Who Do You Say I Am?

Audio Player

Imagine you’d been there that first Christmas, and were scanning the Birth Announcements in the Bethlehem Chronicle. You might think you’d have found Jesus under the ‘C’s – ‘To Joseph and Mary Christ, a son... (etc)’ But actually, you wouldn’t have done. Because ‘Christ’ wasn’t his surname. It was his job title. So if Jesus had ever filled in an official form, he’d have put ‘Christ’ not under name, but under occupation. And in this last passage for now, in our series in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus explains what the job of being the Christ is all about.

Now ‘Christ’ and ‘Messiah’ are two Bible words for the same person. And I guess from the way they’re still used, everyone has some idea what they mean. So, e.g., I first lived up here in the glory days of Kevin Keegan managing Newcastle United. He took them from languishing in the second division to being Premiership title contenders. And when he left, the Chronicle’s headline was: ‘Messiah leaves: Keegan’s reign ends.’ And whoever wrote that really understood what Messiah or Christ means. Because it means someone who rescues the situation by coming to reign. And the Bible says Jesus came to rescue the situation of a world in rebellion against God, by re-establishing God’s rule over peoples’ lives.

So Christmas isn’t really about questions like, ‘What should we get Aunt Maud this year?’ or ‘Does anyone actually enjoy brussel sprouts?’ It’s really about the question, ‘Who should be king of your life?’ – You? Or Jesus.

So would you turn in the Bibles first of all to Luke 1v1:

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. (1.1-4)

And notice in v1 that he doesn’t just say, ‘Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have happened among us.’ He says ‘the things that have been fulfilled among us’ – i.e., things that were promised in the Old Testament (OT), which have now happened in the person of Jesus.

So what did the OT promise? Well turn on to this morning’s passage – to Luke 9v18, because the first few verses go some way to answering that:

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, “The Christ of God.” (vv18-20)

Now what did John the Baptist, Elijah and the other prophets have in common? The answer is: they were all God’s spokesmen. And part of their job was to speak God’s promises about the future. So they were like signposts, pointing forward to the Christ – this person God would send to rescue the situation of a world in rebellion, by re-establishing his rule over peoples’ lives. And the crowds were so impressed by Jesus – especially by his miracles – that they thought he might be another of those signposts. Whereas in v20 Peter says something totally different. He says, ‘I don’t think you’re another signpost; I think you’re the one they’ve all been pointing to – the Christ.’

So how did Peter reach that conclusion? Well, he began to follow Jesus back in chapter 5, so what Peter says here is his conclusion from everything Jesus said and did recorded in chapters 5 to 9 – especially the miracles.

Now miracles are a bit like road signs – they don’t mean anything unless you understand the code. So imagine a little green man from outer space lands in Jesmond and sees a road sign which is a red circle with a white bar across it. It wouldn’t mean anything to him at all. Whereas the reason it means ‘No Entry’ to you is that you’ve read the code – the Highway Code. And likewise, Jesus’ miracles only mean something once you’ve read the ‘code’ – which is the OT. So, in Luke 8 we’ve seen how Jesus calmed a storm threatening to drown his disciples, freed a man mastered by evil, healed an incurable sickness and raised someone from the dead. But what does that all mean? The answer is: you have to ‘decode’ it using the OT. So, the OT says: one consequence of our rebellion against God is that it’s left us all, to different degree, mastered by evil. And it says: another consequence is that God has imposed on us the blanket judgement of mortality – so that we’re threatened by the forces of nature (like storms) and sickness. And the OT promised that the Christ would come and rescue us from our rebellion and its consequences. So against that background, look again at Jesus calming that storm, freeing that man from the grip of evil, healing that sickness and raising that girl from the dead, and what do you see? Peter’s answer was: the Christ – because he was clearly showing he could rescue people from the consequences of humanity’s rebellion.

So, Peter says to Jesus, ‘You’re the Christ.’ And, v21,

Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. (v21)

Why was that? Well, because Jesus knew that at this point their understanding of what he’d come to do as the Christ was way off. You see, Joe Public at the time thought that the Christ would be like a souped-up version of King David, Israel’s best OT leader. They thought the Christ would come and boot out the Romans, so that Israel could get on with showing the world what living for God really looks like. The assumption being, ‘The problem is them – and if only we could get rid of them and get our environment right, we’d be the society we ought to be.’ And many still think like that today. They think that most people – themselves included – are basically good; and that if only we could solve the problem of the people who aren’t – like sex offenders – then society would be fine.

But the Bible says that’s naïve and superficial thinking. It says the problem isn’t ‘out there’ – in other people or our environment – it’s ‘in here’, in the heart of every one of us. And deep down, even those who say they think people are basically good don’t believe that at all. Otherwise why do they lock their houses and cars, and panic when they lose their wallets? No, the Bible says the problem is that at heart we don’t want God to be God over us: we each want to decide for ourselves what’s good and evil – which is why we can’t trust one another to be good, or even trust ourselves to be. And the Bible says the solution is that we need to be forgiven back into relationship with God, and changed at the deepest level of what we want (and those things are actually two sides of the same coin – you can’t truly have one without the other). And that’s what the OT, rightly understood, had promised the Christ would do. Which explains what Jesus says next in v22:

And he said, “The Son of Man [which was another OT title he used for himself – ‘The Son of Man...’] must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” (v22)

Later on Luke tells us how the Lord Jesus, on the night before he died, quoted Isaiah 53 – the OT reading we had earlier. It’s a prophecy about a man sent from God who suffers, dies and rises again from the dead to live for ever. And in Luke 22v37, Jesus says:

“I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me.” (22v37)

And that’s what lies behind the ‘musts’ in Luke 9v22. It’s the ‘must’ of something planned and promised by God in the OT which has got to happen. And no-one in Jesus’ day had understood that the OT – in places like Isaiah 53 – had promised the suffering and death and rising again of the Christ. So, eg, they could see that Isaiah 9 – that classic carol service reading – was talking about the Christ.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.He will reign on David’s throneand over his kingdom,establishing and upholding itwith justice and righteousnessfrom that time on and forever. (Isaiah 9v6-7)

And Joe Public would have said, ‘Of course that’s what the Christ is going to do – he’s going to overcome the rebellion against God and re-establish God’s rule over people’s lives.’ But it hadn’t occurred to anyone that Isaiah 53 was also talking about the Christ – until Jesus taught that it was. Listen to Isaiah 53 again:

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way;and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53v3-6)

And that had to happen to Jesus on the cross because the rebellion in our hearts is only overcome through the experience of being forgiven; and God could only forgive in a way that satisfied his justice.

And the best illustration I know of that is the book on the hand. You may have seen it before, but it’s worth seeing again – because in my experience, people often ask, ‘But why couldn’t God just forgive like we do – why did he require some kind of sacrifice?’ And this is one way of answering.

Imagine that my right hand stands for you or me. And that the light up there stands for God. And we were made to live in friendship with God, looking up to him and trusting him to tell us how to live. But the Bible says we’ve all turned away from God, wanting to rule our own lives. So now imagine that this book stands for everything that God should hold against me at the end of the day of my life – the wrong attitude to him that’s said, ‘Keep out’, and all the wrong actions it’s led to. Ie, imagine this is the judgement I deserve from God – represented by the book now lying on my hand.

And the question is: if God in his love wanted to offer me forgiveness, how could he do that without compromising his justice? Ie, if he wanted to take away this judgement, what was going to happen to it? Because if God just takes it and ‘parks it’ over here, it looks like he’s saying, ‘Let’s just forget about all the wrong you’ve done. Let’s just sweep it under the carpet. Let’s say right and wrong don’t really matter. But (unlike us sinners who can so easily compromise morally) God could never say that – because it’s his nature to uphold right against wrong. Which is why the Bible says our judgement could only be taken away if it was transferred to someone else.

So now imagine that my other hand stands for God the Son – come down to our level when he was born as a man – with no sin of his own to pay for, but here because he was willing to pay for ours. And if I transfer the book representing the judgement I deserve from one hand to another, that’s a picture of God the Father allowing his Son to take it on himself when he died on the cross. As Isaiah 53 puts it, again:

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way;and the Lord [= God the Father] has laid on him [= God the Son] the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53v6)

Which means that we can be forgiven our sin – if we turn to Christ and trust in him - whilst justice has still been done on our sin. That’s what lies behind the ‘musts’ in v22.

So you can think of that ‘must’ from God the Father’s point of view – it was that forgiveness must be offered without compromising his justice.

But then you can also think of that ‘must’ from the Lord Jesus’ point of view. As God the Son, before his incarnation, he knew that co-operating with his Father’s plan to love and save us must involve him going to the cross. But then he became man that first Christmas, and from the OT would have grown year by year in his human knowledge of what the Christ must do. And can you imagine reading Isaiah 53, knowing it was about you, knowing that one day you must go through what it talks about? If you find you doubt his love for you, just think how often in the course of his life he must have re-made his decision to go to the cross for you – even though, humanly, he must have shrunk from it. And if you doubt his ability to sympathise with what you’re going through, just think that not only did he go through suffering of every kind, but he knew what it was to know it was coming, as well.

And then you can also think of that ‘must’ from our point of view. And the must is: if you want to be in relationship with God, you must trust in what Jesus did for you on the cross, because there’s no other way to get back into relationship with him. If there had been another way – like us trying our best to be good – do you really think he’d have given up his own Son to go to the cross? So if you’ve not yet turned to Jesus but would like to, you must simply trust that what Jesus did on the cross was enough for you to be forgiven anything and everything. And if you’ve been a Christian 50, 60, 70 years, you must simply keep trusting that what Jesus did on the cross – and that alone – is what makes you still acceptable to God today.

So, v22 again:

And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” (v22)

Now according to the Bible physical death is the point where, apart from Jesus, we face the judgement we deserve. But when Jesus rose from the dead it showed that he’d dealt with that judgement – taken it on himself, paid for it in full, exhausted it, neutralised it (however you want to put it) and then come out the other side – so that if we’re trusting in him, we can now pass safely through death, with no fear of judgement, into his eternal kingdom.

Which begs the question for each of us: are we going to be part of that kingdom? Do we want to be? To stay out of it, all you have to do is: nothing. I.e., make no response to Jesus and carry on living as you always have. Whereas to be part of it, we need 1) To ask the risen Lord Jesus to forgive us for living as if he wasn’t king; and 2) To accept him as king, with all the implications of that – which Jesus spells out in v23:

Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (v23)

So ‘deny himself’ is about the issue of who’s running your life – you or Jesus? Because to ‘deny yourself’ doesn’t mean to deny yourself something – like chocolate. It means to deny yourself the right to rule yourself. It means saying to yourself, ‘You are no longer king of your life; Jesus is.’ And it means saying to Jesus, ‘I will re-learn, through the Bible, how you want me to live and I’ll do what you want me to do, be what you want me to be and go where you want me to go.’ And I wonder, especially, whether those of us who are long in the tooth as Christians are still saying that and, more to the point, still living that? Are we still letting the Lord Jesus deal with us through the Bible so that it makes us uncomfortable? Are we more, not less, aware, of the ways we need to let him change us – and wanting that change more, not less? If the answer’s no, then we’ve lost sight of what it means to have Jesus as king.

So, ‘deny himself’ is about who’s running your life – you or Jesus. And ‘take up his cross daily’ is about the issue of whose approval matters most to you – the world’s, or Jesus’? In those days, if you saw someone literally taking up his cross, it meant they were on their way to be crucified – which was the Roman Empire’s way of getting rid of its worst criminals and enemies. It was the ultimate form of rejection. And when Jesus says we must take up our cross, he means we must be prepared to suffer rejection for siding with him. Because the world is fundamentally Christ-rejecting. There’s a rebellion on. No-one by nature wants God to be God over their lives. And if by grace you do, then others won’t like it. Because if we live and speak for Jesus we’ll remind people of the God they’re trying to forget. And sometimes, at least, that will play out in being laughed at or unpopular or discriminated against or worse. And we’ve got to learn to accept that, and be unsurprised.

So Jesus spells out the implications of having him as king. And then in v24 he answers the question, ‘Is that really worth it?’:

“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” (vv24-26)

So in v26 he’s saying that one day he will wrap up history and we will meet him. As the carol puts it:

Not in that poor lowly stable,With the oxen standing by,We shall see Him; but in heaven,Set at God's right hand on high;

And v26 says that if in this life, we’ve been ashamed of him, on that day, he’ll be ashamed of us. I.e., if in this life we’ve said, ‘No’ to him, ‘I won’t have you as king – because I want to save myself all the change and possible rejection that involves,’ then on that day he’ll say, ‘No’ to us – ‘I won’t have you in my kingdom.’ Because you can’t be part of a kingdom if you won’t accept the King.

So Jesus is basically saying, ‘Don’t kid yourself that there’s only a cost one way – the cost of following me. Because once you realise there’s a life beyond this life to take into account, you’ll see there’s a cost both ways – and in fact a far greater cost of not following me.’

And lastly he touches on the question, ‘But is this all really true? – that there is a kingdom of God beyond this life to gain or lose – and that whether you’re part of it depends on how you respond to Jesus now?’ Well, in v27: Jesus says,

“I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” (v27)

Ie, he promises that they will see real evidence that there is a kingdom of God beyond this life – and that he is king of it. And that’s partly a reference to the transfiguration, which happens next (see Luke 9.28f) – where three of them were given a ‘preview’ of the glory he was going to have back in heaven, after his resurrection. And it’s partly a reference to his resurrection bodily from the dead – which all the apostles – except Judas – witnessed. And that’s the fact of history on which we stake everything. That’s the fact of history on which we believe it is true that there’s a kingdom of God beyond this life – and that Jesus is the king of it.

And the last word to say is that that’s true for everyone. There’s no option of saying, ‘That’s nice for those who believe it – that’s nice if it helps them.’ It’s true whether you believe it or not, whether you want it to be true or not. And the only options it leaves us are to accept Jesus as king or to reject him – with all the implications either way.

Back to top