Scripture: Matthew 16:13-20; Isaiah 51:1-3; John 1:1-3; Genesis 1:26; Matthew 5:3-9; Matthew 5:48 Series: Identity
Drawing on Isaiah’s call to ‘look to the rock from which you were hewn’ and Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi, Wilson explores the two-fold identity of Christ. Jesus is the Human One (Son of man), the very image and pattern from which humanity was created, and the Messiah (anointed one), the Savior who reconciles us to the Father. Knowing both aspects matters in different seasons: in loss and doubt we meet the merciful Messiah, and to learn what new life looks like we look to the Human One, supremely in the Sermon on the Mount. Its command to ‘be perfect’ (teleos, completed) is not an impossible ideal but a promise: through the Holy Spirit that anointed Christ and dwells in us, our not-love desires can be purged so we become the children of God we were created to be.
Illustrations: sallman-head-of-christ, michelangelo-marble-sculpture, pour-one-out-not-love-desires, wesley-and-can-it-be-emptied-himself, holy-people-in-your-life
August 27, 2023
Who is Christ?
Isaiah 51:1-3
Matthew 16:13-20
Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah, who bore you, for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many. For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song. - Isaiah 51:1-3
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. - Matthew 16:13-20
Jesus holds an interesting place in our culture. Who is Jesus Christ? Now, whether people are believers or not, most have some awareness of Jesus Christ. Some idea that he lived long ago. Often an image of him that comes from this German immigrant to the United States in the 1950s who won a contest in Chicago and whose portrait of Jesus has become one of the most reproduced works of art in world history, even if it is completely ahistorical. For a lot of people, that is the image of Jesus. Who is Jesus Christ?
Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name, Joshua. Joshua and Jesus are the same name. Sometimes you’ll see the name Yeshua on billboards and things like that. Yeshua Ben Joseph, that is Joshua son of Joseph, this is the name of Jesus if we are trying to make his name sound more exotic, as if being exotic makes it more authentic.
Who is Jesus Christ? Joshua was the patriarch of the Old Testament who brought the people into the promised land. It wasn’t Moses or Joseph, but Joshua. The one who had faith, was bold, and did what God asked of him and led the people across the Jordan River. Christ was not the last name of Jesus. Just gonna say that. It’s important to say. Last names weren’t really a thing in Judaism until the 19th century. Sometimes people would be referred to by their father’s name in conversation, but that wasn’t a last name. Christ is not a last name but the Greek form of the word Messiah, which means in Hebrew anointed one. Christos means anointed one. Throughout the Old Testament, there’s word of an anointed one of God who will come and set things right, come Meshiach! There’s also a language of Son of man within the Old Testament, especially the Book of Daniel, but it shows up in Ezekiel and a few other places, huio anthropou, in Greek.
In the Jewish faith, there was no assumption that the Messiah would be the son of God or would have any relation to God. It’s really hard to fathom within Judaism a relation to God. God is one. Totally one without part or variance.
Christians, since the very beginning of the faith, have been able to look back at the Old Testament and see predictions of the coming of Christ. Not only predictions, but a testimony if Jesus.?That’s the reason why the Bible is structured as it is. The Old Testament is the older testimony of Jesus Christ. The New Testament is the newer testimony of Jesus Christ, the newer witness to him, but who is Christ. I want us to take our jumping off point from the prophet Isaiah when he says, look to the rock from which you were hued. Look to the rock.
Genesis describes the creation of humanity as made from the dust and the mud: and God formed Adam from the mud and the dust. Isaiah tells us to look to the rock from which we were hewn. Which begs the question: where did the model for Adam come from?
I haven’t done a lot of sculpture in my life. I like the medium. I think it would be amazing to be able to work with stone and carve stone or carve marble. I love the idea of what Michelangelo said about looking at a block of marble and how the marble itself contained the sculpture and he would just cut out everything that was unnecessary. What was left behind was the sculpture inherent in that block of rock. Look to the rock from which you were Hewn. How did God know how to make Adam? Leaders of the early church understood creation through the Trinity. That God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And that the Son, Jesus Christ, was in the beginning with God. Jesus Christ didn’t appear at Christmas for the first time. The celebration of Christmas was not the creation of Jesus but the incarnation of Jesus, the enfleshedness of Jesus. God became human in the person of Jesus Christ, but the Son of God was there from the very beginning of existence and time. As John says at the beginning of the gospel: “in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and all things came into being through him and without him. Not one thing came into being.”
The word of God is both the language out of which creation is spoken, but also the model for the creation of humanity. When Genesis says, let us create man in our image, this is the image from which humanity was created. The first example of humanity is found in looking at the Son of God; in the image of the Son of God. This is the rock from which we have been hewn.
Who is Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ is the human one. This is a more recent translation of Son of man, the human one. Jesus Christ is the epitome of humanity. What we were created to be, the possibility of what we were created to be. Jesus Christ is also the Messiah, the anointed one of God. Jesus Christ is both image and savior. God the Son is sent by God the Father at Christmas. God the Son is anointed at the baptism when the clouds open up and a voice is heard: This is my son and whom I am well pleased. Christ is the Human One, the rock from which we were hewn, the pattern from which all of our creation has followed. As well, Christ is the Messiah, the anointed one, the Savior. This is what Peter means in the Matthew passage for today when he says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Peter puts these two aspects together and he is praised for it.
Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
Peter is the first to name these two aspects of Christ and the church is built on this rock of who Jesus is.
These two aspects of the identity of Christ are more relevant to our lives at different seasons of our life. In moments of conversion, of transformation, in moments of of doubt, of discouragement, of loss, we see Christ as the Messiah, the Meshiach, the merciful one who comes from the Father, bringing peace, making straight the road, the way to God, offering us reconciliation with God the Father and forgiveness of our sins so that we can have new life. We also have seasons when we look to the human one aspect of Jesus Christ. And this is really important. We look to Jesus to understand what this new life can look like.
Last week, I spoke about the Isaiah passage and call to maintain justice and do what is good. For the words of the prophet, the idea of the good wasn’t whatever makes you feel good or what you think is good. There is a specific content in mind of justice and the good as well as what this new life can be. We find it in the life and teachings of Jesus.
The great example of this is found in the Sermon on the Mount. Here is what this life can look like. The Sermon on the Mount, roughly Matthew chapter five through eight, is not an idealistic text. The most famous parts are at the beginning with the beatitudes.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
The Lord’s prayer is also found in the Sermon on the Mount as are our instructions to turn the other cheek and not worry about things of the world. For some, the Sermon on the Mount seems an impossibility, an ideal. Sure, it’s good for Jesus. He’s perfect, but what about me? I am decidedly not perfect.
The Sermon on the Mount even says, be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. Again, these seem like high expectations that nobody can reach. And yet, if we have that view, we misunderstand who Christ is. We don’t realize that Christ is the rock from which we have been hewn. But looking to Christ offers us is a view of a life without sin. A life without a distance between God and humanity.
In the language of Charles Wesley and his great hymn, And Can it be that I should gain, emptied himself of all but love. If you look at your life, look at all the things in your life, all the desires of your heart. Now let’s just dump out every desire that is not love. All of them. Dump them out on the floor. Just keep on pouring ‘em out. Pour one out. Pour one out for anger. Pour one out for frustration. Pour one out for loneliness. Pour one out for jealousy. Pour one out for pride. There’s more. There’s a lot more. Some of us would feel like we’re pouring ourselves out for days. That’s precisely what Christ teaches us and offers us: all these not-love things are not who we are. The pride, the lust, the loneliness, the despair. That’s not who we are. That’s not who you are. You are not your anger. You are not your frustration. You are not your mistakes. You are a child of God, made in the image of God, hewn from the rock of Jesus Christ, Reconciled with God through the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Offered new life with the Holy Spirit, and that’s the key. That’s the missing link. What takes us from here to there, from being this mass of desires, both good and bad, to being transformed into true children of God who can read the Sermon on the Mount and say, Amen. That is me, What takes us there is the Holy Spirit acting in our lives.
Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. The word for perfect in Greek is teleos. It really means be completed, be finished, which means: be who you are created to be. You are not created to be a person of hate, a person of wickedness. You are created to be a person of love, of overflowing love. Not a general feeling of love, but a specific form of love.
What does that look like? It looks like the life of Jesus Christ. Is that impossible? No, it is not impossible because we have seen it with our own eyes. We have seen holy people in our life. You have seen holy people in your life. Maybe not completely transformed. John Wesley would talk about entire sanctification, people entirely made holy. I’m not pushing for that right now, but I am saying that you have seen people who are holy in your life, who have done things because of who Christ is, because of who God is. If they can do it, you can do it. Because what allows them to do it is not being better than you or having some genetic predisposition to kindness: it is because that Holy Spirit that came down and anointed Jesus Christ, that Holy Spirit that it is one with God the Father, and God the Son. That same Holy Spirit is with you and calling on that Holy Spirit can help you purge those not loves and live a full life. That is who Jesus Christ is. If you don’t know Jesus like this, he offers himself to you this day.
Let us worship him because he saves us, he transforms us. He shows us a way of life beyond the despair of this world. Let us serve him. Let us model Christ’s life. Let us show others that life. Let us live in such a way that people look not to us, but to God for how God has changed our own life.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day and the gift of Jesus Christ. Let us continually meet your Son again as our model and redeemer who saves us and shows us how to live a life of love not just in the future, but here and now. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.