Jesus Manifesto by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola: a review
Christians have made the gospel about so many things–things other than Christ.” So says the back-jacket of Len Sweet and Frank Viola’s collaborative effort, which seeks to “Restore the supremacy and sovereignty of Jesus Christ.”
There are some really great things to be said about this book. A couple of chapters in particular really brought some perspective and changed the way I looked at things, but all in all there wasn’t a ton I hadn’t seen/heard/read before. I would like to specifically bring up two things that I really loved. Here, I’ll quote one:
Jesus Christ is like a vast ocean. He is too immense to filly explore, and too rich to fathom. You are like a bottle. The wonder if the ocean is that the bottle is in the ocean, and the ocean is in the bottle
You see, Jesus, the biggest thing in the universe, the person so completely above and beyond anything we could ever imagine, wants to (and does, when we give our lives to him) take up residence within us. But at the same time, we are in Him. I could say that over and over again and it would still blow my mind, but I take comfort in it. The God of all wants us. In the book’s seventh chapter, the guys explore the flaw in most of the religion thrown around Christianity these days. We’ve become so obsessed with being “like” Jesus that Christianity has become about behavior modification instead of life change. No, that’s not just semantics, there’s a real difference. Christianity isn’t trying to be like Jesus, Christianity is KNOWING Jesus. Len and Frank believe the source of this flaw dates all the way back to the garden of Eden. There were two trees; the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The writers believe the choice that faced Adam and Eve still faces us today. I’d like to quote a big hunk of the book here, because it explains the point way better than I could.
The meaning of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil can be understood by the serpent’s promise: “By eating from this tree, you will be making your own decision. You will be like God, determining for yourself what is right and what is wrong.” The fall of humanity was all about women and men assuming the posture that they don’t need anyone to tell them what to do. They would decide for themselves what’s good and what’s bad. They would be self-sufficient and self-determining. Of course, what was ignored in that discussion was the tree of life. God wanted humans to eat from the tree of life. Eating from the tree of life meant receiving the uncreated life of God into oneself. The tree of life was God’s own life made accessible to human beings. Today, the tree of life is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Here are the two choices before you today: 1. The choice to intellectually know good from evil and to try to do good = the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 2. Living by the life of God, which is goodness itself = the tree of life
So, what tree are you eating from? I think that’s a relevant question today, as we live our lives between the trees.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”