Who
Is Jesus? … And Other Questions Many Christians Struggle to Correctly Answer
Who is Jesus? It’s a foundational question, and one many
Christians struggle to answer.
In Matthew 16, Jesus asks His disciples, “Who do people say that
the Son of Man is?” “Some say John the Baptist,” they replied, “others say
Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” “But who do you say that I
am?”
These days, increasingly odd and just plain wrong answers to
Jesus’ question seem to be floating around everywhere, and churches are one of
the easiest places to find them. This shouldn’t surprise us, however. As we’ve
said before on BreakPoint, beliefs come in bunches. So when you see increasingly
unorthodox and innovative ideas about sex, marriage, and the human person
coming from religious leaders, you can bet they’re also entertaining
increasingly unorthodox and innovative ideas about truth, the Bible, and even
God Himself.
For example, Dr. Karen Oliveto, the first openly lesbian bishop
in the United Methodist Church, recently offered this message to her flock:
“Too many folks want to box Jesus in,” she wrote, “carve him in
stone, create an idol out of him. [But] the wonderful counselor, mighty God,
everlasting one, prince of peace, was as human as you and me. Like you and me,
he didn’t have his life figured out.” Jesus had “bigotries and prejudices,” she
added, even sins which He had to learn to overcome.
Wait, Jesus can be an “idol”? As John Lomperis with the
Institute on Religion and Democracy remarked, “[A]n
idol is something other than God, usually something created by human hands,
improperly worshipped as a god.” But Jesus is God. For Dr. Oliveto to suggest that it’s improper to
worship God is like suggesting it’s improper to love your spouse.
And a Jesus who sinned wouldn’t have been God, nor worthy of our
worship. Ironically, this bishop’s imaginary Jesus would be the idol—along with
the Jesus of the Arian and Unitarian heresies, which teach that Jesus was a
good man but a created being, not God in human flesh.
But before we give Dr. Oliveto too much grief, we ought to ask
where our own theology is.
A 2014 LifeWay
Research survey of self-described evangelicals found that while
nearly all profess belief in the Trinity, one in four say God the Father is
“more divine” than Jesus. That’s similar to what the Arians believed, it’s the
error the Nicene Creed was written to combat.
In another
survey conducted last year, LifeWay talked only with those who held
core evangelical and conservative beliefs. Yet an astonishing seven in ten said
Jesus was the first being created by God—again, a defining feature of Arianism.
And more than a quarter held that the Holy Spirit is not equal with either the
Father or the Son.
This sad mess shouldn’t just bother theological eggheads. These
errors strike at the heart of Christianity, giving fundamentally unscriptural
answers to the question, “Who is Jesus?”
Answering this question correctly is itself an act of worship.
It’s a vital part of knowing and loving our God as He is. And it impacts
Christians’ lives at the most basic level.
For example, because Jesus is equal with the Father and fully
God means He can truly pardon us. As the scribes in Mark 2 correctly observed,
“Only God can forgive sins.”
Yet Jesus is also fully human. In order to serve as our High
Priest, He became like us in every respect, as Hebrews 2:17 says. In order to
redeem Adam’s race, the Last Adam had to belong to it.
This God-Man was not only sinless, He is entirely worthy of our
worship. In reply to His question, “Who do you say that I am?” We should be
able to say with Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and
with Thomas, who fell on His knees before the risen Jesus and said, “My Lord
and my God.”
Please come visit us at BreakPoint.org. We’ll link you to books
and other resources that will help you and your family walk through these
essential truths and answer the fundamental questions of the Christian
worldview.
John
Stonestreet is President of The Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview and
BreakPoint co-host.
In Christ's love, Fr. Robert Pax
