This is the fourth and final message in the
series centred around the Da Vinci Code. Over the last three weeks we’ve asked
some questions. The first week we asked, “Why Bother?” “Why bother even
addressing the Da Vinci Code?” and we saw that the book asks some important
questions about issues that are important to us as Christians, even if the answers
it gives are terribly off target. And we heard from 1 Peter that we should
be able to give a response to those kinds of questions when they come up.
Then we asked the question, “Who was Mary
Magdalene?” and we found that she was a faithful follower of Jesus and someone
we could afford to copy in the way she served him.
And last week we asked, “What is the
Bible?” and we saw that it isn’t some book that miraculously fell out of
heaven, but a faithful and trustworthy record of God at work in the lives of all
kinds of people over 1500 years.
This week we will finish up with the most
important question of them all, “Who is Jesus?” In the Gospel according to
Mark, Chapter 8 we read this:
“27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” 28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ.” ”
There are the two main options; a prophet
and teacher – or something more? There is actually one other option, which is
what the original Gnostics actually believed.
The Gnostics, the people we were talking
about a bit last week, believed that Jesus was wholly divine, he was divine and
nothing but divine, god and nothing but god. I don’t think anyone believes this
today – but it was what the Gnostics actually believed. For them, Jesus was a
purely spiritual being of light who only appeared to be human, a bit like a
hologram on Star Trek – Next Generation. A projection that looks physical but
isn’t.
Acts of John 93, “And often when I walked with him, I desired to see the print of his foot, whether it appeared on the earth; for I saw him as it were lifting himself up from the earth: and I never saw it.”
The Gnostic Jesus was too high and holy to
contaminate himself by taking on flesh. He just kind of floated over the earth
like a vision, not even leaving any footprints. So any real Gnostic would be
appalled at Dan Brown using their writing to argue the exact opposite of what
they believed – that Jesus was wholly human.
That is a much more popular position these days and, according to Peter’s report, it was what many of the people around Jesus were saying too. It’s certainly what Dan Brown would say.
“Jesus was viewed by His followers as a
mortal prophet… a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A
mortal.” (p233)
“Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from his
original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an
impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own
power.” (p233)
Lots of people believe things like this –
including people who would say they are Christians.
For instance, in a 1997 interview with the
Ottawa Citizen, a man by the name of Bill Phipps said that he didn’t believe
Jesus was God, doubted the reality of heaven and hell, and didn’t believe that
Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Now, if Phipps were just a man on the
street, this wouldn’t be terribly surprising. But Phipps was a United Church of
Canada clergyman who also served as its Moderator. Despite the fact that he
denies the central points of Christian orthodoxy, he claimed, “I believe that
nothing I said is outside the broad mainstream of United Church belief. I
believe my faith is well rooted in scripture and Christian tradition.” When
asked by Michael Enright of CBC Radio whether there was anything that a person had
to believe to be Moderator of the United Church, Phipps couldn’t honestly say
that there was.
This isn’t intended as an attack on people
in the United Church. In some ways I understand where Phipps was coming from.
He wants to keep Jesus as the founder of Christianity but on a par with the
founders of other faiths – a great teacher but not divine in any special way.
Many Muslims, Sikhs, Baha’is and Jehovah’s Witnesses hold the same view. It’s
the only way they can incorporate Jesus into their worldview. And some
Christians who want to reach out to non-Christians find that really attractive.
Unfortunately, this “inclusive moral
teacher” Jesus bears little resemblance to the “Lord and Saviour” Jesus of the New Testament.
Although people like Phipps and Brown may
believe they are Christians and are rooted in scripture and tradition, the
early Christians wouldn’t have thought so.
The earliest Christians believed Jesus was
both human and divine, both man and God.
The earliest Christian writing we have
isn’t a Gospel, it’s one of Paul’s letters, 1 Thessalonians, which was written about
15 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection – between 45 and 48 AD. In chapter
1, verse 9 he’s talking about how the Thessalonians turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God, 10 and to wait
for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us
from the coming wrath. (1 Thes 1:9-10)
In that last verse you have; that Jesus came from heaven, that he was raised from the dead and that he is the means of our salvation. Jesus’ earliest followers didn’t think he was a great human teacher. It never occurred to them. In fact, the danger was that they would make him only divine, like the Gnostics did, and ignore his humanity.
You see the same focus on Jesus as both
human and divine in one of Paul’s later letters, in Philippians 2:6-11, written
about 60AD, 25-30 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
If I were in the middle of a sermon and
said, “And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing; Sent Him to die, I
scarce can take it in.” Would you know where it came from?
Or if I were to say, “Shine, Jesus, shine, fill this land with the Father’s glory.” Would you recognise that?
When you do that, borrow the words from a
song in a sermon, the people listening have to recognise them or it’s a waste
of effort. And that’s exactly what Paul’s doing in Phil 2:6-11.
4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to
the interests of others. 5 Your attitude should be
the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Now, here comes the quote. We know it’s
probably a quote from the poetic language and the way the lines run.
6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God
something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became
obedient to death— even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name
that is above every name, 10 that at the name of
Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God
the Father.
What is the point Paul is trying to make
here? He’s trying to get the Philippians to be humble like Christ!
He’s not arguing for Jesus’
divinity, he’s arguing from it. He’s assuming that the people he’s
writing to will recognise the hymn he’s quoting and they’ll understand that
he’s saying, “If Jesus, who is God, could humble himself to come down to earth
as a human being – so much of a human being that he could actually die – then
surely you can get over your petty squabbles and humbly put others ahead of
yourselves just like he did for all of us.”
You see, the argument only works if the
people he’s writing to know the song and already believe that Jesus is God in
human form.
So why did the early Christians believe
that Jesus is God in human form. Because that is what Jesus himself claimed!
Now, you have to
understand that Jesus and His disciples were all Jews. They weren’t from the
kind of culture or religious background that lent itself to calling any great
person a god – somewhere like India, or Hollywood. No, these were Jews. For
over 2000 years their people had been taught that there is only one God, the
creator, and there is no-one like him!
So what do you do with
these statements by Jesus? (We’re going to quickly run through a few of the
verses in the gospels that show that Jesus, either directly or indirectly,
claimed to be God.)
In Matthew 28:18 Jesus says, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven
and on earth…” According to
the Old Testament the only one who has “all authority” is God.
In Luke 23:42,43 a thief
on the cross next to Jesus asked Him to remember him when He comes into His
kingdom. Jesus responds by saying, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be
with Me in Paradise.” Jesus took it upon himself to grant the thief
entrance to paradise, but only God can make that decision.
In John 14:1 Jesus
says, “You believe in God, believe also in Me.” He calls upon people to
believe in him in the same way they believe in God, as deity.
In Mark 2: 5 some men
bring a paralysed friend to Jesus for healing and it says that “Seeing their faith,
Jesus said to the paralyzed man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ ” Jesus
takes it upon himself to forgive sin, something that no man has the authority to
do. Now, you might say that Jesus was just simply stating the fact that his
sins would be forgiven and not actually granting it. Or that Jesus was
personally forgiving this man, and not actually clearing his debt to God. That
would be possible, except that if Jesus was simply stating a fact or personally
forgiving this man then it wouldn’t have been a big deal and there wouldn’t
have been a negative reaction. But there was. In verse 6 it
says, “Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to
themselves, “Why does this fellow talk
like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”” It
doesn’t really matter what we (2000 years later) think he was doing. The
people in the same room as Jesus clearly thought He was granting forgiveness of
sins, something that only God could do.
We started off with
Jesus’ more indirect claims to be God, but in Mark 14:61-64, in the middle of
Jesus’ trial, it says that, “Again the high priest was questioning Him, and
saying to Him, ‘Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?’ And Jesus
said, ‘I am; and you shall see the son of man sitting at the right hand of
power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.’” The high priest tore his
clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. “You have heard the
blasphemy.”
Personally I don’t
think the issue was so much that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah. That was
almost a growth industry in first century Palestine. There was always someone
around claiming to be the Messiah. What the priests found blasphemous is when
Jesus says that he will be seated with God in heaven and come again at the end
of history.
In John 14:8-9 Philip (one of the disciples) says, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus’ answer is amazing… “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus is actually claiming that someone looking at him is looking at God.
In John 10, after
claiming in vs. 28 that he gives eternal life to people who follow him, Jesus
says in vs. 30, “I and the Father are one.” The Jewish leaders
immediately tried to stone him. When Jesus asked them why they wanted to stone
him, they responded, “for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make
Yourself out to be God.”(vs. 34)
As a result, in John
19:7, the Jewish leaders had a problem. They wanted to get rid of Jesus for
blasphemy, because the had claimed to be equal with God, and they tell Pilate,
“We have a law, and by that law He ought to die because He made himself out to be the Son of God.” But, of course, Pilate is a Roman. He
doesn’t care if someone calls themselves a god. Rome had thousands of gods. So
the Jewish leaders spin Jesus as a political threat to the empire, “If you
let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king
opposes Caesar.” (19:12) And Pilate caves in and orders Jesus’ execution.
So, if Jesus wasn’t
claiming to be God… why were the Jews consistently responding to him as though
He was?
Jesus believed that
what people thought of him was absolutely important. He asked Peter, “Who do
you say I am?” And he asks each one of us the same question.
If he was simply some
kind of spiritual being that only appeared to be human then he is really irrelevant
to our lives as physical beings. Interesting, but irrelevant.
If he was
simply a man, then we should ignore the things he taught because he can’t be a
great moral teacher. Great moral teachers do not claim to be God. As C.S. Lewis
puts it in his book Mere Christianity:
“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 mad man, 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 up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He
has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (Lewis, MC’52, 40, 41)
It’s because Jesus is both man and God that
he can stand in the gap between us and God. If he were simply a man, apart from
being a blasphemer, all he could do is say “this is the way to God.”
If he were simply the Gnostic Jesus, purely
spiritual, all he could say is become like me and become God.
But because he is both man and God he can say
“I am both “the way” to God and I am the destination, God himself.” Because of
Jesus we can know what God is really like, I like to speak of him as the
greatest audio visual aid in history. God as a walking and talking human being.
But it goes further than that. Jesus didn’t
just come down and walk with us. He changed places with us, and took upon
himself the pain and suffering and death that is rightfully ours because of
sin, so that we can take on the life that is his.
The evidence is all there that this is who
Jesus is. I can’t prove to you that Jesus is the Son of God. I can only show
that he thought he was, and so did those who knew him best.
If he is the Son of God, then surely that
has serious repercussions for every aspect of our lives.
…