This week we continue talking about the different ways that balance is required in our faith. I want to spend some time talking about the balance we need in our view of Jesus. Throughout the course of Christian history, people of faith have had to form a balance in their view of Jesus. While Jesus the Savior has never been in question, two views of Jesus have prevailed. One would be called the “high” view of Jesus and the other would be called the “low” view of Jesus. Don’t think of these in terms of the “high” road or “low” road, but the orientation of the view of Jesus you begin with.
Those who have taken the high view, focus primarily on Jesus as the Son of God and His divinity. There is nothing wrong with that, but in some instances, the humanity of Jesus has been fully
ignored. The problem here is that it can lead sometimes to the idea that Jesus did not really suffer on the cross, and some go as far as to claim that he did not really die, but that he was merely waiting for the third day to roll away the stone. The danger in this view is that while it affirms Jesus’ divinity, it means that Jesus does not really experience or understand pain and suffering, and therefore cannot be a companion through the suffering we experience as a part of life.
Those who have taken the low view focus primarily on the humanity of Jesus, sometimes to the exclusion of his divinity. Like the high view, it is perfectly fine to focus on Jesus the man, but it cannot happen to the exclusion of Jesus the Son of God. The tendency or concern here is that it can lead to the thought that Jesus was really just about a philosophy of life, as in how to act with justice and grace instead of judgment and power. Taken to its logical conclusion, in this view Jesus is powerless to save us from sin or to offer us the grace of God.
As you can see, taking either the high view or the low view exclusively is dangerous. The Scriptures, however, call us to live out our faith in the balance where both of these views are correct. And this is where Richard Foster’s (a well-known author on Christian spirituality) categories are important. He points to four ways that the Bible talks about Jesus: Savior and Lord (high view), but also Teacher and Companion (low view). And the great metaphor that Foster uses is to imagine these views working together and imagine them as four spokes on a wheel. If any of the spokes are shorter or longer than the others, the wheel of our faith will not roll smoothly, but if they are the same length (given the same attention in our faith), we find a balance that can roll the wheel where it seeks to go.
I hope that in worship and in practice, you find a good working balance in your understanding of Jesus as Savior, Teacher, Lord, and friend. Blessings, Sonny
Blessings, Sonny