The Gnostic Jesus, like the Buddha, Lao-tse, or Sufi masters, offers deep teaching on esoteric spirituality—techniques that quickly become salvation by works. What attracts me to the biblical Jesus is that he came not just to teach but to accomplish a task I cannot accomplish myself. By his actions alone, in obedience to God his Father, in the amazing drama of grace, Jesus brings about the end-time utopian kingdom. People enter it by faith as a gift from God. This message holds the immense promise of a transformed universe.

People meet Jesus in many ways. Mine was typically unspectacular. Born to Christian parents, I grew up in a Christianity that sometimes came quite close to the kind described in the early 2004 movie Saved!. The film portrays—sometimes quite brutally—a kind of Bible-quoting evangelicalism that is high on group emotion and personal salvation but woefully inconsistent and shallow on the demands of Christian behavior and biblical thinking. Jesus was preached as the Savior, but I cannot remember any consistent preaching on the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and moral teachings.

How many times as a young person did I make my way to the altar rail when the call to conversion was made by visiting evangelists? On my knees, with tears, I determined to be a better believer. Clearly, those times equaled the number of times I was quite convinced I was not saved. In my youthful and superficial way, I kept meeting Jesus and then losing him.

In college, my childish faith died. I began the serious business of growing up and proving to all—including myself—the significance and importance of my own person. In this project, Jesus had no place.

One day, as an adult, I met Jesus—or should I say, Jesus met me—at the beginning of my adult life. In the middle of a PhD program (ironically in ancient Gnosticism, no less), my life of self-affirmation and success-seeking came to a screeching halt. I was studying religion simply to put “PhD” after my name so I could finally believe in my own significance. The doctorate was not to help others with knowledge I might acquire. It was to help me. But I was running out of gas. Selfish living can drive you nuts, and I was beginning to doubt I had the inner resources to pull off this final effort of self-affirmation.

It was the beginning of the discovery of Jesus—not just as the personal Savior but as the Lord and Creator of the universe, and thus the all-consuming discovery of the Bible’s theistic worldview, of which Jesus is both the center and the fulfillment. In a profound, emotional experience, I saw Jesus on the cross, in time and space, really dying for my sins. He granted me inner cleansing, brought me reconciliation with my Maker, and allowed me to accept my real self—giving me the freedom to stop being consumed with me and instead be concerned about him and serving others.

This is the biblical Jesus I know and love. When I compare him with the Jesus of Gnosticism, only he makes sense of my life.

Meeting the Biblical Jesus

Sometimes the Gnostic Jesus is presented as “a new Jesus” for a new global era.

Read More