Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? – Mat 16:13
The current secular and academic search for
the historical man called “Jesus” has led to the strangest of discoveries.
Depending on which research you read, Jesus was an eschatological prophet, a
Galilean holy man, an occult magician, an innovative rabbi, a trance-inducing
psychotherapist, a Jewish sage, a political revolutionary, an Essene
conspirator, an itinerant exorcist, a historicized myth, a proto-liberation
theologian, a peasant artisan, a Torah-observant Pharisee, a Cynic-like
philosopher, a self-conscious eschatological agent,... the list goes on.
Is this a testament to the superlative,
multigrained glory of the man Jesus, or is this evidence that they have no idea
who Jesus was?
It’s neither. Because as it turns out, not
only do they begin their research with full knowledge of what the Gospel
writers have to say about Christ, they also make it their stated aim to make
sure that whatever Jesus they discover, he must be different from that
one!
It is this biased, self-serving motive that has
led to the popularity of “the existential Jesus”, or as one theologian puts it,
the What-Does-He-Mean-To-Me Jesus. Like someone looking down a deep
well, each researcher ends up seeing a Jesus that is more like them – a Jesus
that’s germane to their agenda.
That’s why scholarly ‘research’ has
‘concluded’ that Jesus was a Feminist, an Environmentalist, a Big-Government
Critic, a Social Justice Reformer... anything and everything. What they won’t say is that He is “the Christ,
the Son of the living God” (Mat 16:16).
In all of the advantages and education of
contemporary research, we must never lose sight of the REAL Carpenter from
Nazareth: the One who loved us enough to tell us we are lost in Sin, and died
in our place to save us from it.
AMEN.
More Blessings await you today; you’ll not
miss them in Jesus’ Name.
GREG ELKAN
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