Encounters with Jesus by Timothy Keller

Author:Timothy Keller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2013-11-19T05:00:00+00:00

SIX

THE GREAT ENEMY

In the first five chapters, I have sought to address some of life’s biggest questions using the life of Jesus as depicted in the New Testament Gospel of John. I’ve done that by looking at accounts of Jesus’ encounters with everyday people, where we see that meeting Jesus changed their lives forever. But how can we encounter Christ today? In these case studies, we have seen again and again that Jesus does not primarily come as an example; his job is not to model for us the answers to the big questions. He’s not even primarily a teacher, telling us the answers to those questions. No, he comes as a savior—to be the answer to the big questions. To do for us what we could not hope to do on our own.

If we want our lives to be changed forever, we, too, need to encounter him as a savior. To do that we need to see what he did for us. And it is in the key events of Jesus’ life, where we can see most clearly how he becomes a savior for us. So in these final five chapters, I will look at some of these pivotal events in the life of Jesus as they are presented in the New Testament Gospels.

(You may wonder why I’ve left out the three best-known events of Jesus’ life—his birth, death, and resurrection. The reason is that because these events are more familiar to us, their meanings for us are generally clearer. Without the incarnation, for example, Jesus could not have become human and taken our punishment. The crucifixion means that there’s a solution for guilt, a pardon for sin. The resurrection means we will eventually get new bodies that will signal our triumph over death. All of these great and miraculous events of Jesus’ life are obviously crucial and we have looked at each of them to some degree in the earlier chapters. In the following pages, we will look at some less well-known incidents that take us even deeper into what Jesus did to save us. He overcomes evil for us [chapter 6], intercedes for us [chapter 7], obeys perfectly for us [chapter 8], leaves earth to reign for us [chapter 9], and leaves heaven to die for us [chapter 10].)

Let’s look first at how Jesus’ public life was launched. Two events happened back-to-back to prepare him for the single most world-changing career in history. In three of the four Gospels, these incidents—Jesus’ baptism and his subsequent temptation by Satan in the desert—are presented together, and I believe this is for a good reason.

Here is the story from Matthew, chapters 3 and 4:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.