I once thought that given enough evidence all men would come to Christ, but life coupled with a little time in Scripture squashed that folly in a hurry. While there are many biblical passages that transformed my thinking on this matter, it took only a casual reading of John 11 to confirm it. Therein John tells us that Lazarus had died four days prior to Jesus’s arrival to Bethany and even though the family and friends of the deceased knew that things would have been different if Christ had been there sooner, hope, for now, seemed lost. That is when Jesus acted and “with a loud voice” called Lazarus by name and with that summons the once dead man emerged – alive and well.
While Jesus did many miracles, this one seems particularly significant. In fact, it highlighted the two responses so often overlooked in others. The first group followed the evidence and bowed to Christ as “the resurrection and the life” he claimed to be while the other, in rejection, ran to the religious leaders who then began plotting Christ’s demise (John 11:25).
In summary, both groups knew that Lazarus was dead for four days. Both heard Jesus call Lazarus by name. Both groups saw the same wrapped corpse emerge from the cold dark tomb, and both watched him walk among the living in perfect health. As notable is the fact that neither the eyewitnesses nor the Pharisees denied the miracles of Christ, but rather, affirmed them all by their own admission (John 11:47). In other words, the facts did not matter.
2000 years removed, the human heart’s bent on suppressing and then trampling the evidence under foot still emerges in many forms and since Christ is temporarily out of sight, all things both created and affirmed by him are fair-game. This same kind of rebellion appears, for example, in the plethora of Christ rejecting religious sects around the world. Religion apart from Christ says Paul, does not reflect man’s effort to find God but rather his organized disdain for the clear revelation of His power and majesty found in nature (Romans 1). People just don’t care that Jesus is God incarnate as historically evidenced by his physical resurrection, hence, the facts just don’t matter!
It also emerges in the abortion industry. In contempt of both the biblical and scientific evidence regarding the child’s essential humanity, the industry continues to terminate the life of unborn children. As such, it reflects a calculated assault on the God who made us by killing the most vulnerable divine image bearers among us (https://www.link2eternity.com/post/pro-choice-demented-or-demonic). And again, the facts don’t matter!
This brings me to the current all-out war on sexuality, gender, and the family as God meant them to be. Divinely designed and evidentially ingrained in both biology and anatomy, all organized attempts to normalize anything other than that which God intended translates into a fist-shaking spiritual assault on the God who created them (Francis Schaeffer). And once more, the facts don’t matter!
In conclusion, the abundant evidence of Jesus’s identity mattered to neither the tattle telling eyewitnesses nor the religious leaders to whom they reported - they wanted him gone with the sentiments of modern man following suit. Hence, man’s problem with God isn’t intellectual at all, but moral. The problem, then, isn’t a lack of evidence but rebellion in its face.
While the masses continue to rebel against Jesus as both creator and savior, some still follow the evidence where it leads by placing their faith in Christ for their salvation.
To which group do you belong?
Tony
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