Who do you say that I am?

[Jesus] said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" -Matthew 16:15

Imagine that one day one of your friends started saying some rather odd things to you. During lunch you ask him to pass you the chicken and he says, "he who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink" (John 6:54-55). When you ask him how his family is doing he replies, "Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter in law against her mother in law; and a man's enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:34-37). When you ask him when his birthday is he tells you, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am" (John 8:58). You ask him for directions to a restaurant and he says, "I am the way the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me" (John 14:6). At this point you're considering whether it is in your best interests to remain friends with him, and just then he asks you, "Who do you say that I am?" How would you respond?

I love this question that Jesus poses to his disciples because it is so simple and straitforward, yet all of how we view and live life hangs in the balance of our response. Several things that I've read/listened to recently have caused me to reflect on the person of Jesus and on the radical implications of following him. The first comes from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. He writes:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. 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. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Tim Keller, in a lecture entititled Who Is This Jesus?, takes up where Lewis left off and explores our options as to what we can honestly and consistently believe about Jesus. He starts off by saying that throughout history the actions and statements of Jesus have ignited debate about his identity, and every thoughtful person must a be a part of that debate. The the combination of the impact of Jesus on history and the sweeping magnitude of his claims for all of our lives are such that you had better not just doubt that Jesus is not God, you'd better know that he is not God. Is Jesus a myth or was he a real man? If he was a real historical figure, then is what is written about him reliable and accurate? If what is written about him is reliable and accurate then was he crazy, deceptive, or divine? Regardless of how you answer these questions I would encourage you to listen to this lecture (click on the link above). It's easy to follow, interesting, and humorous.

In a short devotional entitled Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, John Piper displays the biblical portrait of many different facets of what makes Jesus glorious. He writes:

Can we know him as he really was--and is? How do we come to know a person who lived on the earth two thousand years ago--one who claimed to rise from the dead with indestructible life and therefore lives today? Some people say you can't. The real Jesus is buried in history, they say, and there is no access to him. Others are not so skeptical. They believe that the biblical records of Jesus' life are reliable, and that its earliest interpreters--like the apostle Paul--are more dependable guides than today's critics. But how can you be sure that the biblical portrait of Jesus is true? People take two paths in search of solid ground under the feet of faith. One is the path of painstaking historical research to test the authenticity of the historical records....I still value the path of scholarly historical research. In fact, I lean on it often....There is another path. It's the path I have followed in this book. It starts with the conviction that divine truth can be self-authenticating....The practical effect of this path is that I do not ask you to pray for a special whisper from God to decide if Jesus is real. Rather I ask you to look at the Jesus of the Bible. Look at him. Don't close your eyes and hope for a word of confirmation. Keep your eyes open and fill them with the full portrait of Jesus provided in the Bible. If you come to trust Jesus Christ as Lord and God, it will be because you see in him a divine glory and excellence that simply is what it is--true."

As I've been thinking about the identity of Jesus I've been led to a practical application of believing in his divinity that I hadn't expected, although in hindsight it is perfectly logical and consistant with biblical teaching. That is, the necessity and 'exceeding sweetness' (to use the language of Jonathan Edwards) of prayer. As Christians we are not dealing simply with abstract theories or moral principles. We are dealing with our Creator, our Father, and our Judge. When the fact that Jesus is God really sinks in we can have no other option than to worship him, confess to him, and trust in him to provide; that is, to pray to him. Only when we place Jesus at the center of our affections as God can we truly obey the law: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment" (Matthew 37-38). With all of this in mind, I also came to the realisation of how consistently I strive to not consider the divinity of Jesus, as evidenced by my lack of prayer, obedience, and joy.

One of the things that I love about Christianity is its openness to investigation and critique. Jesus makes bold assertions about being absolute truth, but he also invites us to come with open minds and open hearts to see if what he is saying is true. Truth has nothing to fear and nothing to hide. And so Jesus asks, "Who do you say that I am?"