the god who is there

"For some, “Jesus” is no more than profanity. For others, he is a moralist who makes you feel bad if you start having fun. Or he is the founder of a world religion like other founders of world religions—Muhammad, for example. Or he is “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” who loves to turn the other cheek and who is never, ever, angry. Or he is the Jehovah's Witness Jesus, a pretty impressive second-string god, but certainly not to be identified with the one, true God. Or he is an empty cipher with virtually no content at all. All of these different hearing groups constitute contexts in which what we say about Jesus will be understood (or misunderstood). What [is required] is learning to get across a lot of things that we Christians simply presuppose.

There are quite a lot of ways of doing this. One of them is to focus on a variety of biblical texts drawn from across the entire Bible and work through them with people. One might begin with Genesis 1-2: “The God who makes everything.” Genesis 3 becomes “The God who does not wipe out rebels.” We keep working through the Old Testament and eventually arrive at the New, coming to topics like “The God who becomes a human being” (John 1:1-18). The wonderful atonement passage in Romans 3 covers “The God who declares the guilty just.” Gradually the Bible becomes a coherent book. It establishes its own framework; it is the context in which alone Jesus, the real Jesus, makes sense."

DA Carson, The God who is there (read the full thing here)