9. Who Do You Say Who Jesus Is?

Hebrews 2:17 & 18 “For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

The group of us meet weekly.  Our questions range from the absurd to the poignant.  Our discussions also cover that area from the deeply respectful to the sacrilegious.  It is understood that faith if is to express itself, at times, needs to border on the blasphemous.  A life of deeply lived love of God requires that love to have few if any barriers.

So the question posed was – “Do you think Jesus ever worried about being called up to the blackboard in math class?  After all, if he was fully human, then as an adolescent boy he would have erections that came for no other reason than he had a blood stream full of hormones.”

For Christians, and I include myself with this class, there is little doubt that Jesus is divinity.  He is the son of God.  Yet, for Easter, it is not his divinity that is important, but his humanity.  We have this sort of superhero view of the humanity of Christ.  Yes, he may have suffered the slings and arrows of life, but he was somehow impervious to them.  And it was this invincibility that made the execution of Christ tolerable to him; more of an inconvenience than a punishment.  Yes, the death on the cross was painful, even anguishing, but he was God; he knew that it would work out all in the end. 

Jesus would have suckled as a baby, soiled himself, been cleaned, teethed and cried.  As a child he would have fell and skinned his knee and sought solace from his mother.  I wonder what order he was picked in neighbourhood games, was he first or was he last?  Did he date?  I imagine that he grew up knowing that he would die – just like we all do.  Just as every other teenager has a time when they contemplate their own mortality.  At some point he would have known that would have been an ugly death. 

There is little doubt that the Cross was the focus of the life of Jesus.  It is the focus of our faith after his resurrection.  But today, it comes down to the question of who do you think Jesus is?  This is a question that has some profound implications.

I like the movie The Last Temptation of Christ.  I like its’ core message.  That Jesus would have experienced the conflict between his desires as a man and his divinity.  I also like to think that the temptations Christ faced came also from within, not just from Satan.  Many of our temptations arise out of our own desires and our wants.  I think the movie over does the struggle that Christ faced with his humanity, I don’t think there would have been the level of self doubt.  But, I am sure that the idea of settling down and raising a family while he ran a little furniture shop must have had some appeal to him. 

Mark 14:32 They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. 34 “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.”

35 Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. 36 “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Nowhere is the struggle for Jesus more clearly displayed than in the scene of the Garden of Gethsemane.  Other passages that record the event tell us that Jesus sweat drops of blood, such was the intensity of emotion. I have but only the vaguest of understandings of the stresses that Jesus felt.  I do believe that it was more than just his pending death that distressed him.  It was more than there day of torment that lay before him.  It was taking on the burden of our sins, bearing the brunt for an entirety of humanity’s sins.  I believe it was the depth of sorrow for us that we were so viciously rejecting God.

However, what I do believe that it was Jesus the man that was upon the cross.

Romans 5:17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!