Jesus: The Softer Side Of God?

Jesus: The Softer Side of God?

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

Colossians 1:15

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.

Hebrews 1:3, NIV

Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father!

John 14:9

Find a penny or a nickel or a quarter. What do you see? The face of Abraham Lincoln? Thomas Jefferson? George Washington? The image on the coin perfectly corresponds to the mold that was used to make it.

This is the same idea the Bible is talking about when it says Jesus is the “exact representation” of God. Jesus is completely the same as the Father even though they exist separately—like the mold and the coin. Jesus is the perfect, personal imprint of God in time and space. But some people see the God of the Old Testament and Jesus of the New Testament as two dramatically different beings—a sort of good cop/bad cop scenario. They like the idea of a gentle, nonjudgmental Jesus on the hillside teaching and healing, but they reject the vengeful version of God they’ve picked up from selected Old Testament stories.

Jesus is not the softer side of God, a slightly friendlier version. Somehow he is completely full of justice and completely full of grace at the same time. And he offers us an up close glimpse of God. Jesus shows us God from a different perspective, like taking a photograph of something from a new angle and seeing it differently, even though the object in the photograph hasn’t changed.

Jesus is God’s full personality and power and purpose in the form of a person. He’s a precise copy, a perfect imprint, the exact image of God. He is no less than God himself in human form. Jesus shows us exactly what the God of the universe is like.

DISCUSSION STARTERS

When you picture Jesus, what is he doing? When you think about God the Father, what does he look like in your mind’s eye?

What do you think people in Jesus’ day saw in Jesus that they might not have expected from God?

What things about Jesus’ character make you grateful God is like that?