Who do you say Jesus is?

I recently read a blog post, Who do you say that Jesus is?, and it inspired me to write this post. I wanted to give that blog some recognition, I don't know the author personally.

First a passage from the book of Matthew:

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. (Matthew 16:13-20, emphasis added)

We see in Matthew that Peter replies to Jesus' question, "Who do you say I am?", with the answer of: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Peter didn't say, "You are a great teacher." or "You are a good man," no, he called Jesus the Messiah.

Why is this important, you may be asking? It's important because Peter, due to the Heavenly Father, understood exactly that Christ is God, as he claimed. Peter understood that Jesus was/is way more than a great teacher. He believed this even after all of the doubters that they had experiences with, Peter didn't fall prey to the Pharisees' false teachings.

Peter saw Jesus make the lame able to walk, the blind to see, the mute to speak. He heard the many teachings of Christ: parables, sermons, and conversations with people. He saw Jesus feed five thousand people, walk on water, calm an ocean, cast out demons, and even raise a dead girl. Peter also saw Nazareth reject Jesus and the Pharisees challenge Jesus on his teachings. None of this was for naught because Peter came to believe that Jesus Christ was God. That's why this passage is important.

The question still applies today. Who do you say that Jesus is?

If you say Jesus a great moral teacher, then the power of the Bible is taken away and it becomes just a book of wise sayings.

If you say Jesus is the Messiah, is Lord, and is God, then you have accepted his free gift of grace. With that answer, however, comes the commitment of laying down our lives and putting everything in. By that I mean that we have to surrender to Christ and die to ourselves.

As explained in Matthew 16: 24-25, "Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it."" 

Galatians 2:20 is another good verse for this, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Finally, a quote from C.S. Lewis about saying who Jesus is.

"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 a 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 patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."                          

(Mere Christianity, 52-53)

So, who do you say Jesus is?