Who is Jesus to you??

Introduction

At the end of the passage last time, remember we saw that the Jewish religious leaders wanted to kill Jesus, and the reason was because not only was Jesus breaking the Sabbath, but Jesus was saying that He is not just a man, but He was God! The Jewish leaders didn’t believe him and they were so angry that they were plotting to kill him.

But the truth of the matter is that Jesus was not a mere man. If we read the 2nd half of this passage, we see so many different things witnessing and saying that Jesus is not just a man, but truly God!

If we look at John 5:32-35, John the Baptist was a witness to Jesus. John was not the light, but Jesus was the true light, and John was just the lamp that showed and pointed to the true light of Jesus Christ.

If we look at John 5:36, the very works of Jesus - his signs/miracles, testimony, sermons, and his crucifixion/resurrection/exaltation - witness to himself.

If we look at John 5:37, the divine Father Himself bore witness to his Son.

If we look at John 5:39, Jesus says the Scriptures, the OT bear witness about Jesus.

If we look at John 5:46, the very writings of Moses are written about Jesus.

But despite all this, people fail to realise who Jesus is and they fail to believe him. And this is something we really need to look into more carefully, because even if people tell us about Jesus, even if we read the Bible, and even if we see miracles, we see it is possible to not believe. And just as this was true 2000 years ago, it is still true today.

So what are some of the reasons for why we don’t see Jesus for who he really is and therefore fail to believe Him?

Our selfishness blinds us

One of the reasons is we are self-centred.

Read John 5:44 “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”

Jesus is saying, ‘how can you believe in who I am and the things I say, when all you are seeking is to glorify yourself, rather than God’s glory?’ All they were interested in was elevating and glorifying themselves, by seeking the praise and approval of others, rather than the praise and approval of God. In the days of Jesus, the Rabbis were very respected teachers in Jewish society, and by being experts in the Old Testament and teaching it, they gained a lot of fame, and they were able to show off how smart they were. They even dressed in a way that everyone would recognise they are Rabbis. They were given high places in society and were in positions of power and prominence. And it is in this very self-centredness that John shows us blinds us to see the true identity of Jesus.

I had a friend in university who was extremely intelligent. He is the smartest person I know. He topped VCE in his year, got a perfect VCE score, he got into every university course he applied to. Even in university, he excelled at everything, and got nearly perfect scores for everything. And he wasn’t just good academically, but he was also a social butterfly with a lot of friends, he was a good son and brother to his siblings, he came from a wealthy family, he had excellent leadership skills and was part of a lot of extra-curricular activities, and to top it off he was a really good singer so he was part of a singing group that even appeared on Australia’s Got Talent. And he’s now a specialist doctor, a gastroenterologist, is married, and has two kids. The only thing is he is not a believer, and he is an atheist. And I was having a conversation with this friend one day, and I think we got onto the topic of religion. And he made one really interesting comment that has really stuck with me even until this day. He said ‘Dan, I think humans are fundamentally selfish.’ He even considered our acts of charity, generosity, selflessness, an expression of our selfish natures. And he was quite resigned, content, and just very accepting of this, and for him, this fundamental selfishness of humans, was just an unchanging reality of life that we can’t escape from.

And in a sense, I think he is absolutely correct. In his brilliance and wonderful intelligence, I think he made an observation that is absolutely correct, about what really drives human beings. It’s really easy to identify overtly selfish behaviour, like showing off or stealing, but I think without Christ, even our acts of selflessness and generosity are actually just a different way of expressing the same selfishness.

People may have different motives for being generous and nice. But aren’t many of those motives really just about ourselves? Through helping others, we find a sense of satisfaction, self-worth, meaning in our lives, happiness.

So humans are fundamentally inward looking, into ourselves, into our own worries/concerns/matters/identity, rather than outward looking looking towards others. We are self-centred rather than other-person centred.

And it is this very self-centredness, this inward orientation of our desires and attention, that blinds us to see and believe Christ. If we are so inward looking and self-obsessed, it is impossible to see anything outside ourselves; it is impossible to see God. That’s why in the passage we read today, we see that when these Jewish religious leaders read and taught the Old Testament, rather than loving God and God’s word, they just ended up loving their own opinions about God’s word. They loved the praise and attention it brought them, rather than loving the very word of God itself. Their self-love kept them from loving God which we see in John 5:42 “But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.”

We miss the point of the Bible

And what does this lead to? We completely miss the point of the Bible. When we are stuck in our self-centredness, when we are so inward looking that we become spiritually blind, we can read the Bible but still completely miss the message the Bible is trying to tell us. We can completely miss the message the Bible is telling us.

Remember these Rabbis and Jewish religious leaders were experts in the Bible. They knew the Old Testament inside out. And they still rejected Jesus. Why? Because they completely missed the main point of the Old Testament, which is to point to Jesus Christ.

See John 5:39 “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me”

See John 5:46 “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.”

They didn’t realise that the whole point of the Scriptures was to talk about and point to Jesus Christ. And this was because they were blinded by their self-centredness.

And as a result, rather than making the Bible a Christ-centred book, they made it a self-centred book, a ‘me-centred book’.

And don’t we often make the Bible a ‘me-centred book’? When we read the Bible don’t we often approach it with the mindset of: what can I learn from it today? How can I improve my life? Can I find passages to make me feel better? What does the Bible say to make me smarter? What does the bible say to help my anxiety? And although God is deeply interested and desires to help you with your problems in life, the Bible is first and foremost a Christ-centred book, not a ‘me-centred book’. The Bible first and foremost is talking about Jesus, and when it does talk about you and me, it talks about you and me always in relationship with Christ.

The Bible doesn’t tell you how to solve your anxiety; the Bible tells you how wonderful, powerful, loving, and in control Christ is, and therefore why we shouldn’t be anxious because of who Christ is.

And when we don’t get this right, when we miss the fact that the Bible is a Christ-centred book, we completely miss the point of the Scriptures and we no longer seek Christ but we seek other things, other foolish self-centred things. We will seek other things in our lives, and the Bible just becomes an accessory on the side, which we misinterpret and misuse to fuel our self-centred desires.

Who is Jesus to you?

So then who is Jesus really? If we read the Scriptures for what they really mean, what does the Scriptures say about Christ?

In this passage, we read about Christ, never in isolation, but always in relationship and unity with God the Father. There is this perfect inseparable unity between the Father and the Son, and we get a small insight into how this relationship works. We will just look at one example:

John 5:19 - Jesus loves the Father so much that He only does what the Father does and what the Father wants

John 5:20 - and if we read this verse, we see that the Father loves the Son so shows the Son all that he does.

These verses show that there is this amazing perfect unity between the two - they are so united that whatever the Son does, it reveals what the Father does and wills.

So here we get this glimpse into this rich wonderful dynamic of the Trinity - our God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -> One God, but in 3 persons. And as they are three-in-one, there is this perfect love and unity within the Trinity, and a key characteristic that we see in the Trinity is complete other-person centredness. There is no hint of the self-centredness that we saw earlier in the passage and in ourselves: each member of the Trinity is wholly, wilfully, devoted to the other, in glorifying, loving, the other.

And because God’s love is a love of complete other-person centredness, God’s love is creative -> the overflow of this complete other-person centred love was the creative force behind God’s act of creation, so that He may share this love within not only the Trinity, but that it might overflow into His creature.

Read quote: “Being triune, God is a sharing God, a God who loves to include. Indeed that is why God creates. His love is not for keeping but for spreading.”

And He created us in His image, so we are to also be completely other-person centred. But with sin entering humanity, we went from being outward looking and loving and other-person centred, to inward looking, self-centred, and only loving the self. And it is this that blinds us to the true meaning of the Scriptures, and makes us miss the point of the Scriptures. It is only when God opens our spiritual eyes, opens our eyes to what true love is by seeing the nature of love contained in the Trinity, that we can see Christ in the Scriptures and the true meaning of the Scriptures.

So the concept of a Trinity in our Christian faith is not just fancy or weird concept. It is absolutely central to our faith, and it is not just an idea, but it is immensely practical, as it is only when we have a correct understanding of God, a correct understanding of the Trinity, that God helps us overcome our self-centredness, spiritual blindness. It helps us to live as God created us to live, to love God and love others with a complete other-person centredness, and it also helps us to see the true meaning of the Scriptures, which is talking about God, about Christ.

So back to the question, who is Jesus to you? What do the Bible talk about? The Bible talks about Christ, and the way it talks about Christ is that Jesus is God, part of the Trinitarian God. And one of the key aspects of God’s character is a perfect other-person centred love. So whatever idea you had of Jesus, of God, whatever you had in your mind before, the Bible teaches us the correct understanding of God. God is one God, in 3 persons, and God is love.

Conclusion

And all this, is not just about living well. It’s not just about living a good life. All this is so important, because what is at stake is eternal life eternal life.

Read John 5:24 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

It is when we come to understand God correctly and believe in Him, as a Trinitiarian God, and read the Scriptures and see and believe Christ, that we have eternal life.

So remember, we are not to live self-centred lives - we are to be completely other-person centred. And we can be completely other-person centred because it is Christ who was completely other-person centred for us when he died on the cross for us. And when we are other person centred, we can love God, love others, and read the scriptures and realise our lives are not about us, but it is all about Christ.

Closing song: Be thou my vision

Sources

PNTC

Bible Speaks Today (Milne)

Preaching the Word (Hughes)