The Jesus I Never Knew

The Jesus I Never Knew

by Philip Yancey
The Jesus I Never Knew

The Jesus I Never Knew

by Philip Yancey

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Overview

How does the Jesus of the New Testament compare to the Jesus we think we know so well? Join bestselling author Philip Yancey as he conducts an enlightening biblical and historical investigation into the real Jesus.

From the manger in Bethlehem to the cross in Jerusalem, Philip Yancey presents a complex character who generates questions as well as answers--a disturbing and exhilarating Jesus who wants to radically transform your life and stretch your faith.

In The Jesus I Never Knew, Yancey:

  • Cuts through existing views and preconceptions of Jesus, citing experts from church history, modern history, and popular culture
  • Discusses how different people and cultures view Jesus
  • Dissects popular quotes about Jesus
  • Points us back to the Bible

The Jesus I Never Knew will engage your heart, mind, emotions, and senses, preparing you for a new, life-changing encounter with the real Jesus described in the Gospels.

Praise for The Jesus I Never Knew:

"This is the best book about Jesus I have ever read, probably the best book about Jesus in the whole century. Yancey gently took away my blinders and blazed the trail through my own doubting fears, pious know-it-all, and critical balderdash until I saw the Savior anew and thought I heard him ask me, 'Now whom do you say that I am?' and I understood the question as I never had before."

--Lewis B. Smedes, Senior Professor, Fuller Seminary

"Philip Yancey takes the reader with him on his very personal journey to Jesus. In The Jesus I Never Knew, I became convinced that the Jesus I met--in some ways for the first time--has known me all along. This book is destined to become a favorite--to recommend to those still seeking Jesus and to pass along to those who've met him, but long to know him more."

--Elisa Morgan, President Emerita, MOPS International


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780310295815
Publisher: Zondervan
Publication date: 09/09/2008
Sold by: HarperCollins Publishing
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
Sales rank: 251,992
File size: 6 MB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Philip Yancey previously served as editor-at-large for Christianity Today magazine. He has written thirteen Gold Medallion Award-winning books and won two ECPA Book of the Year awards, for What's So Amazing About Grace? and The Jesus I Never Knew. Four of his books have sold over one million copies. He lives with his wife in Colorado. Learn more at philipyancey.com.

Read an Excerpt

Part One

Who He Was

The Jesus I Thought I Knew

Suppose we hear an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation ... would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape.... Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre.

G. K. Chesterton

The Jesus I Thought I Knew

I first got acquainted with Jesus when I was a child, singing "Jesus Loves Me" in Sunday school, addressing bedtime prayers to "Dear Lord Jesus," watching Bible Club teachers move cutout figures across a flannelgraph board. I associated Jesus with Kool-Aid and sugar cookies and gold stars for good attendance.

I remember especially one image from Sunday school, an oil painting that hung on the concrete block wall. Jesus had long, flowing hair, unlike that of any man I knew. His face was thin and handsome, his skin waxen and milky white. He wore a robe of scarlet, and the artist had taken pains to show the play of light on its folds. In his arms, Jesus cradled a small sleeping lamb. I imagined myself as that lamb, blessed beyond all telling.

Recently, I read a book that the elderly Charles Dickens had written to sum up the life of Jesus for his children. In it, the portrait emerges of a sweet Victorian nanny who pats the heads of boys and girls and offers such advice as, "Now, children, you must be nice to your mummy and daddy." With a start I recalled the Sunday school image of Jesus that I grew up with: someone kind and reassuring, with no sharp edges at all--a Mister Rogers before the age of children's television. As a child I felt comforted by such a person.

Later, while attending a Bible college, I encountered a different image. A painting popular in those days depicted Jesus, hands outstretched, suspended in a Dalí-like pose over the United Nations building in New York City. Here was the cosmic Christ, the One in whom all things inhere, the still point of the turning world. This world figure had come a long way from the lamb-toting shepherd of my childhood.

Still, students spoke of the cosmic Jesus with a shocking intimacy. The faculty urged us to develop a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ," and in chapel services we hymned our love for him in most familiar terms. One song told about walking beside him in a garden with dew still on the roses. Students testifying about their faith casually dropped in phrases like "The Lord told me...." My own faith hung in a kind of skeptical suspension during my time there. I was wary, confused, questioning.

Looking in retrospect on my years at Bible college, I see that, despite all the devotional intimacies, Jesus grew remote from me there. He became an object of scrutiny. I memorized the list of thirty-four specific miracles in the Gospels but missed the impact of just one miracle. I learned the Beatitudes yet never faced the fact that none of us--I above all--could make sense of those mysterious sayings, let alone live by them.

A little later, the decade of the 1960s (which actually reached me, along with most of the church, in the early 1970s) called everything into question. Jesus freaks--the very term would have been an oxymoron in the tranquil 1950s--suddenly appeared on the scene, as if deposited there by extraterrestrials. No longer were Jesus' followers well-scrubbed representatives of the middle class; some were unkempt, disheveled radicals. Liberation theologians began enshrining Jesus on posters in a troika along with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

It dawned on me that virtually all portrayals of Jesus, including the Good Shepherd of my Sunday school and the United Nations Jesus of my Bible college, showed him wearing a mustache and beard, both of which were strictly banned from the Bible college. Questions now loomed that had never occurred to me in childhood. For example, How would telling people to be nice to one another get a man crucified? What government would execute Mister Rogers or Captain Kangaroo? Thomas Paine said that no religion could be truly divine which has in it any doctrine that offends the sensibilities of a little child. Would the cross qualify?

In 1971 I first saw the movie The Gospel According to St. Matthew, directed by Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. Its release had scandalized not only the religious establishment, who barely recognized the Jesus on-screen, but also the film community, who knew Pasolini as an outspoken homosexual and Marxist. Pasolini wryly dedicated the film to Pope John XXIII, the man indirectly responsible for its creation. Trapped in an enormous traffic jam during a papal visit to Florence, Pasolini had checked into a hotel room where, bored, he picked up a copy of the New Testament from the bedside table and read through Matthew. What he discovered in those pages so startled him that he determined to make a film using no text but the actual words from Matthew's gospel.

Pasolini's film captures well the reappraisal of Jesus that took place in the 1960s. Shot in southern Italy on a tight budget, it evokes in chalky whites and dusty grays something of the Palestinian surroundings Jesus lived in. The Pharisees wear towering headpieces, and Herod's soldiers faintly resemble Fascist squadristi. The disciples act like bumbling raw recruits, but Jesus himself, with a steady gaze and a piercing intensity, seems fearless. The parables and other sayings, he fires in clipped phrases over his shoulder as he dashes from place to place.

The impact of Pasolini's film can only be understood by one who passed through adolescence during that tumultuous period. Back then it had the power to hush scoffing crowds at art theaters. Student radicals realized they were not the first to proclaim a message that was jarringly antimaterialistic, antihypocritical, pro-peace, and pro-love.

Table of Contents

Contents Introduction Session 1: The Jesus I Thought I Knew Session 2 : Birth: The Visited Planet Session 3: Background: Jewish Roots and Soil Session 4: Temptation: Showdown in the Desert Session 5: Profile: What Would I Have Noticed?
Session 6: Beatitudes: Lucky Are the Unlucky Session 7: Message: A Sermon of Offense Session 8: Mission: A Revolution of Grace Session 9: Miracles: Snapshots of the Supernatural Session 10: Death: The Final Week Session 11: Resurrection: A Morning Beyond Belief Session 12: Ascension: A Blank Blue Sky Session 13: Kingdom: Wheat Among the Weeds Session 14: The Difference He Makes About the Writer

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