The revelation from God which we find in the Bible begins with the story of His making man “ in His own image.” To me this means at least three things. It means first of all that we owe our lives to Him. Everything that we have — our ability, our opportunity, our bodies, our personalities, our lives them selves—are borrowed. They are not ours but His, given to us for a few short years by the One who made us. Second, we are completely de pendent upon God. We cannot live for one day without what He gives us. One of the things He has given is the freedom of choice. In a very wonderful way God has taken hands off after creating us and has given us the privilege of choosing whether we will love Him and sub mit ourselves to Him. It is possible therefore for a person to say “no” to God all his life, but every time he says the word and stops to draw a fresh breath to say again, the breath he draws comes from God. Third, we are responsible to God. The One who made us will some day call us to account. The life which He gave us will be judged. Every action, every motive, every thought will be revealed by the light of His countenance and we will have to give answer to our Creator for how we have lived. A true man then is not a bluster ing, self-confident fellow who’s go ing to “ go it alone.” A true man has signed a declaration of depen dence and has submitted himself to God to live in humility and obe dience to the will of God. " I'm a Hero-worshipper" I’m quite a hero-worshipper, as are most of America’s kids. In the summer I never miss the box scores. I follow religiously the games in which some of my heros are play ing baseball. But some of my greatest heros come out of the Bible. Take a fel low like Peter. From all we can find out about him. he was a kind of a blunderbuss, a loud mouth, one of those guys that is always going off half-cocked, maybe a ra the r tough-acting, dirty-talking fellow. But one day as he was washing the nets Jesus came by and stormed him and had him go with Him.
Now I ask you to find anyone in the world’s history who has made a greater mark for good than Peter. He stands up near the head of the human race as one of the greatest men it has ever produced, but you never would have heard of him if it hadn’t been for Jesus Christ. • ohn and James were men like ^ that too. They were nicknamed I the sons of thunder. Those fish- I ermen around the sea of Gali- J lee must have been a rather loud mouthed mob. Now John and James were the sons of Zebedee, but whoever heard of Zebedee? And you wouldn’t have heard of James or John either if it hadn’t been for Jesus Christ. They met Him one day and became properly related to Him and they lived the most impressive, majestic lives that you can imagine. I know kids today just like them. They’re not as famous as Peter or James or John, but they’ve come in touch with the same wonderful Saviour and they’re well on the road to becoming real men and women. Because, believe me, real manhood makes room in its heart for the Creator and the Saviour and the Lord of men. A Friendly Fellow & a Gracious Girl Let me urge you to come to grips with Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Creator of men. It is true that His idea of manhood is very different from the corrupted, sinful ideal which is jokingly tossed about at your high school. It is a manhood which is pure and gentlemanly and gracious and self-effacing. I wish I could show you what I mean in the lives of fellows and girls whom I know today. Their ex ample would mean more to you than all of my talking. I wish I could show you a young fellow who has become the friend liest fellow in school, a girl who has become winsome and gracious and loving. Because in them — and in hundreds of others like them—you can see the very presence and the transforming power of Jesus Christ Himself, and when you see Him you will know that to have your life properly related to Him is to be in every sense a real man or wom an. END.
He was perfect in His love, infi nitely tender and patient and com passionate, a friend of those who needed help. Watch Him deal with the woman taken in adultery, as recorded in the eighth chapter of John. He is such a gentleman that He will not look her in the eye but spares her the embar ra s smen t . Watch how He dealt with all who came to Him in need. Watch Him at last as He ascends the hill out side Jerusalem to lay down His life for sinners. The world has nev er seen, nor will it ever see, love as matchless as that. He was perfect in His character. Not only is there unanimous testi mony to His sinlessness but every action and every word knives through the sham and hypocrisy of religious pretense and gets to the reality of the heart. This in the final analysis is why they crucified Him—He revealed the ugly hypoc risy of the religious leaders. And as He died one of the officers re marked “ surely this was a right eous Man.” He was perfect in His power. Watch Him not only as He per formed the great miracles which attested to Him, but watch the manliness with which He strides through the crowd unmolested. Watch Him as twice—both at the beginning and end of His ministry - He marches into the Jerusalem temple which has been turned int.o a market place and singlehanded drives that money-making crowd out of its courtyard. Watch Him as men like Peter and James and John, rug g e d fishermen, l eave everything to follow Him, capti vated bv the strength and author ity of His own Person. Give Yourself a Chance y ou cannot be a man without seen some of them redden in the face and rage at the suggestion that without Jesus Christ you cannot be a true man. But I believe it more strongly today than ever before, and what I mean by it is involved in God’s concept of what He made man for in the beginning.
Jesus Christ. I have made this statement literally hundreds of times across America to great crowds of teenagers. I have
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