Who Is Jesus? A Dangerous Question

Are you sure you really want to know who Jesus is? Such knowledge means your death. That's right; the cost for knowing who Jesus is, is your life. Let me tell you a true story to illustrate this.

 I once stood before dozens of men in a jail and, after telling them who Jesus is, asked them who wanted to surrender their lives to Jesus, to die to self and live for Jesus. Almost every hand went up. Almost. There were a handful of inmates who sat there, defiance etched grimly on their faces. I looked intently at one such face and though that man never said a word, I could read volumes in the look on that face. It said, "Not me! No way am I giving up my life, my freedom to do what I want. I am in charge of my soul, my life. No one is taking that away from me!"

The irony of his unspoken worldview was striking: For someone already had taken his freedom away from him; he was in prison. But the truth is, it wasn't the law enforcement officials or the judge who took away his freedom: He did. He chose to break the law and suffered the consequences for that choice.

Who was to blame for his losing his freedom? He was. Not society who made those laws to protect people from those who would otherwise harm them; not a poor economy that offered him no employment to get money to buy the drugs to which he was addicted (or anything else he wanted to get for himself); and not life, who had dealt him a bum rap with rotten parents and too little money (or too much money--take your pick).

I tell this story because answering the question of the identity of Jesus is all about freedom and its loss, truth and deception, and most of all, about life and death. It is no small question. In fact, it is the most important question any human being can ask. Jesus himself posed it to his own disciples:

"Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, 'Who do people say I am?'
"They replied, 'Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.'
"But what about you?' he asked. 'Who do you say I am?' "Peter answered, 'You are the Christ.'
"Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him" (Mark 8:27-30 NIV).

Notice that Jesus makes a distinction between what others say about himself and what the individual thinks about Jesus. This is at the heart of the whole matter. For there are many opinions among people as to who Jesus is. But Jesus dismisses what others say about him. His sole concern is what the individual thinks of him. What matters to him is what you think of him.

But why should that matter to him? Why does Jesus care what you think of him? This concern is not for his sake but yours. There is no vanity here, only concern for your soul. It is a matter of life and death for your soul when answering the supreme question of life, "Who is Jesus Christ to me?"

Now, you may be irritated by now that I have not answered the question yet. Why all this delaying in giving the answer? Why not just give the biblical answer to this question? If that is your attitude, then know that you are not the first to feel that way. Another group of inquirers into the identity of Jesus long ago also expressed their impatience over this same thing:

"At daybreak the council of the elders of the people, both the chief priests and teachers of the law, met together, and Jesus was led before them.'If you are the Christ,' they said, 'tell us' (Lk. 22: 66,67 NIV).

They wanted to know who Jesus was, and they wanted to know now. They had heard much about him and rumors of miracles and great powers, but they wanted to know the truth. Or so they said. But did they really? Jesus knew the truth about the reason for their inquiry, for Jesus can know a person's thoughts.

"Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, "Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?" (Mt. 9:4 NIV).

"Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, 'Why are you thinking these things in your hearts?'" (Lk. 5:22 NIV).

Jesus no doubt infuriated these investigators into his identity by refusing to comply with their impatient and devious demand to answer their question. Why? Because he was interested in something more than an answer to a question posed by insincere seekers of truth. He knew that their question arose out of who they were, with their background of a religion based on obeying countless rules and following many manmade regulations as the way to please God. They had let rules become their god instead of the God who rules. He would give no answer to such people.

Previously, Jesus had exposed this great lack of love for God by telling them, "I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts" (Jn. 5:42 NIV).

Knowing this, how was he to communicate with them? They lived in two different worlds, with two opposing backgrounds regarding who God was and what he wanted from men. Love for his Father in heaven, whom they called their God, consumed Jesus. How could these cold, legalistic men understand something like that? He knew also that they expected the promised Christ to be an earthly, political type of savior, not one who came from God to set their captive spirits free. How in the world would they understand such a thing? It is beyond the grasp of those without the Spirit of God.

"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14 NIV).

And so Jesus refused to answer their question of whether or not he was the promised Christ and simply said, "If I tell you, you will not believe me" (Lk. 22:67 NIV).

But he went even beyond this. He turned the tables on them and added, "and if I asked you, you would not answer" (v. 67).

Jesus knew them. Oh, how he knew them, knew their hearts! He knew their fears. They had asked him if he was the Christ, as if they really wanted to know. Now he once again exposed their hypocrisy, telling them that he knew that if he asked them if they thought he was the Christ, that they would not answer for fear of the others who had already made up their mind to kill him, no matter who he was. Therefore, if they would not answer, why should he? And if he did and told the truth, that he was indeed the promised Christ, they would not believe him anyway. They loved the praise of men more than that of God. Little did they know that before them stood the one to whom they and all mankind would one day have to give an answer to how they had lived their lives.

"God will judge the secrets of human hearts, according to my gospel through Christ Jesus" (Rom. 2:16 NET).

Nevertheless, a moment later Jesus did give them something with which to accuse him that was even bigger and better than if he had said that he was the Christ: He claimed deity itself. Sensing their opportunity, they pounced. "They all asked, 'Are you then the Son of God?'" And Jesus answered them, "You are right in saying I am" (v. 70).

That was all they needed. They went from defeat a moment ago, when he refused to say that he was the Christ, to elation with his bold statement that he was the Son of God. They had him! It was now all over.

"Then they said, 'Why do we need any more testimony? We have heard it from his own lips'" (v. 71).

Yes, they heard the truth from God, spoken through his Son; but did this convince them, make those hard hearts yield to the truth? Far from it. Their next action was to take Jesus over to the civil authorities so that he could be put to death (Lk. 23:1).

It was same after his death and resurrection. Jesus showed himself to many people. "When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted" (Mt. 28:17 NIV).

Hearing is not enough, seeing is not enough. There are always those who refuse to believe no matter what evidence God presents to them.

"If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead" (Lk. 16:31 NIV).

The truth of this statement of Jesus is seen from the reaction to his own resurrection, as referenced above, as well as when he raised Lazarus from the dead:

"Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, pue question of the identity of Jesus is all about freedom and its loss, truth and deception, and most of all, about life and death. I want to close with a final remark about each one of these three aspects of knowing who Jesus is.

Freedom and Its Loss

Every human being is born a slave to sin. We want to do the right thing, but something inside us prevents us from doing that.

"I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it" (Rom. 7:18-20 NIV).

"Everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (Jn. 8:34 NIV).

The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that he enables us to do the good that we could not do on our own. He sets us free from the slavery to sin because on the cross the chains of that slavery was broken.

"Our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin" (Rom. 6:6 NIV).

Jesus, the Son of God, has set us free from the imprisonment of our slavery to sin. "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (Jn. 8:36 NIV).

Truth and Deception

We deceive ourselves if we think we do not need to be set free or that we are not imprisoned by who we are as sinful human beings. I mentioned that prisoner whose face betrayed the deception in his heart that he was in control of his life. He was not. Sin was.

"The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (Jer. 17:9 NIV).

Who can understand it? The One who can see into every heart, Jesus. Just as he did for those who brought him in to question him about his identity. Just as he does for my heart and yours. That is not in question. What is open to question is whether or not we will admit our helplessness to save ourselves from ourselves and let Jesus do for us what we cannot do for ourselves: whether or not we will accept him as our Lord and Savior and thus save our souls; or refuse to accept him and thus lose our souls.

Life and Death

And, finally, the final question, the matter of life and death--not just in this world but for eternity. It was said earlier that the question of Jesus is the supreme question that faces every human being in life. The reason it is supreme is because nothing else even comes close in comparison to its importance for our soul. Jesus knew this and said:

"What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mk. 8:36,37 NIV).

"No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him--the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough--that he should live on forever and not see decay" (Ps. 49:7-9 NIV).

No man can do this; only God himself is precious enough to redeem a human soul. Jesus was a man, a human being, like the rest of us. But if Jesus were only a man like the rest of us, his sacrifice on the cross would not have been sufficient. But since he is also God, that sacrifice fully satisfies the requirements for the forgiveness of our sins and to set us free from them.

That sacrifice is the only way this can be done and it has been done. But if we do not accept that sacrifice by accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior, then it does us no good. Many people know about Jesus or have some amount of knowledge about him and think that they know who he is. But that is not the kind of knowledge that saves a person from eternal separation from God in hell. Demons are very knowledgeable about who Jesus is but it does them no good.

"You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder" (Js. 2:19 NIV).

To be saved from the terrifying fate of demons and the devil, a person must know Jesus as Lord and Savior. Continuing to live one's life otherwise is to destine one's self to hell.

"In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead" (Acts 17:30,31 NIV).

Life and death for all eternity. That is how serious this question of the identity of Jesus is. You can either die to self now and live for him now and in heaven for all eternity. Or you can continue to live for self now and not for Jesus--and then live apart from him forever in the torment of hell. Either way, knowing who Jesus is means death: either death to self now so that new life in Jesus can occur; or else eternal death at the final judgment by this same Jesus. That is the danger of the great question of life: Who is Jesus? I pray that all who read this make the decision for life in Jesus.

"This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set beforin this world but for eternity. It was said earlier that the question of Jesus is the supreme question that faces every human being in life. The reason it is supreme is because nothing else even comes close in comparison to its importance for our soul. Jesus knew this and said:

"What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mk. 8:36,37 NIV).

"No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him--the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough--that he should live on forever and not see decay" (Ps. 49:7-9 NIV).

No man can do this; only God himself is precious enough to redeem a human soul. Jesus was a man, a human being, like the rest of us. But if Jesus were only a man like the rest of us, his sacrifice on the cross would not have been sufficient. But since he is also God, that sacrifice fully satisfies the requirements for the forgiveness of our sins and to set us free from them.

That sacrifice is the only way this can be done and it has been done. But if we do not accept that sacrifice by accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior, then it does us no good. Many people know about Jesus or have some amount of knowledge about him and think that they know who he is. But that is not the kind of knowledge that saves a person from eternal separation from God in hell. Demons are very knowledgeable about who Jesus is but it does them no good.

"You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder" (Js. 2:19 NIV).

To be saved from the terrifying fate of demons and the devil, a person must know Jesus as Lord and Savior. Continuing to live one's life otherwise is to destine one's self to hell.

"In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead" (Acts 17:30,31 NIV).

Life and death for all eternity. That is how serious this question of the identity of Jesus is. You can either die to self now and live for him now and in heaven for all eternity. Or you can continue to live for self now and not for Jesus--and then live apart from him forever in the torment of hell. Either way, knowing who Jesus is means death: either death to self now so that new life in Jesus can occur; or else eternal death at the final judgment by this same Jesus. That is the danger of the great question of life: Who is Jesus? I pray that all who read this make the decision for life in Jesus.

"This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live" (Dt. 30:19 NIV).

Who is Jesus? Jesus is Life. Choose Jesus.

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (Jn. 14:6 NIV).

Ultimate Danger

ULTIMATE

THE HIDDEN DANGER OF RELATIVE LIVING

It has been said that good is the enemy of the best. What is often left unsaid is the danger of settling for the good instead of striving for the best. We will look more closely at this danger later, but we begin by noting that the word striving is used deliberately here. For while God grants good gifts to all humanity, without any effort on man's part, his best is reserved only for those who seek him with utmost passion.

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jer. 19:13).

"But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:13,14).

"I worked harder than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me" (1 Cor. 15:10).

Note that we are not speaking of salvation here, for the Bible makes clear (Eph. 2:8) that this is a free gift of God that cannot be earned by man. But salvation is but the first step towards experiencing the ultimate depths of God in one's life; it is the moment of new birth, not the full maturation that comes only long afterwards, after a whole life of growing up from being a spiritual infant.

The Bible says that God causes the sun and its good warmth and light to rise on both the evil and the good (Mt. 5:45). This is an example of the good things that God sheds upon all humanity. This is relative good. But ultimate good--God and the things of God--do require effort on man's part to receive.

But most people never get past the good things God gives to us in this world to proceed onward to the best things that he desires to give to us. Instead, they are satisfied to live their lives far below the high level for which God has created us, which is intimate communion with him. Food, shelter, some degree of pleasure--these are what they desire, in varying degrees. A dog is satisfied with these things.

But we are not mere animals, despite the constant cry of the evolutionists to the contrary. God has called us to much more. We have been called to lift up our eyes to see the grand design of God for us, to have a higher vision than that which is so commonly found in this world.

"Let us fix our eyes on Jesus . . ." (Heb. 12:2).

We are to have our eyes set on God and the things of God. That is the ultimate vision, the ultimate way of living. This is in stark contrast to the relative life so many live in this world. And the tragedy of this type of life is that it is not life at all, and, in fact, leads to ultimate death. Living relative life ends in ultimate death. This is the danger of relative living, and it is hidden from mankind until their eyes are opened in Christ by the Holy Spirit to see this hidden danger. As the familiar hymn so simply but eloquently says, "I once was blind, but now I see." And as Scripture informs us, there is only one way for a person to remove the veil that hides his vision from this deeper life: it can be done only through union by faith and baptism into Jesus Christ:

"But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away" (2 Cor. 3:14-16 NIV).

EXPOSING THE HIDDEN DANGER

If we would see, then we must be aware and know that there are, in fact, two types of death, just as there are two types of life. There is the relative life and relative death and then there is ultimate life and ultimate death. Jesus spoke of these two types, the relative and the ultimate, in these words:

"He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die"(Jn. 11:25,26).

That there are two types of both life and death is implied in these words of him who is life (Jn. 14:6). For Life said that the believer in him would live even though he dies. So there must be more to life than mere existence, life itself, for he said, "even though he dies".

Here Jesus promises that even if we die, it is possible to live. Furthermore, he speaks of the other end of this issue, saying that one who believes in him will never die. Unless there is something else other than the common, everyday view of life and death that humans hold, these words cannot be true. But they are true because they are spoken by him who cannot lie (Heb. 6:18) and who is the truth (Jn. 14:6).

Thus there is something more to life and death as we commonly perceive it. In fact, we ordinarily think of the life we know and the death we all must face as the ultimate realities. But the truth is that they are only relative. There is a life that is more than the common life known to man, which is mere existence, a life much better than that which we normally enjoy; and there is a death that is much worse than that of which we are normally aware. We take a look first at the life aspect.


RELATIVE LIFE versus ULTIMATE LIFE

Jesus said, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full" (Jn. 10:10). Thus it is quite clear that ordinary life that man lives without Jesus in that life is not the ultimate life God intends for man; it is relative life: good, yes, but definitely not the highest good, the fullness of life we are meant to have. It is a sad fact that the mankind, left to itself, lives its life fully in this limited world. Scripture describes this mindset this way:

"Their god is their appetite: They are proud of what they should be ashamed of; and all they think about is this life here on earth" (Phil. 3:19 TLB).

Many are they whose sole purpose in life is simply to enjoy solely for themselves as much as life has to offer, never considering that there is a judgment by God for how one has lived one's life. Not believing in a God who judges and not believing in a resurrection for judgment, their philosophy of self enjoyment is a natural result of such thinking:

"If the dead are not raised, then 'let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die' " (1 Cor. 15:32 WEB).

But that Scripture passage goes on to issue this warning to those who are influenced by this very popular worldview: "Do not be misled: 'Bad company corrupts good character' "(v. 33). It then goes on to show how to avoid being deceived and destroyed by this deadly, false worldview: "Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God--I say this to your shame" (v. 34).

Yes, it is to one's utter shame if he cannot see the plain truth about reality, that there is a God for whom we are made and that all his good gifts are meant to point us to him.

"I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. . . . The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Rom.1:16,18-20 NIV).

There is no excuse for not seeing what is so obvious, that there is a God who created all that exists and that he has claim upon that creation, including us human beings, to live for the purposes for which he created us, which is to know him, love him, serve him and worship him. To live for any other reason is to bring shame to one's soul.

Notice that this passage uses the phrase "suppress the truth". It is not that human beings do not know that there is a God; they know it from what he has created. But they suppress this knowledge because they do not want to serve the One who created them with innate ability to know the truth about creation and reality. They suppress what God wants them to know but which they do not want to know, all the while continuing to want to know what God has expressly forbidden them to know. It has been this way ever since Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. On the very day they chose forbidden knowledge while rejecting revealed knowledge, they died, spiritually; physical death came much later but was inevitable as a natural consequence of rebellion against God. That there are such types of death is one of Scripture's revelations to us.

THE PERVERSENESS OF FALLEN HUMAN NATURE

It is clear from the way most people in this world live that they do not believe God when he tells them the ultimate truth about reality and his existence and their own. Instead, they prefer to choose or even create, they think, their own reality, a reality more friendly to their own self-centered desires. This is not a new aberation of  sinful man but has been around for a long, long time. Ages ago, even the chosen people of God, the Jews, told the prophets whom God sent to warn them of their refusal to quit living relative lives and to start relating their lives to him who is the ultimate life that they did not want to hear the message God had given to those prophets. Therefore God accurately described those people in this way:

"These are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord's instruction. They say to the seers, 'See no more visions!' and to the prophets, 'Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!' " (Is. 30:9,10).

Incredible! An entire people prefer lies and a false vision of reality instead of the truth! How can this be? Surely no one really wants to live a lie, to live one's entire life in a fantasy world. Sadly, it is true. In fact, far more people fool themselves and deceive themselves that their own, self-centered lifestyle is the appropriate way to live rather than the way proclaimed by God in his Word. Nevertheless, God does not force them to admit their error; instead, he says of them:

"Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit" (Mt. 15:14).

Jesus truly spoke well by describing such blind people as falling into a pit, for Scripture often speaks of the end of such people as being in a pit, the pit of hell and its fire. This is the danger of relative living: It ends in ultimate death.

 THE DANGER OF RELATIVE LIVING

People are free to live life however they choose in this world. But they are not free to escape the consequences of that choice. There are laws and justice systems that are in place to punish offenders of the law. And if a person somehow avoids punishment in this world, there is always the punishment of the next. No one escapes final judgment. Some may seem to live wicked lives on this earth and never pay the penalty for it, but we are assured by God in his Word that there is always a final accounting for every individual's life. Sometimes we see a person's inner, hidden heart and motives, and sometimes we cannot, but we are assured that God sees all and there is an ultimate judgment for all.

"Some men's sins are evident, preceding them to judgment, and some also follow later" (1 Tim. 5:24 WEB).

Whether sooner or later, judgment is thus assured by God's Word. Jesus had this to say about this matter:

"He who rejects me, and doesn’t receive my sayings, has one who judges him. The word that I spoke, the same will judge him in the last day" (Jn. 12:48 WEB).

The consequences for rejecting God and his laws and his Savior, Jesus Christ, are most severe. They are, in fact, ultimate. Those who have lived their lives as relative lives, that is, not in accord with the ultimate laws and ways of God but only relative to the ways of this world will ultimately face ultimate punishment: separation from God for the ultimate "amount" of time, that is, eternity. There is no more terrifying prospect than this. It is the ultimate fate of horror: to exist forever apart from God, with not the least bit of goodness or pleasure in that existence, for where God is not, there is no good.

This is the message that has been attempted to be conveyed here in this piece of writing. My heart aches and sorrows for the multitudes I see caught up in deception, with no love for God or truth, racing on their way to eternal torment because they have no love for the truth.

"They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved" (2 Ths. 2:10 NIV).

Friend, do not be one who lives a relative life. The consequences are the ultimate in horror. Live the ultimate life of life in Jesus Christ. It's consequences are also ultimate, but they are the ultimate in joy: life forever with God in heaven.