What did Jesus Christ actually teach? What did He say? There are many who argue that Paul's writings might be more important than Christ's teachings in the Gospels for their own theological reasons, and yet Paul only really expounded on what Jesus Himself taught, and was adamant that the beginning, middle, and goal of everything He taught, said, and did was to gain Christ at the expense of everything else. Paul ate, drank, slept, and breathed Jesus Christ so that he said, "I no longer live but Christ is alive within me." And as Paul wrote, "Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" So, if nothing else, Paul himself would argue that what Jesus Christ taught, said, and did was of far more importance than his own opinions and writings about things.
So, back to my question. What did Jesus Christ actually teach? This tends to be an uncomfortable question for a lot of Christians, because they call Him "Lord, Lord," but tend to see His teachings as suggestions or guidelines for the truly devout or pious, but not really practical for day to day living. And, to be honest, many try and find ways around what He taught. They call themselves His disciples, they do nearly everything in His name whether He taught it or not, but neither meet the conditions of discipleship nor attempt to imitate Him on any level which could be considered discipleship. They prattle on about being saved, yet no one can discern what they appear to have been saved from based on how they live.
The truth is, anyone who has even read the Gospels casually knows exactly what Jesus Christ taught. Even unbelievers know what He taught as they watch those who take His name, talk about how great He is, and totally ignore and do the opposite of what He taught.
For the record, Jesus Christ taught to Love God, love one another, love the person next to you, and love your enemies. He excluded no one from this list. He said that everything He said and did was what the Father instructed Him to say and do. Nothing more, and nothing less, and if you had seen Him, you had seen the Father. He said don't judge, or you will be judged. He said forgive, and you will be forgiven, don't forgive and you won't. He said that, in a nutshell, if anything became an obstacle to following Him whether it was a relationship, possessions, anything you might worry about or have anxiety about, your own soul, a body part, or anything else, that it needed to be let go from your life or you couldn't be His disciple. He taught that those who spoke evil of the Holy Spirit who did the miracles and demonstrations of power through Him, testifying to who He is, then they wouldn't be forgiven either in this eon or that to come. He taught His disciples to make their home in Him, and stay put there, because without Him they could do nothing. And if anyone didn't, they would dry up and be burned like dry grass, but those that did make their home in Him, and His words stayed put within them, they would ask whatever they wished and it would be done for them. He taught that sinners would enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the religious elite, and that you would know a tree by the fruit it produces referring to the aforementioned religious elites. These are the things Jesus Christ taught, and others along the same lines.
For those of us who call Him, "Lord," and take vows or oaths to Him explicitly or implicitly, these things must be in front of our minds at all times. How can we seriously call Him "Lord," if we ignore what He says? We make ourselves liars and worse by so doing. We treat Him and what He taught with contempt when we don't strive to imitate Him as a disciple his master, and as Paul and the author of Hebrews wrote, God doesn't take kindly to Jesus Christ being treated with contempt. We bring judgment on ourselves when we call ourselves by His name, and treat what He said like it was nothing. We bring judgment on ourselves when we turn our backs on the covenant He sealed with His blood to remove our sin and join us to Himself and run back to law keeping of any kind, which Paul repeatedly and explicitly wrote about. We bring judgment on ourselves when we ignore the pleas of the poor, the needy, the widow, and the orphan, especially when we are the cause of their suffering, and this not even from just the New Testament, but God was clear about this all over the Old. When we say we don't posses a malfunction and we're just fine, we call God a liar.
If the core of your theology and practice is not Jesus Christ, then there is something wrong. You are professing and living some other Gospel, but not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you are teaching some other doctrine as superior to or superceding what He taught His disciples, then you are teaching your own doctrine and your own opinions and not the doctrine and teaching of Jesus Christ. The person who does not love, does not recognize God, because God is love. And this is how we know that we recognize Him, by His love flowing through us to those around us. This is how we know that we have been made right by Him, when all those around us can experience and encounter Him through us, when we choose mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than all the religious rights of worship in the world.
Ask yourselves, are you following what He taught? Or are you treating what He taught as mere suggestions meant for other people?
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