Part 2: Why the Biblical Jesus Wins – Divinity, Spirituality, and Victory Over Death

By Dr. Peter Jones

I must be a kid at heart, for I love Christmas. There is something in the air—a sense of expectation, a reminder that all is not misery and discouragement. At the heart of this optimism is the biblical message about the baby Jesus, who mysteriously is not just human but also divine. The divinity of Jesus declares that the transcendent God, in gracious condescension, comes to us as Immanuel, “God with us.”

The mystery of the incarnation is too big for my head, but it fits in my heart. The amazing message of the Bible is not how we can seek God, but how God has come to seek and save us. The God who made us and controls the universe has come to redeem us. Little wonder the angels were singing!

There is no Christmas in the Gnostic texts. Jesus appears ethereally poised between earth and heaven—certainly divine, but no more divine than any other well-informed believer. The “gifts” he brings are techniques for self-realization—what the French call a cadeau empoisonné—a gift that keeps on demanding rather than giving.

Michael Graham, longtime assistant to Hindu guru Swami Muktananda, described his experience this way: “Experiences were easy to come by. Somehow they were never ‘it’… Really it was a ride on a merry-go-round forever to nowhere… and so much was starting to look the same.”

The Spirituality of Jesus

Even advocates of the “new spirituality” or revived Gnosticism describe it as a “celebration of the self.” This is necessarily the case. If the choice is worship of the Creator or worship of creation, then worship of creation necessarily includes worship of the self. Gnostic spirituality is ultimately narcissistic. I know my own narcissistic tendencies—but I do not like them.

The Gnostic Jesus speaks constantly of gnosis. The biblical Jesus uses gnosis only once, but speaks of “faith” twenty-four times. For him, faith is the essence of spirituality—rational, trusting discourse between the personal creature and the personal Creator. Faith remains even when the perfect comes. Gnosis, by contrast, is finally hubris: the claim that we are God and the mystery is over.

After decades in Eastern mysticism, personal development, and the New Age movement, Michael Graham concluded: “There is nothing to compare in value with classical biblical Christianity.” The simplicity and truth of faith draw me powerfully to the gospel.

Gnostic spirituality solves the human plight by flight, not fight. It denies the reality of the physical world and proposes escape into virtual, out-of-body experiences.

The Sexuality of Jesus

Why is the Gnostic Jesus so interested in promoting abnormal, anything-goes sexual expressions?

For me, this is one of the clearest places where the two visions of Jesus diverge sharply. I know that some people suffer from sexual dysfunction, but normalizing dysfunction is the wrong route—as the very nature of the universe itself suggests. A clinical psychologist argues that the normal is “that which functions according to its design.” The design of our bodies, written by the good Creator into the fabric of our biology, is heterosexual. This is an undeniable fact.

Unbridled, self-fulfilling sex goes against who we are. It has produced the breakdown of marriage, an epidemic of STDs, sexual identity confusion, and the spread of sterility. On this diet of selfish individualism, our culture cannot survive.

In stark contrast, the Jesus of the Gospels endorses the normal sexuality of creation. He affirms it both as a life-giving and civilization-promoting blessing from God, and as a way of bringing us face to face with created reality—and thus face to face with the personal Creator.

In my better moments, I long for moral purity. Transcending ethical polarities or relativizing right and wrong only rationalizes the selfishness and evil I find in my own heart. The Gnostic message that “we are gods and can do as we please” has produced nightmarish results throughout history, not utopia. The biblical Jesus confronts me with the blinding light of God’s moral purity so that I might hunger and thirst for righteousness and seek the solution outside of myself.

We all must face death. The Gnostic Jesus closes our eyes to its ugliness and calls death a friend. That does not ring true in my soul. The biblical Jesus cries out in anger at the tomb of Lazarus and shudders as he faces his own death on the cross. He offers realistic hope to those who suffer.

The earliest Christian gospel proclamation was simple: “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” This was no ordinary death. It was the righteous, effective substitute demanded by justice.

The personal power of this moment was captured for me in the song “I Thirst,” which depicts Jesus in agony on the cross, crying out for water even as He offers living water to the world.

The Resurrection of Jesus

I am won over by this perspective. When I stood at the casket of my sister—cut down at forty-two by brain cancer—death had clearly won. But the biblical resurrection is deeply consistent with the biblical worldview. It flows from the power of the same Creator God who made the world in the first place. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” Only divine initiative from outside can bring it in.

A British theologian expressed it powerfully:

Before God raised Jesus from the dead, the hope that we call Gnostic, the hope for redemption from creation rather than for the redemption of creation, might have appeared to be the only possible hope. “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead…”

The resurrection of Jesus is the turning point and glorious culmination of human history. The one who understands the truth about the risen Jesus has understood everything about the cosmos.

Not all questions are answered. Many things about God remain in deep mystery—as they should. Yet the Jesus I kept meeting as a kid has become for me a fully satisfying way of understanding the world in all its deep personhood, magnificent complexity, and glorious destiny. This perspective takes my breath away. It is more than I can ever hope or imagine. With it, I plan to face the reality of my own death.