My wife loves food, but she’s a picky eater. And a dish’s appearance often depends on her mood. Recently, after a long day of self-quarantining, toddler-chasing, homeschooling, and lunch-skipping, I cooked dinner for my exhausted wife.

I take pride in preparing home-cooked hamburgers. I won’t gush or boast about it here, but nobody in my family complains. Everyone was hungry so the kids were served first. I wanted to make Sarah’s burger extra special. She’d earned it. 

I found a BOGO on over-sized sesame seed buns earlier that week. I toasted them to a light brown perfection (If you’ve not eaten yet, I apologize). I set out all her favorite condiments. Mayonnaise, onions, ketchup, mustard, and pickles. Order matters. After spreading the perfect amount of mayo on the bottom bun, I sprinkled on some diced onions, then topped it off with ketchup. It was a thing of beauty.  

The top bun I swirled with mustard, then selected two flawless pickles to complete the dressing. What a sight. The colors, texture, and combination of flavors would blow her mind. I couldn’t wait to serve my wife this work of art! 

I’m not sure how it happened. In hindsight, my eagerness to serve coupled with her ravenous hunger, produced what occurred next. 

My wife ate a hamburger without any meat—and wouldn’t have known it had I not looked in the skillet minutes later and discovered a lonely patty waiting to be consumed.

What does this have to do with Christianity? Since hamburgers imply the presence of meat and since my wife is not a vegetarian, the missing patty was a mistake. I can’t remember laughing so hard at an epic dinner fail. Nobody got hurt or went hungry. She scarfed down that patty with a fork.

Christ is missing from so much of Christianity today. Like the patty in that burger, he is assumed.  

We need a second edition of Michael Horton’s Christless Christianity. As the not-so-subtle title suggests, that book was a prophetic wake-up-call to the church. Horton sounded the alarm of gospel-deviation, but only a few heeded his warning.    

As I survey the landscape today, I think we (I) still have work to do in this area. Our church services, sermons, books, and even music are often beautiful. They mention Jesus. They praise Jesus. They celebrate Jesus. They feature Jesus. But I wonder if, in reality, Jesus is present in name only, like my “ham-burger”—consumed by a starving church while the real power and protein sits alone, unused, in a skillet. 

Here is one way I’ve forgotten Jesus in the skillet while serving my church a meal. 

Making Jesus an EXAMPLE instead of the SAVIOR 

I remember making fun of the “Dare to be a Daniel” youth material and wanting to scream when hearing another misguided application of David slaying Goliath. 

Nevertheless, replacing the example of Daniel and David with Jesus is not an automatic win. 

Who can follow in the fearless footsteps of Daniel or fight bullies like David? Let’s not be ridiculous. Those guys are in a league of their own. But the solution is not to scrap their story, or to replace those figures with the more devastating example of Jesus. 

“Being like _____” is not the primary point of any story in the Bible, really. The Big Idea is not an idea at all. He’s a Savior. One came who was “greater than” failed kings and flawed prophets. They needed his rescue as much as we do.  

How do we miss that? How did we not see how much more crushing the flawless, perfect, sinless, spotless example of Jesus would be? 

Loving God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength; loving my neighbor as myself; saying “no” to every temptation to sin in word, thought or deed; believing everything God has ever said; living a perfect life? That’s a crushing example to follow. If that’s the main point of my sermon—what I use to foster hope, generate courage and motivate obedience for God’s people—we’re all in trouble. 

How could people receive that? “Come on! Get it together! Look at Jesus! Do what He did! What’s wrong with you? Do better. Try harder. Be perfect!” Think of trying to match just the childhood example of Jesus. How defeated would you feel? But then add his perfect record as an adult. 

There are plenty of occasions for us to admire Jesus being faithful in the face of opposition, temptation, or while experiencing weakness, fatigue, and even apprehension (Garden of Gethsemane). And the author of Hebrews calls us to “consider Jesus” on more than one occasion. But that’s a far cry from holding out the example of Jesus as the main point of a sermon, or of Christianity. That’s self-help, salvation by moralism dressed up in Christian clothes. It’s a burger without meat. It’s good advice, not good news. It’s another gospel.    

The “good news” of the Gospel is the declaration that something has been done for you by another, in spite of you. And that the work really is “finished.” Anything else is salvation by works, no matter how shiny and tasty it looks. Sally Lloyd-Jones in The Story of God’s Love for You writes:     

Now, some people think the Bible is a book of rules, telling you what you should and shouldn’t do. The Bible certainly does have some rules in it. They show you how life works best. But the Bible isn’t mainly about you and what you should be doing. It’s about God and what he has done. 

Other people think the Bible is a book of heroes, showing you people you should copy. The Bible does have some heroes in it, but (as you’ll soon find out) most of the people in the Bible aren’t heroes at all. They make some big mistakes (sometimes on purpose). They get afraid and run away. At times they are downright mean. 

No, the Bible isn’t a book of rules, or a book of heroes….There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.     

In the past, I’d be tempted to list some qualifications now, throw in some texts just to ensure you didn’t misunderstand or think I was an antinomian. But sometimes qualifications take away from the scandal of the Cross, the offense of the Gospel, and the real power of Christianity. Qualifications can weaken a sense of desperation and dependency on the finished work of Jesus—work you can’t repeat and shouldn’t try to repeat.  

Jesus is not your example. You can’t be like him anymore than you can run like Usain Bolt, sing like Adele, or swim like Michael Phelps. Jesus is your Savior. And that’s the best news in the world—what keeps Christianity weird. It’ll get you thrown out of a synagogue, a mosque, a shrine, and a temple. But simply believing it will usher you right into the perfect presence of God with pardoned sins and imputed righteousness.

Jesus as my example is crushing. It’s exhausting. And it’s misleading. Jesus as my savior is surprising. It’s refreshing. It’s scandalous. It’s freedom. May the Spirit of God help us to ensure it’s not missing.