"But Who Do You Say That I Am?"

“And on the road He asked His disciples, saying to them, “Who do men say that I am?” So they answered, “John the Baptist; but some say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Mark 8:27-29

Life poses to us many important questions – questions that demand a decision. They come in many forms and are asked of us at different points in our lives. What career will I pursue? Where will I go to school? Will I marry, and if so, whom? Where will I live? How will I choose my friends? What church will I attend, if any? Will I have children, and if so, how many and how am I to raise them? How am I to manage my money? And what is the meaning of life – what is my overall philosophy?
We all have our different approaches to answering these questions, and we may order them differently in importance. Some of us are more philosophical, and others are more practical in nature. Some put family and friends first, and others put careers and achievement before all else. Some of us actually sit down and ponder the answers to these questions, while others answer them by the way they live their lives, and not consciously. But all of these questions, in the long run, do get answered in some way – they must by their very nature. But what would you think if I told you that none of these questions, however basic they may be to our human experience, is the most important that any of us will ever answer?
The most important question we will ever answer is, “Who is Jesus of Nazareth?” In the verse that opens this discussion, Jesus posed just that question to the people who followed Him. He first asked what other people said about Him, which the disciples answered. But Jesus did not stop there, for that was not His main point. He went on to ask them a very personal question – “But who do you say that I am?”
It may puzzle you when I say that we, in the year 2009, will never answer a more important question than that regarding a man who lived 2,000 years ago. The reason I say this is that the question is far from equivalent to asking who we think George Washington or John F. Kennedy or Aristotle were. We can read history books to find that out, and even then, it hardly matters who we think they were. Notable men and women, and even great ones, have shaped history (sometimes to a large extent), but they hardly have a direct influence on our personal lives. Some say that Jesus fits this category. Some say that He was a great religious teacher, a Jewish rabbi who came and taught us the right way to live – a man of peace and good works. If this were so, Jesus would be another notable historical figure, perhaps one worth admiring. But I tell you it is not so. For no one who has read what Jesus Himself actually said can come away thinking that He was a great religious teacher.
In John 7:46, there are recorded the words of officers sent by religious leaders to arrest Jesus – “No man ever spoke like this man!” Take a sampling of the things that Jesus Himself said about Himself, and test whether this is true. In John 4:26, in response to a woman who spoke of the coming of the Messiah, Jesus said “I who speak to you am He.” Jesus repeatedly called God His Father, which to the Jews was blasphemy since in so doing He was making Himself equal with God Himself (John 5:18).
Jesus said of Himself, “Most assuredly, he who hears My word and believes on Him who sent Me has everlasting life” (John 5:24). He also claimed, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). Jesus said, “I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). Jesus lived thousands of years after the time of Abraham, yet He claimed, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58), invoking the name that God gave Himself when he appeared to Moses in the burning bush.
Jesus said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:44). Most astoundingly, especially to our ears in this day of moral relativism, Jesus claimed of Himself, “I AM the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE – no man comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).
More than once, Jesus predicted not only that He would die, but where and how He would die – and in the same prediction He claimed that three days after His death He would rise from the dead. And He did.
Read the gospel of John, and the three gospels that come before it in the Bible. There you will find Jesus’ statements just as I have laid them out here, and you will find many others like it. After just this brief sampling of Jesus’ own claims, can the assertion that Jesus was only a great religious teacher be intellectually honest? Jesus did not claim to show the way – He claimed to BE the way. Jesus did not claim to show us how to live – He claimed to BE life itself, and to be able to give eternal life to anyone who believed in Him. Jesus did not claim to help us learn truth – He claimed to BE truth. Jesus claimed, without batting an eye, to be equal with God, Whom He called His Father. If I came to you and made these same claims to you about myself, you would no doubt think I was on a tremendous ego trip (at the very least). You most certainly would not believe me. These kinds of claims are remarkable claims indeed!
The claims of Jesus, you must admit, are remarkable if they are to be taken at face value. Indeed, no man ever spoke like this man. As one man (I believe it was C.S. Lewis) wrote once not so long ago, there are only three conclusions one may come to concerning Jesus of Nazareth – He is a liar, He is a lunatic, or He is Lord.
Jesus is a liar if He made those claims and yet knew that they were patently false. If indeed He was only a normal human being like you and me, and knew it, and yet claimed to be so much more, would that not make Him a flat-out liar? Tell me, would a pathological liar make a suitable great religious teacher in your opinion? Would a liar be someone you would be willing to trust in matters of spirituality – or anything else?
Jesus is a lunatic if He made those claims and seriously believed them though they were false. Only a mentally unstable person would have such a “God-complex” or a “Messianic delusion” concerning his own identity. We would call such a person narcissistic if he or she claimed such things even once or twice. But what about a person who repeatedly makes such claims? Who do you know that does or has ever made such claims so repeatedly? What would you think of them? Would you not regard them as a little crazy? Would a lunatic be worthy of your faith and trust when it comes to the biggest questions of life and eternal destiny? For my part, I think not.
Either way – if Jesus is a deliberate liar or a pathetic lunatic – He is not worthy of our time. Nothing He said could be trusted as true or viewed as sane. And so Jesus would not really be great in any way – He would only be notable for the wrong reasons.
But what if Jesus of Nazareth was correct in His claims? What if He really is the Son of God? What if He really was sent by His Father to pay for your sin and my sin? What if He really is the Way, the Truth, and the Life – the only path to God? What if He really did rise again from His tomb? This is what Jesus said. If He was right, what then?
The only conclusion then would be that Jesus is Lord, and that we had better believe what He said. If we do not, then what He said would be true of us – “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). John the Baptist testified of Jesus, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe in the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36).
Jesus’ question to His disciples – “Who do YOU say that I am?” – echoes down to us many centuries later. It is a question we must answer, and as I have attempted to show, there are not many different ways to answer it. We must dismiss Jesus as historically notable but insignificant as far as it concerns the pursuit of truth; or we must fall on our knees and acknowledge Him as Lord and as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, our sin. The choice is up to each one of us. Just as with the disciples, Jesus is not satisfied with our answer as to what everyone else thinks of Him. He wants to know what WE think of Him individually. He will not force us to answer a certain way. But He does demand an answer. As for me, I confess that Jesus of Nazareth is my Lord, and the One Who, as my Savior, bore my sins in His own body on the cross, that I may have eternal life and be declared righteous in God’s sight. Who do you say that Jesus is?