A Glorious and Necessary Confession

Who is Jesus Christ?  The Bible makes it clear that our answer to this question is the determining factor in how we live our lives in this world and in our eternal destiny of either Heaven or Hell in the next (Galatians 2:20) (John 8:23-24) (John 3:36).

Jesus, historically, beginning with His three-and-a-half-year ministry on earth, has been a controversial and divisive figure (John 7:37-52). Jesus Himself acknowledged and even warned that He would be (Matthew 10:34-39).  Despite His innumerable and miraculous acts of love and compassion (Matthew 11:5-6) (John 20:30-31), despite His many declarative statements about His true identity and mission (John 8:57-58) (John 4:19-26) (Luke 4:16-20), despite declarations from both Heaven and Hell regarding this identity (Matthew 3:16-17) (Mark 1:23-25), we are told that He was despised and rejected of men, thought little of by both His own people, the Jews, as well as the Romans for whom the Jews were in political subjection  (Isaiah 53:3) (John 1:10-11).

He was particularly hated by the Jewish religious leaders, who were obsessed with finding a way to kill Him (John 11:53).  They considered Him a drunkard and glutton, a friend of sinners, a blasphemer with a God delusion that some simple-minded people were starting to buy into, who thus needed to be eliminated (Matthew 11:19) (Matthew 26:63-66) (John 11:45-48).  They got the Romans to do their dirty work for them by identifying Jesus as a dangerous insurrectionist, a rival king to the Roman Caesar, which resulted in His crucifixion on a Roman cross.

Days before these charges were brought, multitudes were in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. Upon seeing and hearing of His miracles, particularly His raising of Lazarus from the dead, they (rightly) believed Him to be the fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9, of a promised king from the line of King David who would conquer Israel’s enemies, and they celebrated Him as such (John 12:12-16).  However, within a few short days, subsequent to His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, many of this same crowd would cry out for His crucifixion (Matthew 27:20-23).

So, who is this Jesus?  In our contemporary world, some believe Jesus to be only a mythical figure, authored in the imaginations of those who needed a moral example to set right an immoral world, or to provide hope to the weak and hopeless (which as the Christ He does).  To others, like the rich young ruler in Mark 10:17, He is a good teacher, a wise sage.  To many, He is a holy man, a religious and societal reformer on par with Muhammed, Gandhi or the Dalia Lama.  In Islam and other world religions He is a great prophet.  To the Jehovah Witnesses, He is the first created being, revealed as the Archangel Michael in the Old Testament. To the Mormons, Jesus is the firstborn spirit child of the Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother, who in himself progressed to deity in the spirit world.

The Bible, however, presents Jesus in a radically different light than the depictions of Him that come from the sin corrupted imaginations of men and our demon inspired false religions (Genesis 6:5) (1 Timothy 4:1).  Before His birth, He is revealed by an angel to His parents Mary and Joseph as Immanuel, God with us in fulfilment of Isaiah 7:14.  He is revealed in Matthew 1:21 to Joseph as the one who would save His people from their sins, referring to the suffering servant in Isaiah 53.   In Luke 1:31-35, the angel Gabriel is sent by God directly to Mary to reveal the identity of the child about to be conceived in her womb and how He gets there.

In Luke 2:11, an angel appears to lowly shepherds revealing Jesus as the one born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.  A year or two later we have great wise men from the east traveling hundreds of miles through enemy territory to worship Him who had been revealed to them as the one who is born King of the Jews (Matthew 2:1-11).  They follow a star that directs them to a house in which they find the royal child, and in doing so they rejoice with exceeding great joy and lavish upon Him their most valuable gifts.

As Jesus begins His ministry, He is revealed by God the Father as His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased (Matthew 3:16-17), and then introduced to the people of Israel by John the Baptist in John 1:29 as The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

Jesus further reveals Himself to His disciples in John 14:6, as the Way to God, the revelation of the very Truth and Life of God incarnate. He reveals that no one comes into right relationship with God but through faith in Him, a truth denied by liberal theologians and New Age gurus such as Oprah Winfrey and Democratic presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson, yet a truth that will be indisputable at His second coming (Revelation 1:4-8).

All of the various aspects of Jesus’ identity revealed throughout the New Testament, particularly in the four Gospels, are consolidated in one glorious and necessary confession, spoken by the Apostle Peter in Matthew 16:13- 16.  Jesus inquires of His disciples, “who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am”?  They respond, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

And then Jesus asks them the question that they and all who will come to Jesus for salvation must answer, correctly, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter without hesitation confesses, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”. He is essentially confessing, You Jesus are the one who came to redeem a people unto God, the one who would accomplish everything necessary for sinful men and women to be forgiven and restored to right relationship with God, the one who as God, is infinitely worthy of being known intimately, loved supremely, worshiped exclusively, trusted explicitly, obeyed perfectly, and  pursued passionately as the object of our deepest love and the source of our greatest joy (1 Peter 3:18) (John 17:3) (Matthew 22:34-40) (Proverbs 3:5-7) (Matthew 4:10) (Psalm 43:3-4).

Jesus responds to Peter’s confession by calling him, blessed.  And He does so because his confession was not based on something he figured out in his sin corrupted mind over the course of his three plus years with Jesus, nor through his study of the Old Testament prophecies, nor obtained through consensus with the other disciples. It was revealed, communicated directly from the heart and mind of God the Father to the heart and mind of Peter, which is true of everyone who has and will sincerely make this same confession regarding Jesus.

I hope to look more closely at the source, necessity and blessedness of this confession in my next post, God willing.

Grace and Peace ×