When I was visiting my uncle, aunt and cousins in Houston, Texas after my junior year of high school, Uncle Joe kindly took it upon himself to teach me how to drive. He was amazingly patient as I tried to follow his instructions on the old, orange Chevy pickup truck he called “Aurora.” It had a 3-speed manual transmission on the column, starter button on the floor, and clutch I had to learn to negotiate along with the gas pedal and brake.
It was frustrating early on, figuring out how to engage and disengage the clutch while releasing the brake and stepping on the gas without either stalling out the truck or revving up the engine. Then there was learning to back out of his long driveway. Cars – and old trucks – didn’t have backup cameras then. Eventually I caught on, and his tutoring has served me well.
To this day I remember many of the things Uncle Joe taught me about driving. But some things he didn’t need to teach me. For instance, he never cautioned me about texting while driving. The reason is obvious: There were no cell phones in those days. Even if they had existed, he wouldn’t have said, “Yeah, sure, go ahead and chat on your phone. Sounds like a great idea to me. Let the other drivers look out for themselves.” He also never cautioned me about carrying explosive devices in the trunk of my car, or driving blindfolded.
Some things are so evident they don’t need to be said.
I mention this because increasingly we’re hearing people opine about what somebody else didn’t say. That somebody is Jesus Christ. People – even some within the Church – read His quotations in the four gospels, along with some in the Book of Acts and other New Testament books. (Printed in red in some Bibles.) Then they conclude, “Jesus didn’t have anything to say about this, so He must have had no objections to it.”
Seems they’re assuming Jesus’ words in the Scriptures represent the totality of everything He said and thought about during his 33 years on earth. This is ludicrous. If we were to take every one of His statements in the Bible and put them together, they probably wouldn’t amount to more than a week or two of conversation, if that.
The words of Christ in the Scriptures aren’t everything He ever said. They are, however, everything the Lord deemed necessary for the writers of the New Testament to include as they recounted His life and ministry. Just as the Bible doesn’t comprise everything there is to know about God – but it’s everything He determined we need to know about Him. All the libraries and bookstores in the world couldn’t begin to contain all the information about the infinite, eternal God who created the universe.
The apostle John wrote, “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of His disciples which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:30-31).
What I’m getting at is the way some folks offer opinions of what Jesus would say about myriad topics, ranging from abortion and illegal immigration to lifestyles that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago. As if to say, “Since Jesus didn’t comment on it, He must not have a problem with it.”
Jesus never said anything either about kicking puppies, jumping out of airplanes without a parachute, running with scissors, taking up two spaces in the mall parking lot, or leaving the seat up on the toilet. Does that mean He would advocate such things?
When someone asked Jesus about what He considered the greatest of all commandments, He replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:38).
In other words, if we can succeed in following these two commandments, we’re doing well. Some choose to put extra emphasis on “Love your neighbor as yourself,” but Jesus said the greatest commandment of all is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Our thoughts, our actions and our words should all be governed by this mandate.
Another time, near the beginning of His “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus asserted that His intent was not to cast aside the teachings that had been clearly established in the Old Testament, which comprised the Scriptures at that time. He declared, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17-18).
Jesus was affirming that Old Testament teachings on such things as sexual immorality, stealing, murder, envy, and many others were not being nullified. He had come not only to serve as the atoning sacrifice for such sins, but also to provide us with the strength and freedom to overcome them.
The entirety of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is the revealed Word of God. In essence, the very words Jesus would speak to us today. As 2 Timothy 3:16 states, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking correcting and training in righteousness.”
