Jesus’ Convictions

An excerpt from Chapter 3, What Kind of Faith Really Matters,
from the book Faith and Doubt by John Ortberg.

The testimony of those who claimed to know Jesus was that there was a remarkable congruence about him. What he said and what he thought were in harmony with what he did. He was the Man of good faith.
He was also a teacher. What kind of convictions do you think Jesus is most interested in changing—public, private, or core convictions?

Like any good teacher, he is most interested in people's core convictions about the way things truly are. This is faith at the level where it really matters….

Here's how it worked for the disciples. Jesus appeared, and he lived with a new kind of mental map that was in perfect agreement with the reality of God and God's Kingdom and God's presence breaking through right here. Congruency existed between what Jesus said and what Jesus thought and what Jesus did. He believed that there was a heavenly Father who was always present with him, always loved him. Jesus believed that in the way that I believe in the reality of gravity.

The disciples looked at Jesus, and they thought, I like his life. I wish I could live like that. When they tried doing the things that Jesus instructed, they found that his teachings actually made sense when they acted on them. Forgiving worked better than vengeance. Generosity worked better than hoarding. They began to believe these truths for themselves.

The growth of the disciples looked something like this: First they had faith in Jesus; then they began to have the faith of Jesus. Their mental maps began to look like Jesus’ mental map. Finally, after his crucifixion and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit, his disciples realized that Jesus is the Savior of the world—that he really is the revelation of God himself—and therefore they trusted him with their eternal destinies as well. Elton Trueblood wrote these words, and I think they are profoundly true: “The deepest conviction of the Christian is that Christ was not wrong.”

Faith involves certain beliefs. Faith involves an attitude of hope and confidence. But at its core, faith is trusting a person.

Nevertheless, we often try to get people to trust Jesus for eternity—to get them into heaven—without their first learning to trust him for their daily lives. As a matter of psychological reality, this just does not work. It produces people who say they trust Jesus and who might even think they trust Jesus, but what they do shows that they do not share his ideas about the way things really are and the way life really works. Therefore they are not able to live the way that Jesus would live in their place. It is hard to live as Jesus would live if we do not share at the core level his convictions about the way things really are. This is why James wrote, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if people claim to have faith but have no deeds? Can such faith save them?... Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do” (James 2:14,18 TNIV).

Some people who claim to be Christians are selfish, greedy and judgmental…. Others are humble and generous. Both may say they trust Jesus. Both may think they trust Jesus. But their mental maps—their convictions about the way things really are—are night and day away from each other and produce two different kinds of people and two different kinds of souls even though they affirm the same creed. I think this is why I have sometimes found myself more drawn to someone who is “outside the faith” than to another person who is considered a leader of it….

Interestingly, Jesus never said, “Believe my arguments.” He said, “Follow me.” At the end of his longest recorded talk, he told the story about the construction business, in which houses get built wisely or foolishly (Matthew 7:24-27). It always reminds me of the story of the Three Little Pigs. Each character builds a house. Each house faces a test. Houses built wisely survive; houses built foolishly crumble.

"These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.

"But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don't work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards." (Matthew 7:24-27 MSG)

Here is the challenge of the story: We all are house builders. Our houses are our lives, and we construct them out of the choices we make day by day. Like it or not. This is not optional. We are launched. We have to put our houses somewhere.

We all are storm facers. We all will face trials and ultimately death. The big bad wolf is coming our way. This is not optional.

We will choose how to construct our lives. We will choose the convictions we build them on. We can build them on rock or straw. We can make them of wood, hay, or brick.

The risk doesn't go away. We cannot know ahead of time how the house will stand up to the storm. Still, we all have to build a house. But will we ever get home? ■