Timothy Keller - The First Christian

Also by Timothy Keller

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters

Generous Justice: How Gods Grace Makes Us Just

Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God

The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God

Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City

Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to Gods Work

The Encounters with Jesus Series

The Skeptical Student

The Insider and the Outcast

The Grieving Sisters

The Wedding Party

The First Christian

The Encounters with Jesus Series

V

Timothy Keller

DUTTON

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Copyright 2013 by Timothy Keller

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I have created the Encounters with Jesus Series to help people explore the big philosophical questions they must confront in life, such as Who are we?, Whats wrong with the world?, and What, if anything, will put it right? Greek philosophers believed that the answers to these questions lay in the Logos. The Logos was considered the rational structure behind the universe, what today we might call normative, moral absolutes. The Greeks believed that to contemplate the order in the universe and then to live a life conforming to that order was the highest purpose of human life.

The Christian message both agreed and disagreed with the philosophers in startling ways. Yes, said the early Christian preachers, there is an order to the universe. The world is not just the product of blind, random forces; its history is not a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. There are indeed moral absolutes and a purpose for human life. But, as the first chapter of Johns Gospel puts itthe Logos behind the universe is not a set of absolute principles to be deduced with the intellect alone. It is a Person to be encountered, to be known in a relationship. It is the Maker and Redeemer of the world, Jesus Christ. To know him is to know the deepest Reality.

I believe, therefore, that the essential answers to these daunting philosophical questions lie in the Christian scriptures and particularly in the Gospels where Jesus interacts with people and changes their lives forever. There is no better way to see the transformative power of Jesus than through these encounters in the Gospels. But it is easier to put abstract philosophical principles into words on paper than it is to convey the ultimately indefinable power of a personal experience of Jesus. When my granddaughter Lucy was eighteen months old, it was clear that she could perceive far more than she could express. She would point at something or pick something up and then stare at me in deep frustration. She wanted to communicate something, but she was too young to do it. All people feel this kind of frustration at various points throughout their lives. You experience something profound and then you come down off the mountaintop or out of the concert hall or wherever you were and you try to convey it to somebody else. But your words cant begin to do it justice.

Certainly all Christians will feel like that when they want to describe their experiences of God. As a teacher and preacher, it is my job and greatest desire to help other people see the sheer beauty of who Christ is and what he has done. But the inadequacy of my words (or perhaps any words) to convey this beauty is a constant frustration and grief to me. Yet there is no place in the world that helps us more in this difficult project than the description of Jesus own encounters with people in the New Testament Gospels.

In this essay were going to look at the most foundational aspect of a relationship with Christfaith. Every place we turn in the Bible we are told that all the insights, comforts, and gifts that God can give us through Christ will come to us only through faith. But there is a great deal of confusion about what Christian faith even means. To get a better understanding of this crucial concept, lets take a look at another encounter between Jesus Christ and an individual in the Gospel of John:

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.

So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we dont know where they have put him!

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.

Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.

He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in.

Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen.

Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.

(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, Woman, why are you crying?

They have taken my Lord away, she said, and I dont know where they have put him.

At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.