Book Review: Jesus is _______ by Judah Smith

You are not seeing a typo. The title of this book is Jesus is ________. The question with this book is, how would you complete the sentence. Judah Smith talks about Jesus in this book as a way of looking at him as our example as the subtitle of the book communicates, "Finding A New Way To Be Human."

Judah Smith is the pastor of City Church, where his dad founded the church in 1992. Smith took over the church in 2010 when his father passed away. One of the alarming things I found in the book, even before I got into the meat of the book was what Smith wrote regarding preaching:

The Bible is meant to be down-to-earth...So when I preach and write, I often retell Bible narratives in my own words. It's not a new translation: it's a paraphrase, usually with a good dose of humor thrown in. Sometimes I crack myself up; but laughter is biblical, so I feel almost holy laughter at my own jokes.

I am ready seeing a contempt for the Word of God because Smith feels he needs to preach and write from the Bible in his own Words. I know sometimes, we do our own paraphrase at times, but to me, when preaching or writing about Jesus, I will take God's Word over my own words any day.

Regarding the book, it is divided into 6 parts that has the blank in the title filled in. For example, Jesus is Your Friend, Jesus is Grace, and Jesus is Alive. Each chapter shows how Jesus is portrayed in Scripture and how we can be a new person. To me, this book seems more like a book that shows Jesus as a good moral man who did extraordinary things and here is how you can be like him. At times, Smith wrote solid biblical truths about Jesus such as his resurrection. Other times, I felt Smith took a casual approach to Jesus which many pastors do today. Smith did not communicate who Jesus truly is from the pages of the Bible. So this is not a deep theological book on the Person of Christ. I did not see the gospel preached at all in this book, unless I missed it through some paraphrasing. The only thing that really stands out in this book, it has a colorful cover.

Thanks Booksneeze for letting me review this book.