DAY 281
CHALLENGE
“Why can’t I, as a Christian, simply choose the beliefs I think are right? Why should anybody else tell me what I should believe?”
DEFENSE
This may be an attractive proposition in our individualistic age, but it wasn’t Jesus’ view.
If you’re going to be a Christian, that means listening to Jesus Christ, and he set up a Church, not a cafeteria. We aren’t allowed to pick and choose our beliefs like we pick and choose dishes in a serving line.
This is evident from the way Jesus teaches. In the Sermon on the Mount, he repeatedly takes on common interpretations of Jewish law and corrects them by his own authority, using the formula, “You have heard . . . but I say . . .” (Matt. 5:21–22, 27–28, 31–32, 33–34, 38–39, 43–44). The authority with which he taught was remarkable even in his own day: “The crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:28–29; cf. Mark 1:22, Luke 4:32).
Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God. His teaching is backed by divine authority—“My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me” (John 7:16)—and one is not a faithful Christian if one rejects what Christ taught. That has implications, because Christ did not keep this authority to himself. He gave teaching authority to the ministers he put in charge of his Church, telling them: “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16).
He further promised them, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13), and he declared: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:18–20).
Jesus thus invested his Church with the authority to teach until the end of the world, and if we want to be Jesus’ followers, we cannot simply pick and choose our own beliefs.