It was a weeknight in September, 2008. Brenna and I drove from our home in Delaware to New Jersey. We were going to get to spend some time with Len Sweet at a nice steakhouse in Morristown, NJ. I remember three things from that evening. First, the food was amazing. Second, Len told us that he has only one requirement when he treats people: he won’t pay for your chicken! Third, Len asked me if I had read much of Frank Viola. I told him that I hadn’t. I had heard his name floating around in my doctoral cohort and there was a disparity of opinions about his book with George Barna called Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices. But Len said something I haven’t forgotten. “Whatever you think about Frank,” Len said, “he always comes back to Jesus.”
That was entirely in line with what I had heard from Len in two years of doctoral work. “I’m not as concerned about what you believe as who you are in relationship with,” he told us. His point then is the same point he and Frank make in their new book, Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ.. Truth is a person and his name is Jesus. When we are in a relationship with Jesus, the Spirit will guide us into all truth, specifically, into a deeper relationship with Jesus. If we are centered around Jesus, then we are brothers and sisters, regardless of what we believe about eschatology, ecclesiology, or pharmacology. (Ok, that last one is not as important.) Len and Frank even mention in the book that they have not had discussions on these and other theological topics, and on some of these they may disagree. But they are deeply in love with Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the incarnation of God, the creator and sustainer of all. He is what matters. And around Him, we can all join hands.
It reminded me of my own experience where I was challenged about who Jesus. It was a Thursday night during my latter college years. I went with three guys whom I had discipled earlier in my college years to restaurant called Shoneys. Three of us were committed to ministry full-time. In fact, at the time we all were either currently serving or had served on a church staff.
We sat there eating our meal and our discussion centered around the church. We were complaining about the church. We were frustrated by the church. We were experiencing what many who want to change their world experience. We had almost finished and the waitress dropped our check off beside me. Not long after she dropped it off, she returned to pick it back up and take it with her. I assumed that she had made a mistake and took the check to correct it. When she didn’t bring it back, I asked her for our check and she told me that someone had been taken care of the check. Stunned, we stood and in a louder than normal level said “Thank You!”. A voice from my right sounded: “Guys, got a minute?”. We turned to see a man sitting alone so we went over to talk with him.
He told us that he had come from Canada and owned a ski resort. He was in Huntsville, AL for a convention for a group of Christian men who worked in the marketplace. He had driven around the entire city of Huntsville and felt compelled to stop at this particular restaurant. He was seated two tables from us. And it was he who picked up our check that night.
He told us that he could hear our conversation. He noted that we talked a lot about the church. We griped and complained. We shared our frustrations. He also noted how we talked about the gospel. It was important and people were not sharing it with others. Then he noted specific people sitting around us. He told how they were listening as well. One lady, he said, was captivated by our discussion. Another was listening intently as well. I could see their faces in my head as he pointed where they had sat. Then he pointed out something that has haunted me and yet driven me ever since. He said to us four college guys, “You talked about the church and you talked about the gospel, but you never once mentioned the name of Jesus. You had the chance to point a whole section of people to the only one who could save them, the supreme sovereign of eternity and you didn’t. The church doesn’t save people. Jesus does. So guys, let me ask you, ‘What does Jesus mean to you’?” That night we went around the table and described what Jesus meant to us. He gave us a blessing and sent us on our way.
That experience transformed my life. Theology is great. The Bible is wonderful. But it is really all about Jesus. Nothing else. No one else. It is Jesus and Jesus alone. It is the name of Jesus that transforms life. No other name under heaven can do that. No other thing under heaven can do that. The most important thing we can do is have a deep and abiding relationship with Jesus. Everything in life flows out of that one relationship.
The book, Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ, is an expansion of a document the two released in 2009 with the same title. It is a call to come back to Jesus. Christianity is nothing without Jesus. Our lives are not to be centered around anything but Jesus. We should not be a gospel-centered, social-justice-centered, kingdom-centered church. We are to be a Jesus-centered community of Faith.
Len and Frank take the reader through the scriptures attempting to describe the indescribable person of Jesus, and they do a wonderful job. The authors challenge you to get a fresh vision of Jesus through the Old Testament and understand Him fully in the New Testament.
Christianity is, simply, Christ. Nothing more, nothing less. It is not an ideology, a philosophy, a social ethic, a cause, a core value or a worldview. Christianity is “the ‘good news’ that beauty, truth and goodness are found in a Person—a real and living Person who can be known, loved, and experienced—and that true humanity and community are founded on connection to that Person.”
Christians have lost sight of the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ, replacing the gospel with the language of gospel, justice, values, self-help and leadership. The authors point to Paul’s letter to the Colossians as the key Scripture that will help the church recover an understanding of Jesus Christ who “is all and in all.” The Jesus presented by Paul “smokes brain cells in one’s effort to grasp Him. He embodies the inexplicableness of almighty God. This is the same Jesus you have today.”
“In a church filled with leader-oholics, justice-oholics, commandment-oholics, and doctrine-oholics,” it is essential that Christians comprehend Paul’s message, the authors say. With this fresh glimpse of Jesus, Sweet and Viola challenge their fellow believers to reject the “bestseller Christianity” that wraps up self-centeredness in spirituality, and to start living as “walking, breathing Jesus Manifestos.”
This may be the most important book you read this year. If we can fall passionately in love with Jesus and let the Spirit form us into the image of Christ, a movement can be born as Christians passionately in love with the all-sufficient, unselfish Jesus pour life into a dead world longing to be reborn.
