The Abiding Influence of Jesus Upon Our Lives

Wendell Winkler

 

One of the definite pieces of evidence of Christ’s divinity is his unprecedented and unequalled influence. The unlimited and unquestioned influence of his word is one of the unanswerable pieces of evidence of its divine inspiration. In less than fifty years after the death of our Lord, there existed a congregation of Christ’s disciples in every major city of the Roman empire (Col. 1:23). In fact, the Lord even had his disciples in Caesar’s household (Phil. 4:22). And, down through subsequent time he has continued amazingly and wonderfully to influence man. As the Pharisees expressed it, “Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? behold, the whole world is gone after” (John 12:19). Indeed, no one has ever started to begin to commence to influence the world as greatly as did Christ. Perhaps the greatest tribute ever written to the influence of Christ is the one titled, “One Solitary Life,” by an anonymous author.

 

Here is a young man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty, and then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never owned a home. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put his foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place he was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

 

While he was still a young man, the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross, between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for the only piece of property he had on earth, and that was his coat. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen centuries wide have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race, and the leader of the column of progress.

 

I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that ever sailed, and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as has that one Solitary Life.

 

In this present study we propose to set forth the past, present, and potential influence of Christ and his word.

1. The Influence of Christ on Time

 

Time is even marked by his birth. Even infidels cannot erect a building, sign a deed, or put a signature on a check, loan or mortgage, without giving credit to the Lord’s influence; for such things are dated A.D. (that is, in the year of our Lord). Before he came the Jews marked time from the creation; the Romans from the building of the imperial city; and the Greeks from the first Olympic games.

 

2. The Influence of Christ on Law and Government

 

President U. S. Grant wrote, “Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet anchor of your liberties. Write its precepts on your hearts and practice them in your lives. To the influence of this Book, we are indebted for all the progress made in true civilization, and to this we must look as our guide in the future. ‘Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is reproach to any people.'”

THE WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA, Volume 10, page 82, observes, “Democratic beliefs in equality, responsibility and care for the weak owe much to Jesus’ lessons in brotherhood and love.”

 

3. The Influence of Christ on Art

 

Many of the world’s great masterpieces in art are religious in nature, many of them pertaining directly to Christ and his life. For example, we recall Leonardo De Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” Van Dyck’s “Christ and the Tribute Money,” Rembrandt’s “The Prodigal Son,” and many, many more.

 

4. The Influence of Christ on Literature

 

In the Library of Congress there are many books about Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and William Shakespeare. However, these pale into insignificance when compared to the number of books concerning Christ. Without the influence of Christ, there would be blank pages in the writings of Tennyson, Longfellow, Dickens, and a legion of others. Prominent books include In His Steps, Pilgrim’s Progress, and The Imitation of Christ.

5. The Influence of Christ on Music

 

Without Jesus there would be no “Joy to the World,” “Tell Me the Old, Old Story,” or “Jesus, Lover of My Soul”; yea, not even “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord.”

 

6. The Influence of Christ on Education

 

The influence of Christ and his religion have contributed to the establishment of some of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. These institutions of higher learning were established by men of religion upon Christian principles and primarily for religious purposes. Harvard, Yale, Texas Christian University, and others illustrate this point. How tragic they have wandered so far from their original moorings!

 

7. The Influence of Christ on Children

 

Christ and his gospel undermined infanticide (the killing of infants). Seneca, a Stoic philosopher, and contemporary with Paul, wrote, “We strangle a mad dog; we slaughter a fierce ox; we plunge the knife into sickly cattle lest they taint the herd; children who are born deformed or weakly we drown.” But Christianity changed this. Where Christianity has gone, mentally or physically handicapped children are given loving care and are affectionately known as “little angels.” The advocacy of abortion is totally incongruous with the ethical principles of Christianity.

 

8. The Influence of Christ on Womanhood

 

Where the Bible has not gone, woman is a slave to man and man is a slave to himself. Where the Bible has gone, women have been elevated because the Bible teaches

 

• that woman is divinely created (Gen. 1:27; 2:21-23; Matt. 19:4),
• that woman is the complement of man (Gen. 2:18-23),
• that honor is to be given unto her (1 Pet. 3:7),
• that God chose to have his Son become incarnate through birth of a woman (Gen. 3:15; Isa. 7:14; Gal. 4:4; Matt. 1:18-25),
• that man is to love his wife as he loves his own body (Eph. 5:28-29), and
• that a man’s wife is from the Lord (Prov. 19:14).

 

9. The Influence of Christ on the Sanctity of Life

 

A former African cannibal, as he sat reading his Bible, was asked by a European trader what he was doing. “Reading the Bible,” was the reply. “That book is out of date in my country,” replied the trader. “If it had been out of date here,” said the African, “You would have been eaten long ago.”

John G. Paton was a missionary to the New Hebrides Islands. At first the British government refused to give him permission to go, saying the people of the island were the most savage people known. However, Paton persisted so vigorously that the government finally conceded to let him go. He and his wife landed on the island under armed guard. These also stood by while the missionaries built their house. When the house was completed, the guard left, thinking that they would never see the couple again. Soon thereafter, Mrs. Paton died, and the natives were so morally low that they even demanded her body for a feast. Her husband had to lie on her grave, gun in hand, assisted only by his dog. When he was convinced that sufficient time had transpired as to render her body inedible, he went to his lonely house and stared translating the Bible into the native tongue.

He worked with these islanders for thirty years. Then, a commission of the British government came to visit the island. Upon seeing the situation, they published an official document stating that the “cannibals” had become the most advanced of all the native tribes who lived under British authority!

Brother F. W. Mattox, after a trip to Nigeria, West Africa, wrote in the Firm Foundation, January 19, 1965, the following:

 

The people of Nigeria are friendly, courteous, eager for education, and interested in the plea to return to New Testament Christianity. This report will sound unbelievable to some, but it is true. A road runs through the campus of our Onicha Ngwa Bible college property eleven miles north of the city of Ada. Formerly the Ibos and the Efficks fought across the line which divides their territory. The savagery was so intense that no person would dare walk this road at night. As late as 1957 Brother Akandu, a great gospel preacher, saw human flesh, being dried and used as food in seven different homes in the immediate area of this mission compound—and some of it was fresh. His last time to see such was in 1960.

 

Our mission program and Bible training college was established in this location in 1958 and one of the Nigerian officials, whose father was the judge of this area, said, “It had been as if the ‘Peace of God’ had descended on the area.”

 

10. The Influence of Christ on the Dignity of Man

 

C. Goodpasture relates some interesting facts concerning slavery in the June 2, 1966, issue of the Gospel Advocate. Slavery was so prevalent in the Roman Empire that the Roman Senate did not pass a suggestion that slaves be dressed so as thus to identify them since they outnumbered the freemen. And slavery never existed in a more depraved form than in the days of the Roman Empire. Caesar put on a gladiatorial show with 600 slaves in the arena at one time to fight wild beasts. Flaminius, according to Plutarch, to entertain a guest who had never seen a man die, put a slave to death. According to Seneca, Pollio fed his fish by cutting his slaves into pieces. Trajan forced 10,000 slaves and gladiators to contend for life in the Roman amphitheater, with the bloody contest lasting for 123 days.

Now, though the New Testament does not say, “Thou shalt have no slaves,” wherever it has gone, slavery has ceased. Why? Christ and his word teach principles (the golden rule, Matt. 7:12, and that a Christian master and slave are brothers, Phile. 1:16) which abolish slavery.

 

11. The Influence of Christ on the Home

 

Through Christ’s teaching on

 

• the divinity of the home (Matt. 19:1-9),
• the indissolubility of marriage (Rom. 7:1-4),
• the necessity and nature of love (Eph. 5:22-33; 1 Cor. 13:1-13),
• the individual responsibilities of the members of the family (Eph. 5:22-6:4), etc., the home has been stabilized. On the other hand, the absence of disrespect of these scriptural principles contributes to the disintegration of the home.

 

Conclusion

 

Matthew 7:16-20; James 3:12. These passages teach us that something is known by the fruit it bears. Everywhere the Bible has gone, or Christ has been preached, marvelously great and positive changes have occurred; morally, socially, economically and religiously. Indeed, Christ in the past, in the present—and we believe potentially—has influenced time, law and government, art, literature, music, education, children, womanhood, the sanctity of life, and the dignity of man and the home.

 

Some questions:

 

Question one: With his influence being so totally wholesome, why are we trying to remove every trace of Christ and his word out of our government and our school systems? To further elaborate, there is not an infidel alive, of any stripe, who would want to live where the influence of Christ has not gone. James Russell Lowell expressed it this way:

 

The worst kind of religion is no religion at all, and these men living in ease and luxury, indulging themselves in the amusement of going without religion, may be thankful that they live in lands where the gospel they neglect has tamed the beastliness and ferocity of the men who, but for Christianity, might long ago have eaten their carcasses like the South Sea Islanders, or cut off their heads and tanned their hides like the monsters of the French Revolution. When the microscopic search of skepticism, which had hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society and has found a place on this planet ten miles square where a decent man can live in comfort and security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted; a place where age is reverenced, infancy respected, manhood respected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard—when skeptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way and laid the foundation and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the skeptical literati to move thither and then ventilate their views. But so long as these men are dependent upon the religion which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate a little before they seek to rob the Christian of his hope, humanity of its faith, in that Savior who alone has given to man that hope of life eternal which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave its glooms. THEREFORE STAND, Wilbur Smith, page 32.

 

Question two: Will we not renew our efforts to take Christ to a world so desperately in need of him?

 

Question three: What influence is Christ having over my life? Is he the savior of my soul? Is he the pattern of my behavior? Is he my refuge in the storm, my comfort in sorrow, and my hope in despair? Is his coming, and the prospect of an eternity with him, the guiding star of my journey from time to eternity?