Now some of them from Jerusalem
said, “Is this not He whom they seek to kill? But look! He speaks boldly, and
they say nothing to Him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is truly the
Christ? However, we know where this Man is from; but when the Christ comes, no
one knows where He is from.” Then Jesus cried out, as He taught in the temple,
saying, “You both know Me, and you know where I am from; and I have not come of
Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know. But I know Him, for I
am from Him, and He sent Me.” Therefore they sought to take Him; but no one
laid a hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come. And many of the people
believed in Him, and said, “When the Christ comes, will He do more signs than
these which this Man has done?” (John 7:25-31).
C.
S. Lewis wrote the following about Jesus in his wonderful book, Mere
Christianity:
I am
trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often
say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t
accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who
was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great
moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who
says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make
your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or
something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill
him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let
us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human
teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.[1]
This
was really the question the people of Jerusalem, the pilgrims, and the Jewish religious
leaders were debating as they watched Jesus teaching in the temple: Who is
Jesus? They see Him teaching in the temple courts, not like a proper rabbi
should, but claiming some kind of divine authority, almost as if He were the
author of the Scriptures; they see Him going around and performing miracles; He
heals the sick, the blind, the deaf and mute, the demon-possessed, acting
almost as though He had some kind of divine authority to command nature. Even
the wind and waves obey Him![2] He
ignores the traditions of the elders, the oral teachings, guarded and protected
by the Pharisees, the hedge of protection which could keep men from
transgressing the Law. He calls them the vain teachings of men; He condemns the
Jewish religious establishment by saying that the hearts of the Pharisees were
far from God.[3]
He will soon say much worse. He acts as though He had the authority to define
faith and tell people how to worship. Probably the most shocking thing was that
Jesus goes around telling people that He is the Christ,[4]
using messianic titles like “son of man”,[5]
saying that He is the fulfillment of Scripture,[6]
that He would die as the sacrifice for the sins of mankind,[7]
and that He would rise again.[8] It
is almost like Jesus is not just claiming to have divine authority, but that He
is God Himself, in the flesh.
Well,
C. S. Lewis would be satisfied that the Jews at least made a choice about who
Jesus was. They did not try to come down somewhere in the diplomatic middle.
They looked at Him and saw the Devil of Hell. They would soon spit at Him, and
kill Him as a demon. The people see a good man, a political revolutionary
perhaps, a prophet even, but God in human flesh? That just can’t be. That’s
blasphemy. Besides, Jesus comes from Nazareth. His parents are Mary and Joseph.
The people know His origin, or so they choose to believe despite Jesus’
miraculous testimony to the contrary. He couldn’t be the Messiah because,
the
supposition had gained ground that no one would know whence He [Messiah] would
come. This idea was due to a misunderstanding of some Old Testament passages
referring to the eternity of the Messiah and to sections of apocryphal
literature which was circulating among the Jews in those days.[9]
Yet,
Jesus is in the temple courts teaching, and the Jews aren’t stopping Him. The
people, mockingly, wonder aloud if the Pharisees have changed their minds about
who Jesus is. This is how Jesus forces everyone, including us, to deal with His
question: Who do you say that I am?[10]
Jesus
says, “You both know Me, and you know where I am from; and I have not come of
Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know. But I know Him, for I
am from Him, and He sent Me.”[11]
Jesus asserts here, as He would later in an even more overt way, that He is
divine. He tells the Pharisees that, not only is He sent by YHWH to do YHWH’s
work, they are not even believers in YHWH and, in fact, they do not even know
YHWH.[12] Later,
Jesus will tell the Jews that they are not children of Abraham, and the
promises of YHWH, but rather children of the devil, and Jesus will then call
Himself YHWH.[13]
Considering
all this, if we judge Jesus according to the standards of man, Jesus can only
be either a lunatic or the Devil of Hell. But, if we judge Him according to God’s
standard, according to what God has said about Himself and His Christ in Holy
Scripture, we must fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. These words of Scripture
have been given to us by God for that very purpose: for us to use as the only
standard to judge all teachings about God. It is through God’s Word that the
Holy Spirit creates faith in us.[14] All
Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God
may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.[15]
So, we gather together around Word and Sacrament as the Body of Christ. We hear
the words Christ has given us, and we eat the body and drink the blood of Him,
the Word made flesh, as He bids us, all for the strengthening of our faith and
the forgiveness of ours sins.[16]
Just
as Jesus explains to the Jews, “The doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent me.”[17]
We, accordingly, follow Jesus’ example and confess[18] (that
is, we say with Jesus) His doctrine.
We confess that we are, by nature, sinful and unclean.[19]
We confess that Christ died for our sins, to pay the penalty we deserved for them,
that He was buried, and that He rose again from the dead for our justification.[20]
He sits at the right hand of God, in the glory of God the Father. We believe
that He shall come to be our judge. The doctrine is not our own, but comes from
Jesus, the Christ, the one by whom we are sent. We believe, teach, and confess
that which we are given, because the One who gave it is true.[21]
[1] Lewis,
C. S. Mere Christianity. Read by
Geoffrey Howard. Blackstone Audio Incorporated: Audible, 2006.
[2]
Matthew 8:24-27
[3]
Matthew 15:1-9
[4]
John 4:25-26
[5]
Daniel 7:9-14; John 8:28
[6]
Luke 4:16-22
[7]
Mark 10:45
[8] Matthew
20:18-19; Mark 9:31; 10:33-34; Luke 18:32-34; 24:6-8;
[9] Kretzmann,
Paul E. Popular Commentary of the Bible:
New Testament, Vol. I. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1921
[10]
Matthew 16:14-16
[11]
John 7:28-29
[12]
YHWH: Yahweh, whose name was revealed to Moses as four Hebrew consonants (YHWH)
called the tetragrammaton. Whenever the word Lord
is found printed in such a way in the Old Testament, in a mainstream
translation of a modern English language Bible, it is translating the tetragrammaton
and can be read as, “Yahweh.”
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Yahweh.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Inc., September 24, 2018, www.britannica.com/topic/Yahweh.
[13]
John 8:37-59
[14]
Romans 10:17
[15] 2
Timothy 3:16-17
[16]
Luke 22:19-20; Matthew 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; 1 Corinthians 11:23-25
[17] John
7:16
[18] Confess:
From the assimilated form of com “together” and fateri “to
admit,” akin to fari “speak”; “To speak, or admit, together.”
"Confess." Online Etymology Dictionary. Accessed May 16, 2019.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/confess?ref=etymonline_crossreference.
[19]
Psalm 51:5; Ephesians 2:1-10
[20] 1
Corinthians 15:1-8; Romans 4:25
[21]
John 7:28; Romans 3:4
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