Who do you say Jesus is?
10th December 2006
In the years before Jesus was born many Jews believed that God would send an anointed King who would be the lead them in a resistance movement against their oppressors.
Though they didn’t know where he would come from he would be a descendant of King David, their greatest anointed King. To be the anointed King was to be messiah. Criteria: warrior king and ultimate priest.
In Matthew 16 we read how Jesus takes his disciples away, and asks them, “who do people say I am?”
The disciples explain how the people believe him to be a prophet.
He then asks them “Who do you say I am?”
Peter tells him “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.”
At this point no one believed that the coming king would be divine. The phrase “Son of God’ was a biblical phrase explaining the special relationship the anointed king would have with the living God. A relationship like David had. The Son of God was the anointed king who was adopted to be God’s special representative.
What Peter was saying was that “Jesus , you are the true king.” “You’re the one we’ve been waiting for, the one chosen to lead Israel, You are the descendant of David and the anointed King who will bring peace and justice to our land.”
This was dangerous talk, if Jesus was the true king then that meant that Herod wasn’t and that also meant that even Caesar, the self proclaimed Son of God had also better watch out.
This conversation had to remain secret. If they went back to Judea as a band of revolutionaries with Jesus as their leader and their King, to kick some Roman ass, any revolution would be short lived. Jesus chose the path of love rather than the path of power.
What does this mean for you?
Is he a man of power or a man of love? Which did he choose to be?
In the book of Philippians, Paul writes:
If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.
Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.
Phil 2:1-11 (The Message)
The fact is Jesus decided not to take up the power route to becoming King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He chose the path of love.
Jesus was an epiphany of God. A disclosure or revelation of what God is like and who he is. Jesus showed this in his teaching and also in his very being. The epiphany was the person of Jesus. He was an image of God, revealing the divine reality. In simple terms what Jesus was like, God was like. Those who have seen the son have seen the father.
He was the word made flesh, the love of God incarnate. He demonstrated the love and compassion of God to the world.
Jesus is also our role model for what it means to live life. This is what we call discipleship. We follow after him, we pursue him, he holds the keys to eternal life, an eternal life we can start living now, today. We choose to become followers of Jesus, to become the kind of people for whom the things of the kingdom come naturally.
We also choose to embrace our culture. A culture that denies God’s love and very existence, a culture that believes we are delusional if we believe in a God of Love.
People thought Jesus was delusional, a mad man, his own family, came at one time, to take him away. His brother James and even his mother Mary believed him to be out of his mind. Both only fully understood what he was really about after he laid down his life as the true king of Israel.
If we become followers of Jesus, followers of the Messiah we become both less involved and more involved in culture.
We move away from the securities and trappings of our culture and embrace God’s way for our lives, we stand on the rock of the spirit of God rather than standing on the shifting sands that society demands we build our lives on. Stuff, security, success, status.
We become an alternative community, living life with an alternative set of vision and values. There is an “other-ness” about how we live life that set us apart from the world around us.
The values of appearance, achievement and affluence pale into insignifcance as we embrace the value of God’s love and compassion and seek to live out the vision of God’s Kingdom. Living in God’s story.
Individualism where we are taught to fight for our selves, live for our selves, breathe on our own, has the danger of becoming a form of idolatory.
So we choose to become les involved but not in a way that leaves us isolated and cut off from society. Some Christians choose to reject culture altogether, regarding it with fear and loathing. Whether it’s passive or hostile, this view seeks to isolate the pure Christians from the polluted world.
Another view is to capitulate, to surrender, yield, submit the kingdom lifestyle to the world’s lifestyle. Christians that follow this view believe that there is harmony between their faith and their culture. Any tension between the two is denied and the church endorses the values of the culture around it.
A third view is to simply keep the faith party of your life private, we become two dimensional in our faith and our culture. Our life in the spirit becomes domesticated, the radical nature of what it means to follow Jesus is watered down and boxed in, compartmentalized into a small alcove of our lives. We keep it secret, keep it safe. So no one can rob us or harm us.
The fourth and final view is to believe that culture can be transformed by the loving power of the spirit. This is how we see Jesus living life. He did not withdraw from culture but moved into it.
The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish.
John 1:14 (Msg)
Jesus embraced a polluted world, his holiness brought cleanliness and healing. His holiness was not contaminated by the world. His compassion and love led him to a mission of passion for a broken world. A passion that sought to transform the world around him. Dealing with sin, and the roots of evil, and hatred, and greed, and oppression.
Because he chose to live under the kingdom of God, within the revolution of lve he sought to transform culture rather than reject or legitimize culture.
You and I have a voice to shape the world around us. We have been given the authority that through the power of love we can speak into being beauty and justice and compassion.
As we journey with Jesus, our lives become centred, grounded around the God of love, rather than the kingdom of the world around us. What if what we see around us is not really reality. What if there’s a more real reality. A world outside of the “Matrix” of our culture, the system that we serve, the order that tells us what to think and feel.
The image we have of Jesus determines our response to him and to our response to the world around us.
Questions.
What steps are you taking to become both less and more involved with culture?
How does your story fit into God’s story?
What part are you playing in God’s revolution of love?
What steps might you need to take to not conform but to transform culture?
Do you dare to choose to live in the world but not of the world?
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