Who Really Has the Last Word, Anyway?

by Larry Short

When we started this column in our brand-new Elim weekly e-mail/newsletter, the title was a bit tongue-in-cheek. We called it "The Last Word" simply because we intended it to be the last thing in the newsletter.

But this morning as I was doing my devotions, something I read (John 12:47-50 in The Message paraphrase) reinforced a thought that has afflicted me, a few times, about us so brazenly naming this column "The Last Word." For, in our church, elders do not, should not, really have the last word. So then, who should? Pastors Brian and Martin? The M&Ms? Anyone else?

Here's the passage I was reading that Jesus cried out to the Pharisees:

"If anyone hears what I am saying and doesn't take it seriously, I don't reject him. I didn't come to reject the world; I came to save the world. But you need to know that whoever puts me off, refusing to take in what I'm saying, is willfully choosing rejection. The Word, the Word-made-flesh that I have spoken and that I am, that Word and no other is the last word. I'm not making any of this up on my own. The Father who sent me gave me orders, told me what to say and how to say it. And I know exactly what his command produces: real and eternal life. That's all I have to say. What the Father told me, I tell you."

When considered in the context of who many of the Pharisees thought Jesus was (an itinerant preacher, a blaspheming troublemaker), these are probably some of the most shocking and offensive words imaginable. God the Father, the holy and wholly Other who created the world and exists outside of it for all eternity, whispers His words in the ear of this 30-something young man and he repeats them verbatim to us? And he claims this communication is the message to end all messages? On top of that, not only does Jesus SPEAK this message to us, he lives it. In fact, He Himself IS this message. What an outrageous claim! No wonder the people tried to stone Him! No wonder the religious leadership felt like they had to crucify Him!

Christ's message was clear and inescapable, as the young adults are discovering on Sunday mornings in our book study on C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity: Either Christ is indeed God and our only hope, the only road to God, as He claims to be, and we must accept this and allow it to kick-start our flatlined lives and hearts anew; or else we must reject him as a liar or a lunatic (which no one in his right mind, hearing the words of Christ, can really do); or else, sadly, our only remaining choice is simply to utterly reject His Word because, like Satan and the demons, we reject God Himself. Logically speaking, there simply are no other choices available to us.

And the really scary part is Christ's statement that "whoever puts Him off, refusing to take in what He is saying" is in reality choosing this latter course of rejection. How many of us simply ignore His claims? Simply choose to "put him off?"

We may think that we are free not to choose, or at least to postpone choice until some later (undefined) time. But according to the Bible, by not making the choice we ARE making it. Death itself makes it for us: "It is given unto man once to die, and then the judgment." If you have not yet chosen for Christ, you have already chosen against Him. Or, as C.S. Lewis might put it, death IS the choice; we were born dead (spiritually speaking), and so we have already (by default) made the choice ... unless we are willing to allow Christ to unmake it in us! This is repentance, this unmaking: turning from death to life, allowing His redemptive work (his cleansing blood, shed on the cross) to run its divine, regenerative course in our spirits and souls.

I know this is not the "politically correct" message our society wants to hear. "Oh, Jesus is just allright with me," they say. "A great teacher. I like that 'turn the other cheek' thing he said. It means we should get out of Iraq, right?"

This kind of thing about Jesus being merely a good teacher is obviously nonsensical drivel and asinine fatuity (another great Lewis phrase!), but sadly the world around us would rather believe this than face the inescapable fact of Christ's true Lordship, and the ramifications of that Lordship on our lives.

OK, you may think I am now far afield from my original topic, why we call this column "The Last Word." I really wanted to share that we didn't intend to be as arrogant as we might have sounded. In our church, we must allow Christ Himself to be what he demands to us that He must be: the Last Word. That has several important implications for our Body Life:

1) We must each of us acknowledge that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last. He began His good work in us, and He will finish it. We must look to Him as both the Source (and the final authority) for any doctrine, any teaching, any claim we have on life and godliness. We must be insisting and holding one another accountable, as leaders, members, and simply brothers and sisters in Christ, to be "in the Word" (in Christ) and to be allowing Him to change us daily.

2) We must subject any teaching, whether in this "Last Word" column, or in a Sunday School or adult ed class, or a community group, or a pastor who is preaching behind the pulpit, to the authority of Scripture. I love the fact that Pastors Martin and Brian are always asking for feedback on their sermons. We should be listening carefully, taking notes, praying through what they are teaching us, and sifting it through Scripture. If we disagree (because of what we are hearing from the Lord) WE ARE RESPONSIBLE to share what we are hearing Him say to us. The teachers are then responsible to re-evaluate their teaching, and to either confirm it or retract it in repentance. God takes a teacher's job very seriously. We should too.

3) We must do everything in our power to share the truths of Christ's Lordship with the dying world around us. By His grace and mercy he reached down and redeemed us. He wants us to do the same for others, for those friends and coworkers and neighbors of ours whom he loves so dearly that he gave His very life to save. As Scripture says, "We are his workmanship." We are His hands and feet, His voice speaking His Last Word to humanity.

Amen and amen?

- Larry