sunday should once again expose us to a reality that is all too easy to forget – not that we simply fail to do what we should do but that we often don’t even know what we should know. We haven’t learned enough Scripture, haven’t read it as thoroughly as we should. 

Why does this matter? Because Palm Sunday reveals that our God is a God who does everything by the book – and guess what, there’s a lot going on in this book. One of the most significant reasons we miss God, is that we haven’t learned God’s word, we haven’t taken it to heart. It’s the deep theological truth that the Holy Spirit never works independently of the word, and that the word is made effective through the Holy Spirit. The Bible, in other words, is your “Wanted Poster” for God. And, ironically, he wrote it himself. It’s how we recognize him. 

How do we address this failure of knowing Scripture that Palm Sunday so aptly reveals?

First, we need to acknowledge what all experts of any discipline know and embrace – the depths of our own ignorance.  

Second, we need to learn to love God’s word and ruminate on it – chewing it, or as the Psalmist puts it, “murmuring” it day and night. We need to give the time necessary to allow Scripture to sink in. We have a phrase for what I’m talking about – “to know something by heart.” It’s to have knowledge become such a part of your life that it can show up without effort - to memorize it so that it remains fixed in our memory molding our minds and our will. I know this isn’t a fun tasks – and many of you are saying, “I have a terrible memory.” It’s interesting to remember, however, that our forbearers in the Covenant who sparked a massive revival were often called “readers.”  

Finally, we memorize it not so that we can be Biblical experts but so that we can pray. Learning the Bible is a lot like learning a language and that requires a certain amount of memorizing but for use not for some esoteric knowledge. There’s a lot to remember when speaking a language. Words matter – illus. Marianne and the beaver story

           2.      Palm Sunday reminds us that reading isn’t enough. You can read and still misunderstand Jesus.

The scariest part of this story is that these good readers, the “multitude of the disciples,” Luke tells us, don’t get it. So Palm Sunday leads us even further down the rabbit hole of the reality that to not get it is more than a problem of deeper knowledge or awareness – it exposes the myth that if we truly knew God’s will, God’s way, we would want to do it.

Luke goes to great lengths to reveal that the disciples don’t get it – Luke 19:11 – they thought the kingdom of God would immediately appear, they thought it would be the destruction of Rome, the vanquishing of real and imagined enemies. Even after Jesus’ talk about turning the other cheek, taking up one’s cross, they believed that spilling Roman blood would save them. The irony that Jerusalem, which means the “city of peace” did not understand what makes for peace. They believed that military might, revolution would be God’s glory but in AD 70 Jesus was proven right as the Roman General Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the temple.

Palm Sunday reminds us that our God often doesn’t live up to our expectations. We struggle to understand why God doesn’t act as we would want Him to, behave the way He is supposed to. It reveals that those who praise him are also quite willing to betray him when we encounter something that we don’t like – that cuts across the grain of our personal beliefs, our political hopes, our own ethical visions. Jesus himself was aware of this – in vs. 14 he cryptically describes his hearers, the disciples, no less, as citizens of a country who “hated” the one sent to them saying, “We do not want this man to rule over us.”

Jesus doesn’t betray us but sometimes his message can feel like betrayal. It grates against a desire to define ourselves by our nation, by our enemies, by our kinship, by our own vision of peace and prosperity. But he has declared that there is only one side for peace, one side for salvation, only one who is King. Jesus tells us that there is no side but mine – and then he weeps. 

Why should we remember this story every year? We need to remember this story because it intersects with ours. They are us. How do I know this? Because we still don’t understand our own suffering let alone his. Because I still so easily praise Him and believe that someone who follows Jesus will have an easy life, a successful life, a life of only wonder and joy. Because many of us still believe that we can bomb our enemies to find “peace on earth and good will towards men.” Because we still often refuse to believe that power is located in the cross. We want Jesus to stop his crying and do something to fix our world – refusing to realize that he has done it. 

And we are reminded – we just don’t get it. But remember, there is grace inside of ignorance.

Some words of encouragement for a people who don’t get it:

We don’t get it – but we still can praise him.

This is a story about praising someone we don’t understand. About worshipping with Scripture on our lips and failing to fully grasp what we are saying. In many respects that’s what worship is.

The author Kathleen Norris writes, “As a poet, I am used to saying what I don’t thoroughly comprehend. And once I realized that this was all it was – that in worship you are asked to say words you don’t understand, or worse still, words you presume to think you have mastered well enough to accept or reject – I had a way through my impasse.

Even though they get it wrong, Jesus still doesn’t silence them. Even in the depths of our ignorance, praising him is the right thing to do.

We don’t get it – but we can still be saved.

Their praise gets it right. He is THE king not OUR king. Jesus did not run for president. He rules whether we like it or not. He weeps for what is true whether we weep or not. And his kingship turns out NOT to be what they or we always imagine. They’re wrongness doesn’t change his ability to make us right. He may weep but he will not stop!

Palm Sunday reveals a gracious ignorance that we can jump into the Christian life with both feet and even more abandon, ever mindful that our failure to comprehend is hardly God’s failure to act compassionately. He doesn’t allow their ignorance to thwart his plan, to change his mind. They didn’t get that the cross would be their victory but their getting it didn’t stop God. What was God’s plan? Well – it’s there right in front of us to see in Luke 19.

Luke 19 begins with Jesus’ own military counteroffensive, his true design to bring a traitor to justice, to enact kingdom rule, to vanquish enemies, to reveal God’s real plan for the wicked – I’m speaking of Zacchaeus. What does Jesus do? He seeks him out, eats with him, loves on him changing him from the inside out. And when their love turns to betrayal – he does what all prophets do – he goes with them, ahead of them into the very judgment that he preaches – death at the hands of the Romans.

Friends, we don’t get it – but He still is God

"Worship Matters" - Friendship & Passing the Peace

Why do we greet one another and what do we mean by passing the peace? What are we signaling about ourselves as a community?

        1.      When we pass the peace of Christ, we declare that the Gospel is about friendship – God befriending us is found throughout the Old and New Testaments (Is. 41:8; Phil. 2:1-8; Ps. 119:63)

·         When we say, “The peace of Christ” we are stressing why we are here – not because of a shared hobby, similar political vision, common ethical norm but because it is Christ crucified and risen again who has called us together. This work is his work. It’s friendship that is about death and life.

·         We enact the gospel – a relationship of deep friendship and reconciliation with each other. As I’ve said before, salvation is as much a social miracle as a spiritual one and will not stand for anything that would divide us (Gal. 2:11-14, Eph. 2:13-19).

         2.      When we pass the peace, we are reminded that friendship is about discipleship. 

·         Welcoming other is not about being liked but is your vocation as a Christian. It’s not “Hi, how are you.” But, “the peace of Christ be with you.”

·         The first exchange intends a life framed by individuals wishing to retain personal boundaries while being nice to each other. The second exchange practices a communal way of life framed by Christ’s action on the cross to bring everyone together.

·         In other words, passing the peace challenges us to be more than polite but dares us to move beyond ourselves—our interests, our concerns—and create Christ-centered community with others. It’s not about being polite but being faithful.

          3.      Passing the Peace of Christ teaches us that the church is maintained by being obedient NOT by being nice.

·         It’s not that being nice is bad but that it’s not enough, doesn’t go far enough in demonstrating the radical love of God. Being nice won’t get the job done. When it gets tough, nice will always politely leave.

·         In the sermon on the mount, Jesus challenged us to define friendship not about being nice to those who like us but by extending welcome to those who don’t like us, who even hate us.

·         It can be abrasive because it’s about changing the hearts of our enemies and witnessing to a love that demands justice and grace.

"Worship Matters" - Saints & Benches

Today’s Worship Matters is an important discussion about what we don’t do. Why does no one sit in those benches on the chancel? Why do we as pastors sit in the congregation?

        1.      If no one sits there it’s because we believe in the priesthood of all believers.

·         Over and over in the letters of the NT, the apostle Paul when writing to the different churches refers to those who belong to that church, even struggling, messed up churches, as “saints” (1 Cor. 1:2).

·         If no one sits there it’s because saints don’t sit - we all have a part to play. The Apostle Peter will refer to all Christians as priest (1 Peter 2:9) – we are all to use our gifts and participate in evangelism, formation, worship, as well as serving one another.

·         Our priesthood is not defined by power or education but shared humility. In Luke 14 Jesus told us not to seek the honored seat but to take the humble one. 

        2.      If no one sits there it’s because our faith is found in the table, font, pulpit, and cross not pastors.

·         We believe our life together in Christ is shaped not so much by good examples or even friendship but the saving act of God who feeds us, bathes us, gives us His Word, and who died and rose again so that we might walk in newness of life.

·         Saints are not fundamentally made by a godly life but by the death and life of God – we all walk the same path toward the same thing - the cross. We are a people polarized around Christ.

·         This doesn’t mean that there are NO good examples but that saints always sit here like everyone else facing those things. These are what give us our identity and our hope.

         3.      If no one sits there it’s because we don’t have to hide or pretend – all saints are broken.

·         We also acknowledge that we still struggle as saints; that our lives move between the poles of following and failing. That we are a community of sinners.

·         As we watch some come up to read, others to sing, and others to pray, we know each other’s stories (divorce, death, addiction, loss, struggle) and we remember that most saints walk with a limp, aren’t always successful, don’t have it all. That all that we do depends upon God and that all that God does involves using broken people for his glory.

A Meal at the Table: Musings on the Atonement

Well - this is probably a more true-to-blog post than my usual sermon manuscript but it's an effort to start a conversation, begun this past Sunday, about the atonement - what happened on the cross, why did Jesus die, what are we saved from, etc. The metaphorical image guiding the discussion comes from N.T. Wright who said that Jesus didn't give a theory to the disciples to explain what he was doing but a meal. That meal also reminded me of the many other meals that Jesus shared with people throughout the gospel accounts and I hope all those meals provide us with a helpful metaphor as we seek to understand and discuss what Jesus has done for us. So, as we sit down at table together I invite a conversation that is gentle and kind, where we pass the dishes with care, mindful that we all have hungers, stories, and things to share.

So, here are some more thoughts on the topic at hand. I just read the book of Galatians this morning and was struck by both what it says about Jesus' work on the cross and what it doesn't. Absent are many of the elements associated, whether rightly or wrongly, with penal substitution and the like. Rather, Galatians speaks of Christ's work on the cross as the act of God and Jesus "to set us free from the present evil age" (1:3). It speaks of Christ having "redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (3:13). Of course, Paul is not arguing that the law is opposed to God but has been "imprisoned" under the "power of sin" (3:21-22). Paul then goes on to speak of Jesus offering us adoption and freedom from the "elemental spirits of the world by his being born - that is taking on our humanity and yet makes no mention of the cross; thereby signifying that Jesus' birth already signaled something critical for our salvation apart from the cross. Finally, Paul ends the letter with the statement: "May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (6:14). Paul's point seems to be that Christ's death frees us from having to follow the law, hence the mention of cirucumcision in vs. 15, and that he is free from the tyranny of the world. I wonder if the latter doesn't fit back into his discussion of elemental spirits; that is, Christ's has freed us from those powers of the evil age that seek our allegiance and devotion.

A few thoughts on Galatians and the atonement: First, I am reminded how much our discussion of the atonement occurs because we allow one book to dominate the discussion. Here I of course mean the preponderance of Romans and the way in which it shapes much of the theology of Christ's work on the cross. This is not to say that Romans is wrong or bad, God forbid, but that it belongs to a canon which contains other books concerning salvation that must also be allowed to speak with equal weight and force. We must, in other words, make sure that the entire Bible is being served at our table and not merely one dish. Second, the book of Galatians focuses on the cross and incarnation as salvific with two foci: saving us from the law which has been, itself, imprisoned by sin and saving us from the present evil age and powers that, while not real gods, enslave us. Absent are any of the penal images that so many evangelicals focus on as well as the defining of sin simply as rebellion. In Galatians, however, sin functions less as an act of rebellion and more as an element of enslavement from which Christ's seeks to set us free. Third, for Paul the incarnation is not merely an instrumental element of the salvation that Jesus brings. Some atonement theories, in other words, are so cross focused that one would think that the only reason Jesus became a human being was to die. However, Paul's discussion, I would argue, makes Jesus' humanity far more salvific than the theories that simply focus on his death - in 4:4 his birth is redemptive.

A few thoughts to pass around and chew on. May the dish of Galatians nourish us as we think carefully about what God has done for us in Christ.

Peace,
Jon

"Be Reconciled": Why we need another Reformation

16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view;^* even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view,^* we know him no longer in that way. ¹⁷So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! ¹⁸All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,^* not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. ²⁰So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. ~ 2 Cor. 5:16-21

The story is powerful and old - the story of a people who have offended and dishonored God. And so restitution had to be made and could not be ignored – God’s honor and justice were at stake. These people, however, couldn’t pay the debt or satisfy the offense. How could they? They had offended God – a being of infinite greatness – and since no human could pay such a breach but God himself and no one should pay it but a human being - Christ had to come and die. Behind this is the idea that the measure of the offense is determined by the status of the offended party; if I offend a beggar, the consequences are not the same as they would be if I offended a head of state. So Jesus was sent by God as a human being, who did not sin, to take up our dishonor of God and then die on behalf of people. He satisfied God’s infinite wrath and restored God’s honor by taking upon himself the terrible punishment that sinners deserved and suffered in their place, allowing God the Father to vent his righteous anger on him rather than on them and us.

Let’s have a show of hands. Have you heard this version? Have you heard someone tell you that Jesus took your place on the cross? Have you ever heard the idea that Jesus’ death paid your debt to God or satisfied God’s wrath? That God held a raised hammer to your life. Or maybe it’s more personal, that you love Jesus but secretly fear God – who rumbles around in the shadowy recesses of heaven like an abusive father.

Have you heard that this is wrong?

This theory of salvation was first constructed by Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 – 21 April 1109) and is probably one of the most successful theological visions of the atonement in the history of Christianity. But it’s wrong. It is not the theology of Paul, nor the witness of Jesus in the gospels, nor even the vision of salvation offered by God in the Old Testament and yet it maintains a remarkable hold over the imagination of many Christians. 

Jesus’ death on the cross is one of the more critical features of our faith. And we need to acknowledge up front that there is no “theory of atonement” clearly presented in the New Testament but mostly compelling yet diverse images, a series of “likes” which seek to explain what God has done – it’s like being released from debt, like liberation from slavery, like welcoming a wayward child, like being healed. And we need to take all of them seriously if we hope to do justice to the Biblical account of what Jesus accomplished. N.T. Wright says, when Jesus was preparing for his death he didn't give the disciples a theory, he gave them a meal and I would add many meals of table-fellowship with sinners. In the Spirit of that and those meals, I would like to engage us in a conversation about salvation. But we must always pay careful attention to the Bible itself. So I would like, this morning, to bring Anselm into conversation with Paul. I can’t cover everything today but I believe this text is an important step in helping us understand this message that God has entrusted to us.

        1.      God has never hated you.

The first question raised for us by Anselm is, “Who needs to be reconciled?” According to Anselm – it’s God who needs to be reconciled. But is that true? “To reconcile” means to restore someone into a right relationship – it acknowledges that there has been a breach. But the Bible never says “reconcile God to sinners” but “sinners to God.” Sin did not change God – it changed us ~ illus. one of the first effects of sin is Adam and Eve fleeing God in terror. The belief that God had changed.

God does not hate you because of sin; rather God loves you and seeks to save you from it. How do we know this? Because of Jesus’ teachings and actions with sinners but also because Jesus is God and God is in Jesus, Paul tells us. So you can’t say that Christ needed to appease God, because as Paul states, “all this is from God” vs. 18-19. And God is not schizophrenic! Not Jeckyll and Hyde.

So what is required of us is good Trinitarian thinking – this is why the Trinity is vital to understanding who God is. God was “in Christ,” Paul says, which means that who God shows himself to be in Jesus is simply who he always is – always was – always will be. There is a phrase associated with two great theologians of the twentieth century which states it this way: “God is Christlike and in him there is no unChristlikeness at all.” In other words, who God is then is the outpouring of selfless love revealed by Jesus on the cross. 

Some of you are saying, “This is all fine and good but what do we do with the biblical discussion of God’s wrath? It’s a good question and I don’t have time to deal with it as fully as I would like but whatever we would wish to say about “wrath” we have to say with Jesus in mind. It simply won’t do to speak of “wrath” as something that exists with God the Father but remains foreign to Jesus. And believe me, Jesus could be angry. – Illus. Angry Jesus in the Gospel of Mark: Mark 1:40 – “Moved with anger, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean.”; Mark 3:1-6 – a man with a withered hand comes to be healed on the Sabbath and Jesus asks, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?” But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger, he was grieved at their hardness of heart . . .”; Mark 10:14 speaks of Jesus being “indignant” at the disciples who wish to keep children away from Jesus. 

Jesus rightly points us to what angers God – sin which keeps people away from God, keeps them wounded, keeps them bound, keeps them afraid – child abuse, racism, exploitation, disease. The object of wrath is sin NOT people. And this wrath should never be appeased or changed. If so, that would mean God no longer hated sin. Why would we want God to NOT hate that which kills and steals our life – injustice, disease, wickedness? 

Listen. If Jesus is God and God is in Christ, then God needs no reparation, it’s we who have to be extracted from sin’s prison of fear and hate if we are to be able to accept God’s free gift of love.  It is we who must be changed so that sin is destroyed. It is not God who must be reconciled, but we who must be delivered from our sin, our hatred and fear of God and one another.

        2.      God doesn’t count sin and doesn’t accept American Express

So, what does God demand? According to Anselm’s theory, we owe God a debt that we cannot pay, that God demands recompense for lost honor.

Paul tells us, however, that what God was up to in Christ was “not counting their trespasses against them . . .” So why do so many of us believe that Jesus’ death was necessary to pay a debt  to God that we could not pay. Well, some of you might be asking, “Isn’t that in the Bible? Doesn’t Jesus equate sinfulness with debt?” And the simple answer is yes (Luke 7). But the Covenant theologian Paul Waldenstrom rightly points out that in “those Bible passages, where the forgiveness of sins is likened to a release from debt, not a word is said about payment, but only about remission.” You can’t have it both ways. Either the debt is forgiven or it’s paid – it can’t be both. A paid forgiveness is no forgiveness. Jesus didn’t pay your debt – it was forgiven.

        3.      It wasn’t supposed to be you.

In Anselm’s argument death is a punishment for sin and it was you who should have been punished on the cross and Jesus took your place. Now, the truth is that something must be done about sin because sin exacts a costs from us – it is in many respects its own judgment – its own destruction – illus. Dante’s Inferno where people continue to sin in hell incapable of stopping. Paul says, “the wages of sin is death.” Simply put, God is the subject not the object of our salvation. We are not saved from God but by God through Jesus on the cross. Sin is like what cancer is to Oncologists. The cancer exists as a problem that needs to be dealt with and doesn’t exists solely in the mind of the doctor or even under the control of the patient. In Anselm’s thinking, however, sin exists as a problem within God – he has been offended and someone must pay for the offense. But the Bible primarily speaks of sin not as God’s problem, per se, but ours. It warps us, keeps us from God and one another, it is our destruction and something must be done about it.  It needs to be healed, in other words, not satisfied so that relationship can be restored. God is not some petulant person who demands an apology – He is the One who knows fully what sin does to people and bore the full brunt of that sin in Jesus so that in him we might be made righteous. So Jesus doesn’t die to placate God but to make us a new creation, to heal us – not of offense but of the disease that threatens our lives. That’s why Paul does not say that Jesus became a sinner on the cross but sin. By taking up our sin, Jesus offers us healing – righteousness – so that we might be reconciled to God. The mechanics are never truly explained by the NT but the intentions and results are – love, relationship, reconciliation and not condemnation. Read John 3:17.

Why does all this matter? Why is this more than an obtuse theological discussion?

Because nothing less than who God is and what God has done is at stake and he has entrusted this message to us. Can you imagine an ambassador of the United States being asked to represent the President and misrepresenting him – who he is, what he wants. That would be devastating in any sort of international relations – treatise could break down, enmity created, even war could begin. Can you imagine doing that God – it has happened before in the church. We need another Reformation in the church when such a wrong theology is rampant, to go and proclaim loudly the gospel of God’s unfailing love, and God who doesn’t count sins but wants to heal them, the God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ.