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Except, perhaps, for a few people suffering from a rare form of religious mania and one or two extreme academics who dream of some kind of glory by trying to out-Bultmann Bultmann, nobody, today, believes that Jesus never actually existed. [1] But a belief in the bare fact of his existence has as little to do with Christianity as belief in the existence of Shakespeare has to do with Hamlet. A scholarly quest of the historical Jesus, which was entered upon during the 19th century, proved to be a total failure. [2] A second, more recent 'new' quest has been no more successful. [3] Why is this?

Jesus has outlived his own history

In the first place, the Jesus of history is only completely unknown and unknowable if we take a view of scripture which sets up our own judgment as being both superior to and

more trustworthy than the judgments made by those who knew Jesus personally and wrote the documents which are our only source of knowledge of him. The gospels may not be histories or biographies but this does not mean that they do not contain both historical and biographical fact. Yet it is certainly strange to our way of thinking that we are told so little about the person who is both the source and subject of these writings. We know nothing of the physical appearance of Jesus, and only one single event in his life between birth and the age of about 30 is related (Luke 2:41-52).[4] Almost half of the Gospel of John is concerned with one

single week in Jesus' life! The portrait given us in the gospels is of a man almost completely sublimated to his mission. Any information about him as a human being has to be studiously gleaned - and the gleanings are spare - from accounts which have been written with quite other purposes in mind. (See e.g. John 20:31).

But, again, such knowledge really has as little to do with Christianity as the  knowledge that Homer enjoyed black olives would have to do with 'The Iliad'. The reason for this is much simpler and more obvious than is generally recognized. Knowledge of an historical person is necessarily descriptive knowledge, whereas knowledge of a living person can only genuinely be had by personal acquaintance. I can know a lot about Napoleon, perhaps more even than his closest friend knew, but I cannot KNOW him. Even if it were possible to have a comprehensive descriptive knowledge of Napoleon, it could never take the place of knowledge by acquaintance. With Jesus, however, it is quite different. Descriptive knowledge of him is in extremely short supply, but anyone can become personally acquainted with him. Jesus is unique, for he is the only historical figure who has outlived his own history.

Christ is known only by the indwelling of his Spirit

[5] The New Testament states categorically that "if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain." (1 Corinthians 15:14). [6] It knows nothing of a so-called resurrection experience' [7] but tells in ringing, life-changing, triumphant tones the fact that death has been conquered, that one person has returned truly alive, absolutely victorious. It also claims unequivocally that this person is the self-same man who was seen to die publicly under the watchful eyes of the civil, military and religious authorities, whose body was put into a tomb that was sealed and guarded by soldiers, and on whom, to all intents and purposes, the stone of death had rolled for ever. This is the man who was confidently, repeatedly and thrillingly proclaimed to be alive in the very city in which he had died and to the very people who had put him to death. This proclamation was supported by hundreds of eye-witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:6) and immediately believed by thousands (Acts 2:41). Jesus is most definitely alive. It must therefore be possible not only to know about him but actually to KNOW him. And, of course, it is - not only possible but necessary. Christianity involves a personal relationship with a real person from the historical past who is more alive now than he was then.

Nobody - not even the disciples or his family - has ever known Jesus except by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3). Although the resurrected Christ appeared to many, it was not until the coming of the Holy Spirit that anyone really knew and understood who Jesus was.[8] What changed Peter, for example, was not the life of Jesus, not even the resurrection, it was the experience of Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit of Christ himself to take up residence in Peter's innermost being. That is why he is in perfect sympathy with other believers when he writes, "Without having seen him you love him, though you do not now see him you believe in him" (1 Peter 1:8). The person Peter came truly to know was not the man Jesus who had walked and talked with him in Galilee and Judea, but the Christ of faith living unassailably within him. Exactly the same was true for Paul who had a post-Pentecost encounter with the risen and ascended Christ on the road to Damascus and immediately knew him as 'Lord'. Paul was later to write many times and in many different ways that this Lord and Christ is known only by the indwelling of his Spirit (see e.g. Romans 8:9-11, 1 Corinthians 2:6, 16, 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 etc.).

We do not come to Christ to receive anything

The experience of the disciples was exactly what Jesus had promised prophetically: "the Spirit of truth ... he dwells with you, and will be in you... In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you ... he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him ... my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him ... These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you ... But when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me ... I will send him to you ... He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you." (John 14:17, 20,21,23,25, 26, 15:26, 16:7,14). It is a single promise couched in two forms. The promise that Christ himself would be, in us and the promise that the Holy Spirit would be in us. But notice how Jesus uses the terms interchangeably and tells us that the Spirit's work is to reveal him (Jesus) to us and in us.

We do not come to Christ to receive anything whatsoever. We come to receive HIM, and in receiving him we receive "all things" (Romans 8:32). [9] We come to be born anew by the Spirit,[10] to receive a totally different kind of life. It is, in fact, the life of another, the life of Christ, the life of the Eternal. Someone comes to live his life in me and that someone is the Christ of faith. It is this life, the life of Christ himself, which is powerful in my weakness, immortal in my mortality, light in my darkness, holiness in my sin, Spirit in my flesh. This is the life which cannot sin (1 John 3:9) and cannot die (John 5:21, 26, 6:57, 11:25-26 etc.).

And so I come to the title of this article. There is a Greek word, 'Chrestos', which means 'good' or 'kind' and it is pronounced in almost exactly the same way as the word 'Christos' which means 'Christ'. Acts 11:26 tells us that the believers were first called 'Christians' at Antioch, but the Greek word 'Christianoi' could very easily become confused with the word 'Chrestianoi' in two ways: (1) The word 'Christ' had little meaning in the pagan world. It was commonly believed that the Christians were followers of a criminal slave executed by the Romans. Since the name 'Chrestus' was common, particularly among slaves, it was not unnatural for non-believers to think that the word 'Christianoi' (those belonging to Christ) was actually the word 'Chrestianoi' (those belonging to Chrestus). (2) In the world of that time, the Christians stood out as being good and kind. It is quite possible, therefore, that 'Christianoi' was taken to mean 'Chrestianoi' - 'the good ones'.

You cannot become good by coming to Christ

But Christians are Christ's people, not good people. They have come to Christ [11] on this very understanding, recognizing that far from being good they are actually "wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked" (Revelation 3:17). And this wonderful Christ, this living Lord who alone is truly good, has come to live within them. A Christian has not received a spiritual gift, he has received the gift of the Spirit, that is, Christ himself! A Christian is a person who has opened himself up as a vessel, a container for the One who alone is good, the priceless treasure, the pearl of great price, the lovely Lord Jesus Christ. Any good that a Christian does or thinks or is, comes from that source alone.

NOTES

Rudolf Bultmann, the German theologian, famous for his ‘demythologizing’ of the New Testament. In his book ‘Jesus’ he says that we can know virtually nothing about the historical person of Jesus. Another German, Bruno Bauer, claimed that there never even was such a person (see his ‘Criticism of the Gospel History 1851)

This quest is brilliantly summarized by Albert Schweitzer in his book 'The Quest of the Historical Jesus' (1910), in which he shows how all attempts to    construct a life of Jesus totally fail since they always and inevitably reflect the personality, beliefs etc. of the one writing the life rather than the life written about. T.W. Manson put this cleverly when he said, "By their lives of Jesus shall ye know them."

Inaugurated by Ernst Kasemann in 1953, one of Bultmann's disciples who was unhappy that the historical Jesus of the Gospels was being completely lost. (see J.M. Robinson, 'A New Quest of the Historical Jesus' 1959).

It is Luke (3:23) who tells us "Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age". I have not counted the infancy narratives.

Martin Kahler, as long ago as 1896, in his 'The So-called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ' argued that Christ was not "the mere object of historical research" but a living person with whom each individual can and must become acquainted. Unfortunately, Kahler went too far and implied that the Jesus of history was unimportant compared with the Christ of faith. This is false.