A "Balanced" View of Jesus

Too narrow a view of God in Christ can cause us to miss Him altogether.  This was the affliction of the Jews who were contemporaries to Jesus.  One of the greatest of their prophets, Isaiah, had presented the picture of a Messiah Who was both a “suffering servant” and a “conquering king”.

When you are seeking to be set free from the hard heel of the Roman Empire, as the Jews were in Jesus’ day, you run past the “suffering servant” and embrace the “conquering king” aspect.  What the Jews did not realize, and are still largely ignorant of to this day, is that their Messiah would come first as a “Suffering Servant” and a second time, as a “Conquering King”.

Too narrow a view in the opposite direction can cause those who ought to know better, namely many in the Church, to miss the Messiah a second time.  So, when you recount with warmth the story of the Babe of Bethlehem, temper those warm, fuzzy thoughts with the notion that that Babe will one day return as a mighty, Conquering King, even the “Lion of Judah”.  To not make allowance for this and to factor it into one’s expectation is to commit the greatest of follies.