Genius Jesus

Genius Jesus

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Third Week of Lent

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030713.cfm

Jeremiah 7:23

Walk in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper.

Luke 11:20, 23

Jesus said, “If it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you … Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

Jesus is the full expression of God’s spirit “materializing,” becoming physical.  We say Jesus is fully human as well as fully divine.

God tells us to walk in his commands because he made us and knows how we work.  He wrote the instruction book, and it’s reasonable that we would want to know what he says about us.  Jesus wanted to know, that’s for sure.  He “only did what his father was doing.”

Because of this, the fully human Jesus did things very very well.  He did not make mistakes.  He did not follow any path that became a dead end.  He was, as Dallas Willard says, “the smartest person who ever lived.”

Willard has observed that we don’t see Jesus that way.  In this article (http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=67) and in The Divine Conspiracy he points out that we rarely apply the categories of intelligence to Jesus:

“In our western culture, and among Christians as well, Jesus Christ is automatically disassociated from brilliance or intellectual capacity. Not one in a thousand will spontaneously think of him in conjunction with words such as ‘well-informed,’ ‘brilliant,’ or ‘smart.’ “

If I expect Jesus to “show me how” to prosper, then I need to change my way of thinking about him.  There is NOTHING more important than discovering his way of doing things.  Willard continues,

”Can we seriously imagine that Jesus could be Lord if he were not smart? If he were divine, would he be dumb? Or uninformed? Once you stop to think about it, how could he be what Christians take him to be in other respects, and not be the best informed and most intelligent person of all: the smartest person who ever lived, bringing us the best information on the most important subjects?”

Jesus touches me with what he calls “the finger of God.”  That tiny touch, that brush with the ruach of God, infuses every instant of my life with intelligence and direction.  Not mine.  God’s.  Inside my skin, yes, but this is God.

You bless your children well, Lord, and make us wise beyond our years.  We must not appropriate this wisdom for ourselves, or take credit for your work within us.  Instead, we praise you and adore you and bless your holy name.  We invite your habitation.

http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1159