3 scary things that Jesus said

Ask literally anyone to describe Jesus, and I’ll bet a year’s pay that “scary” doesn’t come out of their mouth. 

That isn’t surprising because in Scripture’s one place that has Jesus describing Himself, we read: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:29–30, my emphasis). That being the case, it’s certainly understandable why most people won’t connect the words “scary” and “Jesus” together. 

But the fact is, there are more places in the Bible than you might think where Jesus says things that should cause us all to stand up straight. Let me give you just three off the top of my head. 

Burned branches

The postmodern and post-truth philosophies that are lived out by the vast majority of people today are the antithesis of what you see Christ teaching in His four biblical biographies. Instead, they show Him stating that “true truth”, as Francis Schaeffer used to call it, exists and He’s it. Follow anything or anyone else, and you’ll be making a career decision.  

Life apart from Him leads only to a terrible conclusion, which He begins to explain in a fairly famous section of John’s gospel: “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:4–5). 

Before we get to the foreboding part, let me add a quick aside and ask you to notice that in the above, you see anything but a self-effacing claim from Christ (“apart from Me you can do nothing”). Instead, you find a statement that helped fuel C. S. Lewis’ famous quote about Jesus: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.” 

But immediately after that comes the real kicker: “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned” (John 15:6).

I’m not sure anyone reading this needs that imagery explained, but just in case, He’s saying, Me or Hell — you choose. 

You see this phraseology elsewhere in Scripture like from John the Baptist: “The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 3:10), and Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 7:19), as well as the writer of Hebrews: “For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God; but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned” (Heb. 6:7–8). 

All of which say the same thing — without salvation in Christ, your final destination will be something unthinkable. 

Some scary stuff? You bet. 

Fake Christs

Another episode in John has Jesus saying these words to the Pharisees who rejected Him: “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24). 

I see two unsettling takeaways from this brief statement. 

First is the consequence of an outright rejection of Jesus — something Walvoord and Blum note in their commentary on John: “Jesus said twice they would die in their sins. If they would reject the Sin-Bearer (1:29), they would continue in the realm of sin. If they would reject Jesus as the revelation of God, they would miss their only hope for salvation.” 

The second deals with something more subtle and is in reference to the phrase “I am He,” which speaks to His true identity of being God. When it comes to Jesus, there’s the real deal and then those He warned about in His Olivet Discourse: “Many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will mislead many” (Matt. 24:5).

And boy, have they ever. 

We have false Christs of Islam, Christian cults, eastern religions, along with fabricated ones in so many people’s heads that bear no resemblance to the real one. All of which have no power to save. 

A. W. Tozer wrote, “To believe on Christ savingly means to believe the right things about Christ. There is no escaping this.” As usual, Tozer is spot on. Truth about the real Jesus matters — especially when you’re on the receiving end of a lie about Him.

Fake faith

This last scary saying of Jesus really hits home for me because it was who I was until my late teen years. 

Jesus winds down His Sermon on the Mount by saying: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness’” (Matt 7:21-23). 

Raised in the church since I was an infant, I knew all about Jesus but was indifferent about Him and the things of God. I had no “holy affections” for God and Christ as Jonathan Edwards talks about in his work, The Religious Affections. Instead, I was what the Puritan Matthew Mead calls The Almost Christian — someone who counts themselves as a believer, but whose house in reality is built on the sand (Matt. 7:26-27). 

The “almost Christian” thinks that because of who they are (like Israel) or what they supposedly do (works salvation), they will be welcomed by God into His Kingdom. But Jesus tells us that, in a horrifying turn of events, their house of cards collapses and “destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape” (2 Thess. 5:3). 

Don’t let that be you. 

Today, as always, you and I are in one of two groups: those with their judgment behind them and those with their judgment ahead of them. There are no other possibilities. 

That being the case, let these three scary sayings of Jesus serve as an opportunity for you to, “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you — unless indeed you fail the test?” (2 Cor. 13:5), and make sure you’re abiding in Christ, believing in the true Jesus of the Gospels, and bearing fruit that shows you pass the test.