Who do you say He is?

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that people find Jesus to be confusing. There is no straightforward answer when it comes to trying to describe who Jesus is. The ultimate answer comes from Peter in Matthew 16:13-16 where he answers by saying “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.”

For some reason that doesn’t seem to be enough. We need more answers. We need to know exactly who he is, who he was, and who he will be. We need to know what the ratio of God to man actually is and we need to be able to prove all of this too.

As I’m sure you know, this is not a new issue. As we saw with Peter’s proclamation the question of who Jesus is has been on people’s minds ever since he first came to earth.

As is human nature people were and still are determined to logically explain who Jesus was/is and what role he played in the grand scheme of things. Now, speaking as someone who got their Bachelor of Arts degree and shied away from all classes that involved the word logic (ask me about my brief foray with a philosophy class…ohhhhh boy!) logical explanation very rarely seems very logical.

Looking back at some of the logical explanations that were provided for Jesus life here on earth, I can’t say that they really change my mind.

Now here is logic. You and I sin. We do the things that we don’t want to do. The root cause of our misdeeds…our sinful body. All the inside bits are all awesome and devoted to God. If only these dagblasted arms would stop stabbing people, these lips would stop bearing false witness and these eyes would stop lusting after people. The only way to stop sinning is in that day when our sinful body is removed from us, buried in the ground and our soul is united with God. Now what about Jesus? If he came to earth and lived as a man, how could he be perfect? The only solution to that would be to say that he obviously did not have a real body; it only looked like he did. God couldn’t abide in something as sinful as flesh and bones.

Or a different form of logic deals with the persona of God. The God we see in the Old Testament is a God of vengeance, a God of law, of fire and brimstone. The God we see in the New Testament sent his one and only son to die at the hands of those he came to save. The God of the New Testament talks about love, gives good gifts and is a God of mercy. These two Gods are so different that there is no way we could possibly believe that they are both the same being. With the drastic difference between the two, there must be two different godheads who are involved here.

How do we reconcile an ever changing logic with the steadfast word of God?

The truth is that we don’t. What we do is have faith.

We have faith in the words of scripture that tell us that Jesus was both true God and true man (Hebrews 2:14-18) that he needed to be man in order to be subject to the pain of sin to which we are subject but also needed to be God in order to conquer it.

We have faith that there is only one God (Ephesians 4:4-6). We realize that just as we react differently dependent on the circumstance, God also does the same. God judges us harshly when we are left to our own devices, knowing that there is no way that we can live up to the demanding measures that are required for salvation. In the light of Christ’s sacrifice we are made to live up to these demands. We are still judged harshly, but are successful because of what Christ has done. God’s judgment doesn’t change, it’s Christ’s sacrifice that changes us.

But in the end it isn’t about a successful argument. It isn’t about facts, nor is it even necessarily about the memorization of scripture. What it boils down to is faith. There will always be an argument that will tempt you to doubt what you have always believed. This isn’t a new thing, nor is it something that will soon disappear. What we do is believe that God has provided for us, that he created us and has given us the most amazing gift in the form of his son. We say together with Peter that Jesus is the Christ, that he is the Messiah, the anointed one, the one who has come to be our salvation.