who is Jesus?

The world has a lot of messed-up ideas about who Jesus is. Some think he didn’t really exist, that he was made up by the church. Others say he was just a wise man and a great teacher. Some say he was kind of crazy, with delusions that he was God. 

This is a really important question, and Jesus’ disciples had to decide just like we do. I read this in Luke 9:18-20: “Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, ‘Who do the crowds say I am?’

“They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.’

“‘But what about you?’ he asked. ‘Who do you say I am?’

“Peter answered, ‘God’s Messiah.’”

It took a while for the disciples to go from following Jesus as a rabbi to seeing him as the promised savior, but they got there. And they help frame the same issue that every person since then has to resolve: who is Jesus, really?

Of course Peter was right; Jesus is the Messiah, sent by God and our only hope. But it isn’t enough to just say the words, or to acknowledge him intellectually. There’s a lot of emotion involved in recognizing Jesus for who he really is. There’s the guilt and hopelessness of realizing how prone we are to sin and how helpless we are to resist it. There’s the surprise and amazement when we realized that God loved us enough to help us. And there’s the overwhelming gratitude and life-changing joy of feeling truly free.

My Dutch family is one of those that thinks it’s ok to have feelings, as long as it’s one at a time and you don’t let anyone know. We’re more attracted to knowledge. But this is one of those cases where intellectual understanding isn’t much use.

The bottom line is, if we don’t feel all those emotions, we don’t really understand who Jesus is.