The Jesus I Never Knew (Philip Yancey)

an email from January 2006

Over the Christmas break I was able to finish a couple books I had been reading... this one called “The Jesus I Never Knew” by Philip Yancey and then I finished “Let The Nations Be Glad” by John Piper too. But that little summary of the Piper book I’ll send out sometime later this week.

I really liked “The Jesus I Never Knew”. It showed me a side of Jesus and His life that sometimes I have failed to consider. The chapters were broken down as follows: His Birth, Background (Jewish), Temptation, Sermon on Mount, Miracles, Death, Resurrection, Ascension and Kingdom.

Listen to what these 2 “big-wigs” had to say about the book:

“Yancey’s flair for honest, vivid, well-informed down-to-earthness gives piercing power to these broodings on the gospel facts about Jesus Christ. In a day when novel ideas about Jesus are all the rage, Yancey’s pages offer major help for seeing the Savior as he really was.” – J.I. Packer

“There is no writer in the evangelical world that I admire and appreciate more.” – Billy Graham

Something that was really interesting too was the research he did:

Before beginning the book I spent several months in three seminary libraries – one Catholic, one liberal Protestant, one conservative evangelical – reading about Jesus. (pg 20)

This quote jumped out at me too because the victorious, warrior Jesus is pictured as in Revelation is seldom taught in our upbringing today.

Jesus, I found, bore little resemblance to the Mister Rogers figure I had met in Sunday school, and was remarkably unlike the person I had studied in Bible college....Two words one could never think of applying to the Jesus of the Gospels: boring and predictable. (pg 23)

Does anyone else listen to (or listened to) Audio Adrenaline... I never knew where they got one of their quotes / songs from.. but now I know :)

Underdog. I wince even as I write the word, especially in connection with Jesus. It’s a crude word, probably derived from dogfighting and applied over time to predictable losers and victims of injustice. Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog. (pg 39)

These next quotes talk about Jesus’ birth and upbringing:

As I got to know Jesus, the realization sank in that he probably did not spend his life among Jews in the first century merely to save Americans in the twentieth. Alone of all people in history, he had the privilege of choosing where and when to be born, and he chose a pious Jewish family living in a backwater protectorate of a pagan empire. (pg 50)

We know that Jesus was raised in poverty: his family could not afford a lamb for the sacrifice at the temple and offered instead a pair of doves or two young pigeons. ~ see Luke 2:24 and Lev 12:6-8 (pg 59)

This one’s pretty blunt too... but needs to be said (I love the hymns :p)

I know that among many Christians an emphasis on future rewards has fallen out of fashion. My former pastor Bill Leslie used to observe, “As churches grow wealthier and more successful, their preference in hymns changes from ‘This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through’ to ‘This is my Father’s world’.” (pg 111)

Something else this book taught me and made me question was this...

Somehow we have created a community of respectability in the church, I told my class. The down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, no longer feel welcome. How did Jesus, the only perfect person in history, manage to attract the notoriously imperfect? And what keeps us from following in his steps today? (pg 148)

Jesus was the friend of sinners. They liked being around him and longed for his company. Meanwhile, legalists found him shocking, even revolting. What was Jesus’ secret that we have lost? (pg 149)

How hard it is to remember that the kingdom of God calls me to love the woman who has just emerged from the abortion clinic (and, yes, even her doctor), the promiscuous person who is dying of AIDS, the wealthy landowner who is exploiting God’s creation. If I cannot show love to such people, then I must question whether I have truly understood Jesus’ gospel...From Jesus I learn that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, or otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven. (pg 245)

Ironically, our respect in the world declines in proportion to how vigorously we attempt to force others to adopt our point of view...For this reason, I must say in an aside, I worry about the recent surge of power among U.S. Christians, who seem to be focusing more and more on political means. (pg 246)

When I ask a stranger, “What is an evangelical Christian?” I get an answer something like this: “Someone who supports family values and opposes homosexual rights and abortion.”... Jesus did not say, “All men will know you are my disciples ... if you just pass laws, suppress immorality, and restore decency to family and government”, but rather “... if you love one another”. (pg 247)

We give lip service to “hate the sin while loving the sinner” but how well do we practice this principle? (pg 259)

As you can probably tell... that chapter and 14 pages on “the Kingdom” caught me and really made me think. What is the proper balance that a Christian is to have between politics and “the Kingdom”... I’m not sure?!?! But I do know that I have a far way to go.
Something else that was interesting that I hadn’t really thought about was...

If Easter Sunday was the most exciting day of the disciples’ lives, for Jesus it was probably the day of Ascension. He the Creator, who had descended so far and given up so much, was now heading home. Like a soldier returning across the ocean from a long and bloody war. Like an astronaut shedding his spacesuit to gulp in the familiar atmosphere of earth. Home at last. (pg 226)

And finally this quote hit me too!

Then out of nowhere this wise woman asked a question that has always stayed with me. “Philip, do you ever just let God love you?” she said. “It’s pretty important, I think.” I realize with a start that she had brought to light a gaping hole in my spiritual life. (pg 269)

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)