These trying times are a reminder that the most important question of human existence came from a Jewish Rabbi 2,000 years ago: “But who do you say I am?” Jesus of Nazareth, objectively the most influential human being who ever lived, is himself life’s ultimate question mark. In the context of the time it was an explosive question, both for Jews and Romans, but for very different reasons. Jews had been waiting for their Messiah for 400(!) years. They had been enslaved by one nation after the other, and fully expected the God who had rescued their forefathers from slavery in Egypt, would send another savior to rescue them again. Romans, on the other hand, were not about to let some mythical Messiah figure of these strange and rebellious people threaten the hard won Pax Romana, earned through so much blood and warfare. There had been false alarms before, dynamic figures who claimed Messianic credentials, but nothing, at all, like Jesus of Nazareth. He was nothing like anyone expected, friend and foe alike. Let’s look at the context of the question from Matthew 16:
13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” 14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” . . . . . 20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
The “buzz” about Jesus in Israel was huge. Think of the Beatles circa ’64-’66, and you’ll get a sense of how “popular” Jesus was, contrary to John Lennon’s remark, probably more than the Beatles. He was a sensation, and caused a stir wherever he want. And because Jews from all over the Roman Empire came to Jerusalem en masse several times a year, the news of Jesus spread far and wide. This is yet another reason Jesus, his claims and what he did, could not have been invented from nothing. There were just too many eyewitnesses, so that distorting it would have destroyed the possibility of anyone taking him, or his followers, seriously.
The other issue is that if the Jesus of the gospels (and the testimony of Acts) is not true, then we have to believe he could have been a fiction. I would argue that it takes much more faith to believe in a made-up Jesus than the Jesus of the gospels. Just look at so called “Quest for the historical Jesus,” and you’ll see what flights of fancy scholars have gone through over the last several hundred years to come up with a Jesus, any Jesus, but the Jesus we find in the next of the New Testament. I don’t know about you, but I find the text of Scripture much more credible than the arbitrary assertions, conjecture, and speculation of scholars and skeptics who come to the text with assumptions born of the so-called Enlightenment.
If the text of the gospels is credible and reliable, and it is, then Jesus, the Messiah, God’s very own Son, directs the question to each and every one of us. Everything depends on our answer, not only for the kind of life we live here and now, but for our eternal destiny as well. We must take Jesus’ words and warnings about hell very seriously because that is the dire consequence of getting the answer to his question wrong. He is the Messiah, and he alone can rescue us from the dominion of darkness, and the just penalty for our sins, alienation from God, forever.
Fortunately, we don’t just have to take his word for it because of what we celebrate this Easter day 2020, locked up in our houses or not: his resurrection from the dead! If that actually happened, and the evidence is overwhelming that it did, then he not only claimed to be the Messiah, he proved it! His coming back to life after being brutally murdered on a Roman Cross (the reason for which we read about in the words of the prophet Isaiah written over 700 years before Christ) means our hope in life and death is secure. As the answer to the first question of the The Heidelberg Catechism puts it so eloquently:
—That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.
—He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil.
—He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation.
—Therefore, by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him.
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