Who Do You Say Jesus Is?

Posted by Randy | Labels: , , , , , , , , , | Posted On Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 12:01 AM

Today marks the last "official" day of our daily readings in the New Testament for Greater Things.... But, I hope you'll continue reading. After doing this for 31 days, I hope it has begun to become a habit for you. Our Gateway website, under the Life Journal heading, has the daily Scripture readings for New Testament and Old Testament. You can even read online.

I won't be writing everyday, though I will keep doing my daily readings. I do plan to still write a few times a week on the Scripture readings, plus other things. If God has used this to encourage you this month, you might think about bookmarking this or subscribing to it.

I've been amazed all this month with the way God has been using these readings, at least in my life. I keep feeling like God picked all these Scriptures just for us, even though the reading plan was put together a few years ago at a church in Hawaii. For instance, our key Scripture for Greater Things... is John 14:12, where Jesus said: "'I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.'" (italics added) Jesus says the key to doing even greater things is our faith in him.

So, our reading today comes from Mark 7-8, and there's a passage in Mark 8 that sums up all we've been trying to do this past month. Jesus and his disciples have headed north from Galilee, and as they're walking along, Jesus asks them who people think he is. His disciples repeat what they've heard, saying people like the prophets, Elijah or even John the Baptist (who had been executed by King Herod Antipas, Mark 6). But then Jesus gets to the crux of the matter when he asks his followers, "...'But who do you say I am?'..." (8:29, NLT - italics added)

That's really the question, isn't it? Not just who people or disciples in First Century Palestine said Jesus was, but who do we say he is. Who we say, what we believe, makes all the difference in the world. It determines whether we believe what he says, whether we're willing to follow him, no matter what. It determines whether we're a follower in name, or a follower in reality. And Jesus tells us from John 14:12 that who we believe he is, our faith in him, determines how much God can and will use us.

Peter makes the amazing statement that must have been floating around in the minds of at least some of the disciples, but no one had said it yet: "...'You are the Messiah.'" (8:29) The Messiah was the Hebrew term (or Old Testament term) for God's anointed One. It was believed by First Century Jews that someday the Messiah would come, from the line of King David, and he would liberate his people, freeing them from captivity and slavery. Jews today are still looking for the coming of the Messiah, whereas Christians believe he has already come in Jesus Christ. The Greek term for "Messiah" is "Christ." Peter was saying to Jesus, "You are the Christ, the anointed One of God." "Christ" is actually a title, not a proper name. Jesus is the Christ.

The Jews pictured their Christ or Messiah as a warrior-type king who would vanquish their foes and lead them to re-establish the Kingdom of Israel, as in the time of King David, a thousand years earlier. There were certainly prophecies that pointed to the Messiah being a liberator, but there were other prophecies that most Jews had overlooked. As if to say this to his followers when Peter made this statement, Jesus proceeds to tell them what will happen to him - and it wasn't exactly according to the script most of them imagined for the Messiah or Christ. Perhaps this was one reason Jesus wasn't fully understood until after his death and resurrection.

Jesus told that, as the Messiah or Christ, he "...'must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but three days later he would rise from the dead.'" (8:31) I'm certain the disciples didn't really hear what Jesus was saying, because all of this went against everything their faith had taught them about the Messiah. How could their conquering King be killed? The reason the disciples had a hard time at first believing in Jesus' resurrection, even though he told them he would (as we see here), was because this was so far outside their expectations, they couldn't begin to swallow what Jesus was saying.

But Jesus doesn't stop there. He goes on to talk about what it means to be his follower - then and now:

"...'If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?'" (8:34-36)

Here is the picture Jesus paints of what it means to follow him, to put our faith in him. It's a radical turning from self to God and others. It's selling ourselves out for Jesus Christ, so that nothing and no one is more important. It's sacrificing everything for him, and receiving eternal life! And it is this kind of life, a life of faith in Jesus fully lived out day-in and day-out, that Jesus says he can work in and through to do even greater things. Every time we fall short of this picture, we diminish what Jesus can do in us and through us. Yet, this goal is so impossible, in and of it self, that it takes the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, living in us to move us in this direction, enabling us to live this radical lifestyle.

The question Jesus confronts all of us with is actually very simple: "Do I really believe you are who you say you are - the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed One of God? Am I willing to redirect my life and actions to align with this belief - to live what I say? Ultimately, this is the question that confronts every one of us. Who do you say Jesus is?