Who is Jesus?

And I've done something a little bit unusual because what I've done is I've brought in a New Testament guy over here, Justin Bass, and a systematic theology person over here, Scott Horrell, both teaching at the seminary to discuss in a cross-disciplinary kind of way issues related to Christology, but not Christology in the way you normally think about it. We're not talking about which passage what are the passages were Jesus confesses who he is or the text says he's the Son of God, those more kind of direct passes, but kind of the indirect passages and the indirect ways in which Scripture reveals who Jesus is.

But to start us off, I'm gonna start us off on the theological foot so, Scott, welcome.

Now, the other thing that I think befuddles people – I think that'd be a good word to use – is this combination of how the human and divine work together. We've just come out of a discussion on our campus in the context of a chapel in which the discussion was made did Jesus learn math. Terrible question, right? [Laughs]

There are a wide variety of ways in which this is done, but my point is that scripture is literally loaded with other ways to do this that we often don't think about and that often are in many ways just as revealing. So I want to talk about those for a second and talk about it from a New Testament side on the one hand and then theologically reflect on the other. So I'm gonna just go through kind of a list of texts and so let's start here.

Perhaps one of the ones that shows up earliest in a gospel narrative is the scene in Mark 2 where Jesus is confronted with a paralytic who has come to have Jesus heal him and I love this. This is one of my favorite passages in all of scripture. It's a great story. I mean it's crowded. They can't get in. I mean everything about it says this isn't happening.

The second category is they are partitioners of numinous power. They pray to God that God would act and he acts. So they're healers but they're not direct healers, if you will, okay. The third category is called they are bearers of numinous power. Now, if you actually study the Jewish materials carefully, you will find that they bulk of healings that take place in the context of Judaism belong in those first two categories. There are very few people who act directly and kind of bypass the appeal to God either through prayer or through the use of an object that he has somehow designated as the means by which to do this, to mediate this healing.

And the observations made – this is by a book by Eric Eve called The Jewish Context of Jesus' Miracles. And the point that he makes is the bulk of the Gospel miracles are Jesus is a bearer of numinous power. He doesn't pray before the miracle happens and he doesn’t use, generally speaking, an object through which to perform the miracle. He simply speaks and it happens.

Let me go to another one. This is a fun one. This is the disputes on the Sabbath, okay, and I think to set the table for this we just need to sit back and think through what the Sabbath day is, okay. I mean in one sense how far back in the biblical story does the Sabbath go?

So Jesus gathers them together for Passover meal and he says, "Guys, you have heard it said unto you we're supposed to celebrate a Passover. But today I'm telling you we are going to reconfigure this imagery."

But if somebody's coming down to say they're God, you know, the old C.S. Lewis stuff, you lock them or they're crazy as an egg or whatever else it might be. But the profoundness of Jesus indirectly showing hundreds of times that he is Messiah. But there's an evocation of disciples and others who come to say "Well, who are you?" That's what the crowds were saying and there's something about Jesus that just fascinates and pulls us in to say wow, I don't understand this, but this is not just a spirit-filled man. There is an authority reality of this one that goes beyond anything human we've ever seen.

So he attracts. It's like a magnet for those God calls to himself. There's a beauty there. I think in the mystery of "no one comes to me unless the Father draws him" and yet "whosoever will may come." There is this beauty that, you know, somebody like a Friedrich Nietzsche or Kazantzakis. They can understand the Gospel and reject it and yet a Helen Keller or G.K. Chesterton or T.S. Eliot they hear and there's something that draws them. So I actually see behind the mystery of our Lord presenting himself, a kind of sovereignty of the Lord at the same time. He draws. He attracts.

And the first thing he does when he enters the capitol is to go to the temple and assert his authority over the temple to challenge the way in which the temple is being operated. I mean he really goes to the heart of what Judaism – there's only one temple in second temple Judaism – and does his thing.