Who is Jesus Christ?

One day, Jesus was walking with His disciples in Caeserea Philippi. According to Matthew 16:13, He asked the following question, Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?" Normally this would seem like a ridiculous question, but Jesus Christ was no ordinary man. His disciples had been following Him for about two years when He posed this query.

This is more than a question about Christ's reputation. This is obvious what is said by the disciples in verse 14, "Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some Elias (Elijah); and others, Jeremias (Jeremiah); or one of the prophets." These refer to, in all but one case, men who had been dead for hundreds of years. John the Baptist, of course, had recently been put to death by Herod. The disciples were basically saying that people were saying that Jesus was one of the Prophets come back to life.

So we have it that people knew He was no ordinary man. He was a contemporary of John the Baptist, so some thought He was John risen from the dead. In Matthew 14:1 and 2, "Herod the Tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus, and said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do show forth themselves in him." At times Herod must have quaked with fear because he himself had ordered that John be put to death.

Some said Jesus was Elijah, who did not die, but was carried up to heaven in a chariot of fire. The prophet Malachi said that God would "send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse" (4:5 and 6). People were expecting Elijah to return as the forerunner of the Messiah, and in Jewish tradition to this day, when they have the Passover feast celebrating the freeing of their slave forefathers from Egypt, they set an extra place at the table for that Prophet. Some thought Jesus was Elijah came back to earth.

Others said He was Jeremiah, the "weeping Prophet," who gave stern warnings the nation was going to fall because of the sins of the leaders and people. Jeremiah wept over Judah (the southern kingdom of Israel) because the leaders and the people would not repent and turn back to the Lord, but instead relied on Egypt to protect them from Babylon. Jesus, like Jeremiah, wept at times. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus in John 11:35. It is very hard not to imagine Him weeping during His preaching of Matthew 23.

Others said He was one of the prophets, probably referring to the many prophets of the Old Testament. These were the predictors of the future to whom God gave the gift of prophecy. But prophets were more than that. They were the preachers who had the Word from God that the people were commanded to follow. They were also the interpreters of what had already been set forth by the Lord, applying the known principles of God's Word to every day life. In this sense, they were like Pastors of today, preaching in church. A Biblical example of this is Ezra in Nehemiah 8:4-8.

But Jesus is infinitely more than this. He was great teacher, and more. He was a worker of miracles, and more. he was a healer, and more. He was a man of compassion, and more. He was a man of strong ethical principles, and more. He was a man of God, and more. All of these answers are true, but inadequate.

He asked His disciples in verse 15, "But whom say ye that I am?" This is the important question. If the Bible is true, every one's eternal destiny lies in the way he answers this question for himself. There is no getting around this.

Peter, speaking for all the disciples, in verse 16 replied, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." This answer went much farther than any answer above. There had been may mortal prophets throughout Israel's history. Israel had seen many teachers, miracle workers, and healers come and go. Men of compassion, strong moral principles, and exceptional godliness had lived and died over all of the existence of the world. But here was someone unique.

The Christ, the Son of the living God." This is what Peter called Him. The Christ. The Son of the living God. Not a Christ. Not a Son of the living God. Peter was saying this was someone so special, so unique, there never has been nor ever will be another man like Him.

Jesus was called the Christ by Peter. This is the Greek term for the Hebrew Messiah. This word means Jesus was the "Anointed One." The Jews were looking for the Messiah to fulfill many Old Testament prophecies. In the Old Testament men were anointed to serve in three different offices; prophet (I Kings 19:16), priest (Exodus 3:20-33), and king (I Samuel 15:1-13).

The prophet was anointed to be the messenger from God to His people. He foretold what would happen in the future, and forthtold God's message to them. This function in forthtelling was like that of a preacher today. Today, we have the completed Word of God, which is the entire Bible, and when a preacher, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, puts together a message from the Word of God and preaches it, he is doing some of what the prophet did.

In Isaiah 61:1-3, the Messiah, speaking through Isaiah, said, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty unto the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance our God; to comfort all that morn; To appoint unto them that morn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for morning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called Trees of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified."

The priest was anointed to go before God on behalf of the people and offer sacrifices for them. In the Levitical system, only the tribe of Levi were allowed to become priests. At least two of the kings of Israel (Saul and Uzziah) tried to usurp the priestly office for themselves, and were punished severely by the Lord. So God called the men of the tribe of Levi to be priests, and no other.

The king was anointed to administer the government of the state. He was to lead God's people in war, and govern them according to His Word at all times. He was to administer justice with an even hand, showing favor to neither rich nor poor.

The Messiah was unique in one regard: He would be anointed to all three positions. No other man would be so anointed. Jesus was this man. Christ was not His surname, but His title. He was a man, but a unique man.

The other part of Peter's reply to the question of who Jesus is; the Son of the living God. In this we see that Jesus was and is more than a man. He was the very Incarnation of God Himself. He is God's Son in ways no sinful man could ever be.

In the Apostles' Creed, it states that Jesus Christ the Son of God, was "begotten, not made." He was not created by God, but is God. Back in the time of creation, God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Note the plurality. Also the very word for God, Elohim, is a plural. John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God." in verse 14, John says, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." Jesus Christ was the Incarnation of God Himself. This is what separates Him from the rest of humanity: He is God as well as man.

A further aspect of His Sonship that is different from ours is He is the natural Son. Everyone who trusts Him for their salvation is adopted into the family of God. The Father sent the Son to make this possible. The Apostle Paul in Romans 8:15 tells us, "For ye have not received the the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." Everyone in the human race needs to be adopted by God. Sadly, many never are, and remain in bondage of sin forever. But those who are adopted into the family of God are set free from sin's penalty and will some day be forever free even from sin's very presence.

Jesus, however, had no need to be adopted. He, "being of one substance with the Father," is co-equal with Him in every way. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have existed from all eternity, so the Son exited before creation. The heretic Arius was wrong when he said, "There was a time when the Son was not." He was dead wrong. The Son is equal to the Father in all things, now and forever. As Colossians 2:9 says, "For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily."

Now let us briefly look at Jesus' response to Peter's answer in Matthew 16:17: "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven."

Two things are stated in Jesus' response: 1)Flesh and blood (men) did not reveal this to him, and, 2) The Father did reveal it to him. Peter got his information from the right source, and the information was true. For this Jesus called him , "Blessed."

So, who is Jesus? He is none other than the Messiah the Jews were expecting, and the Son, God in the flesh.

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Do You Have Eternal Life?

This earthly life is not all there is. You will spend somewhere in eternity. There are two choices; heaven or hell. Eternal life or eternal death.

There are two choices that determine where all people go; belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, or unbelief in Him. Belief in Him results in an eternity with Him in heaven. Not believing in Him results in your ultimate destination being the lake of fire spoken of in Revelation 20:10-15. In John 3:18, Jesus said of God's Son (Himself), "He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God."

The Lord Jesus Christ said in John 5:39, "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me." The scriptures Jesus was referring to was the Jewish Old Testament, to which was added the New Testament in due time to complete the canon. What He was saying was that since you believe that the way of eternal life is to be found through the scriptures, if you want eternal life, you must search them and learn what they say. "They are they which testify of me." By implication, He claimed to be the Giver of eternal life, since in looking for it in the scriptures, you find Him.

The scriptures testify of Jesus, even before His incarnation. From the beginning of creation, the Bible shows a plurality in the unity of God. When in the beginning God created all that He did in the universe, His name was a plural name - Elohim. When He created man, He said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, this demonstrated more than one person was in the essence of the Creator.

After the sin of Adam and Eve, we have in Genesis 3:15 what is known as the protoevangelium, the first prophecy of salvation. God in His love had no intention of turning humanity over to sin and the devil. Someday He would send a savior. He said to the serpent who had tempted them into the fall after telling the man and woman the consequences of their sin, And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." The Hebrew says the seed of the woman's heel will be bruised, but the serpent's head will be crushed.

This is the first prophecy of the cross of Christ, the sacrifice for sin. God's plan of salvation was revealed over a long period of time, culminating in the incarnation of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. God was telling the serpent that some day there would come a time when He would redeem man and destroy Satan. Centuries later, He would accomplish this at the cross.

In the mean time He would work His plan. In Genesis 12, He called Abram (later renamed Abraham) out of Ur of the Chaldees to become the father of the nation out of which would come the Messiah. This is the main aspect of the saying in verse 3, "And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." In Matthew 1:1 and 2, we find Abraham heads the list of the ancestors of Jesus Christ. This list establishes that Jesus came from the right family line to be the Messiah who was predicted to come in the Old Testament.

Abraham had a grandson named Jacob, who had 12 sons, one of whom was Judah, from whom King David would come. Jesus was both "the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1). This is important because the Messiah was to come from the lineage of David. Through the Prophet Nathan, God told him in II Samuel 7:12 and 13, "And when thy days are fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." The kingdom to be eventually established is that of the Lord Jesus Christ, Who will eventually set up His eternal kingdom.


Other prophets gave more information about the Messiah as time went on. The place of His birth was foretold in Micah 5:2, "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." In Matthew 2:1-10 we see the fulfillment of the prophecy. In Isaiah 7:14, we have the prophecy that Messiah would be born of a virgin: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, an shall call his name Immanuel." The verse is quoted as being fulfilled in Matthew 1:22 and 23. That Mary was a virgin is shown in Luke 1:34. When the angel Gabriel announced to her she would give birth to Messiah, she asked, "How can these things be, seeing I know not a man?" The angel's answer in verse 35 shows this would be no ordinary birth: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."


Most important to the purpose of this blog are the prophecies relating to His death, burial, and resurrection. Isaiah 53 is the ideal prophecy for this. This is one place in the Old Testament that has all the elements in the same chapter. It also gives God's loving motivation for the actions of the Messiah. Here are the highlights:


Verses 2-6: "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath bourne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."


The first thing we see is the the Messiah would not attract undue attention with His physical appearance. He would be a very ordinary-looking man, and not considered a "catch" or be any more desirable to women than ordinary. He would be despised and rejected also partly because He lived in Nazareth, a town with an unsavory reputation.


The second thing we notice is the motive for his coming to this world: He was literally born to die for our sins. He "bore our griefs and carried our sorrows." The manner of it was that He was "wounded," "bruised," and "chastised," all for our sins. The Roman lash on his back produced the "stripes" by which we are healed. He took our punishment for us. The Lord "laid on him the iniquity of us all."


Verses 9-12: And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit found in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered among the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.


Here we see that after the Messiah dies, he is to be buried with the rich. When Jesus died, He was buried with the wealthy. But He was just a poor carpenter. But we see the prophecy fulfilled in Matthew 27: 57-60: "When the even was come, there came a rich man Arimathea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple: he went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered. And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out of the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed."


This brings up a point: People who deny the resurrection took place have suggested that the disciples went to the wrong tomb. This is patently ridiculous. The disciples knew where the tomb was. It is doubtful that Joseph buried Jesus all by himself! Joseph's tomb would have been in a prominent place. The disciples would not have contracted collective amnesia. Jesus died. He was buried.


He rose again. This is the only way verses 11 and 12 could possibly be fulfilled. If he He stayed dead, how could He "see the travail of his soul and be satisfied?" If He remained in the grave, how could He, after being "numbered with the transgressors," and bearing "the sin of many, how could God "divide him a portion with the great," and then how could He "divide the spoil with the strong" after He bore man's iniquities? In order to do these things Christ would have had to have risen from the dead.


Christ sacrificed Himself that we sinners might have everlasting life. But this life must still be appropriated by putting trust in Him. By bearing our sins, the Lord Jesus Christ paid the price with His blood to cover all our sins. But we still must believe and accept it for ourselves. If we will not believe God and trust Jesus, we are still "condemned already." Good works will not give you eternal life. Ephesians 2:8-10 says: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works lest any man should boast. If you are saved and have eternal life, it means nothing less than the fact that you have accepted the gift of salvation from God, and are not relying on any good works to have any part whatsoever in the transaction. The gift of eternal life is all about God the Father sending His Son to die on the cross for man's sin. It is up to each individual to make it personal. No one can accept the gift for you. You must receive the gift for yourself.


How? Repentance and faith. Repentance is a change of mind, and thus of your way of life. One clear example of this is found in Paul's first epistle to the Thessalonians. Their testimony had reached into other Roman provinces (Macedonia and Achaia) and it says in verse 9, they had "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God." This means a radical change has occurred in a man's thinking. A man will act in accordance to what he really believes, not what he says he believes. So true repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other.


In order to have eternal life, you must acknowledge that you are a sinner. God is a holy God, and cannot accept sin in His presence. You are no better than anyone else in God's eyes. In Romans 3:9-11, we read, "What then? are we better than they? no, in no wise: for we have proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. We have all violated God's law at one time or another. So we see in vereses 19 and 20, Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin." If you die in this state, as an unsaved sinner, you will not be allowed in the presence of God in heaven, but only look forward to an eternity in hell. However, there is hope for you, because Jesus died for you.

Romans 6:23 says, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. At the end of your earthly life, you will either receive your wages, which is eternal death, or if you have received God's gift, you will be eternally in His presence, free from the guilt, power, and presence of sin.

Even the rest of your life on earth will be different. II Coronthians 5:17 says, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (or creation): "Old things are passed away; behold, all things ae become new." When you are saved by God, you are saved forever and cannot possibly lose it. You are adopted into the famly of God, and no longer a child of the devil. In John 1o:27-29, Jesus says, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." The whole idea that a man can lose eternal life from God is ludicrous! Once you have it, it is yours forever!

After acknowledging that you are a sinner, you must by faith accept the gift of eternal life by acknowledging that the Lord Jesus Christ died for your sins, and asking Him to be your Savior. Do not expect your life to be the same after He does so. Changes will be made in your life. The Holy Spirit will come into your life and cleanse you from sin. You will live differently.

The Christian life is a good life, but it is not easy. It is not a cure-all for all your problems. In fact, you may find you have some problems you've never had before. You might lose friends because of it. Your life will change, possibly in ways acquaintances will not understand. You will not want to do the same things you did before.

But the love of Christ will outweigh any disadvantage in your earthly life. And after this life is over, you will enjoy eternal life with the Lord in heaven. I know God has a wonderful eternity in store for those trust His Son as their Savior. I Corinthians 2:9 gives this promise of that: But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him"

Dear reader, I pray that I will see you there. Eternal life is yours for the asking - the gift of God.




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