Have you ever found yourself getting comfortable in your own familiar ideas—about Jesus, about Christianity, about your own life—and then found that God was doing something completely different? This tends to get us when our faith life depends on our present culture, which is easy to listen to, rather than the Word of God, which is harder. For example, how many of you realized that when Paul says “I can do all things through him who strengthens me,” he’s talking about being content in the Lord through all circumstances, and not succeeding in your worldly endeavors? It got the Jews in Jesus’ day too. They were waiting for the Messiah, but they hadn’t really examined Scripture all that well and they were looking for the wrong things. “No one will know where he is from?” Oh please; that’s an invented folktale, not Scripture!
So how do we really know whether or not Jesus is the Christ? For that matter, how do we know no one else is? The Old Testament has plenty of prophecies and typologies, but how do we know they’re specifically about Jesus?
Jesus answers. Out of everyone in history who has ever claimed to be Christ, Jesus is the only one to ever come on God’s authority and not his own. Notice through every word that Jesus ever speaks in the gospels, he never once seeks to glorify himself or gain benefit for himself; everything he says or does is in obedience to the Father, to glorify the Father. And on top of that, Jesus fits with the rest of the past! We would have to be skeptical if anyone brought up a new religious movement with no grounding in the past before it. But examine the Scriptures and see that Jesus fits seamlessly with what God has been doing since the beginning of the universe!
A handful of people believed Jesus’ claims. They reasoned that they were most likely true. But Jesus being the Messiah calls us to deeper belief—not just head knowledge, but heart-transforming knowledge. The Scriptures tell so much about who he is and what that means for you. It’s a worthwhile read, and it’s a worthwhile transformation.
