Stripping Jesus
Randall Caselman
11/12/97
Stripping Jesus
Rough Roman hands tore the clothing off the already tortured body of Jesus,
they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on Him. Matthew 27.28. The move is on in our world to strip Jesus, not of His clothing, but of who He is and what He has done and continues to do on our behalf.
The world tries to strip Jesus of His deity.
The world believes that Jesus was just a mere man, another Mohammed, Gandhi, Abraham or Moses. Stripping Jesus of His deity denies His preexistence, His equality with God and His Lordship. Jesus was God in the flesh.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
Stripping Jesus of His deity eats like acid at the vitals of Christianity. It makes His blood, shed on the cross, as impotent as water, to remove the sins of humanity. Indeed, if Jesus was
just another good man, then He has no power to save us.
The world is stripping Christ of His work as Savior.
The world contends that Jesus was a good man, but not the Savior of humanity. Jesus said, I
am the way, the truth and the life: no man comes to the Father, except by me.
We are not saved by the teaching of Jesus. We are saved by the
person of Jesus Christ. Salvation is "
in Christ," not about Christ.
We are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ... In Him we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace. If we could have been saved by our knowledge, by our own law keeping, then why did Jesus have to go to the cross?
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.
The world seeks to strip Jesus of His Lordship.
Our world wants a king and the benefits of living in His kingdom, but they do not want a Lord. We want the benefits of His blessings, but we don’t want Jesus ruling over us. The idea of submission is no longer popular. We want to enter the kingdom, but we don’t want to be
born again of water and spirit. We want to call upon His name, but do not want to do what He asks. We want to honor Him with our lips, but not love Him with all our heart, mind, body and soul. We are willing to give Him a place in our lives, but not first place.
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
The world attempts to strip Jesus of His second coming.
The night before Jesus died on the cross He promised,
If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again. At His ascension, the angelic promise was that
this same Jesus will come in the same manner as you have seen Him go. You see, what we believe about the second coming has a lot to do with how we live daily. If we strip Him of His coming again, then there will be no resurrection, no judgment, no eternal reward in heaven.
Well, we've talked about the world stripping Jesus, how about us personally? Are we guilty? Bobby Dockery wrote in a recent bulletin article that some of us don't want Jesus. He noted that there are several ways we can ignore Him...
Strip Him:
• Sometimes we ignore Jesus by our own conscious decision to exclude Him from our lives. We just don't want Him involved in our home, career, school, government or friendship circles. We don't want Him influencing our decision making.
• Sometimes we force Jesus out by our own wickedness. We strip Him of His rightful place in our hearts. We love sin and sinning more than righteousness. We must know that Jesus will not live in such a heart focused on sin.
• Still at other times, we crowd Jesus out by becoming preoccupied with things. We just do not have time for Jesus. We don't really intend to exclude Him, but somehow there are always other things to do and there is never time for Jesus.
Our challenge today is to take time to examine our own heart. Are we stripping Jesus of His deity, His work as Savior or His lordship? Are we ignoring Him, forcing Him out of our lives by our love of sin or by simply failing to make time for Him?
—
RANDALL CASELMAN
