JESUS' IDENTITY

Introduction

-Over the past several decades, in world of psychology the term IDENTITY CRISIS has become quite popular. It generally means that a person is going through some personal conflict over who they are because of some traumatic event or maybe because they didn’t reach their goals. They begin to question their values, beliefs, or interests because life isn’t going the way they expected it to go.

-Usually the psychologist will tell such a person that they need to find themselves, using all sorts of secular ideas on how to find your identity again. And they have been taken to such extremes that there are some people nowadays who don’t even know what gender they are

-As bad as it is to have a personal identity crisis, where you question who YOU are, it is even worse to have an identity crisis over who Jesus is. If you don’t grasp who Jesus is, you will never make sense of anything else, including who you are in the grand scheme of creation.

-This is why it is so important to have a strong Christology. Let me explain that term for those who may have never heard it before:

Christology is the theological understanding and study of the nature, person, and work of Jesus Christ.

-If you do not have a solid Christology, if you do not have a grasp of Jesus’ identity, it will show itself in a misunderstanding of your beliefs, a lack of living in faith, and a skewed moral compass. A strong Christology is a necessity.

-But there is a lot of confusion in the world, and even in the Christian church, about Jesus’ identity. But we aren’t the only ones to live through such times.

-What we find in today’s passage is that the apostles, who ministered with Jesus for years, were still confused about Jesus’ identity which led to a weak faith.

~So, the contrast is therefore true=when you have a strong grasp on Jesus’ identity (a strong Christology) the stronger your faith will be.

~Hopefully that’s where we will go today—gaining a strong Christology to have a strong faith. We do not want an identity crisis abt Jesus

John 14:7–11 ESV

7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” 8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.

Jesus is…

1) Revealer of the Father (v. 7)

-I want to give some context. It is right after the Last Supper and Jesus washing the apostles’ feet, and Jesus tells the apostles some troubling things. But immediately prior to our passage Jesus tells them not to be troubled because they can trust in Him just like they trust the Father.

~Why not be troubled? Because there are many dwelling places in the Father’s house that Jesus is preparing for His followers, and Jesus will personally bring His followers to those dwelling places. Thomas asked Jesus the way to the Father and these dwelling places, to which Jesus replies that He (Jesus) is the way, truth, and life and NO ONE comes to the Father except through Him.

-And now Jesus continues this thought in that He explains why He can be trusted and why He is the only way to the Father. And it all has to do with Jesus’ identity.

-If the disciples had truly known who Jesus was, they wouldn’t have had any problems with what Jesus said and would have trusted Him. The problem is that they followed Jesus but didn’t seem to trust Him or the Father. But the more they would know Jesus the more they would trust Him.

-But not only that, the more they got to know Jesus, the more they would know the Father. And Jesus equates knowing Him with knowing the Father and seeing Him is the same as seeing the Father. When you see Jesus, you see the Father. When you hear Jesus, you hear the Father. When you know Jesus, you know the Father. Jesus is the ultimate revelation of who God is.

-Now, the word that we translate as KNOW doesn’t merely mean knowing the facts, but it means to know by experience. I can know facts about my wife, but that isn’t the same as knowing her through experiencing her in life.

~You can know facts about God, and you can know facts about Jesus, but that isn’t the same as experiencing God or experiencing Jesus.

-Jesus is saying that when you grasp who He is and you experience Him in your life, you are experiencing God Himself because Jesus is the REVEALER of God.

-Jesus reveals God to humans as the God-man. As one theologian put it:

No material image or likeness can adequately depict God. Only a person can give knowledge of Him since personality cannot be represented by an impersonal object….Furthermore, if a personality must be employed to represent God, that personality cannot be less than God and do Him justice, nor can it be so far above humanity that it cannot communicate God perfectly to men.

-This is why John said earlier in his Gospel that Jesus has made the Father known and Paul says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God—Jesus reveals God to humanity that does justice to God and is able to actually communicate something to humanity in a way that they understand and can learn in the experience.

-Now, that was all well and good for the apostles in Jesus’ day, but what about us in the 21st century? We don’t see the Father AND we don’t see Jesus either. If we don’t have this experience with Jesus, it would seem like we can’t experience the Father either.

-Ahhh…but we can know and experience Jesus, through His Word. And when we know and experience Jesus through the Word, we know and experience the Father.

~The Bible reveals Jesus, so we can experience His essence and heart and words and deeds. And then Jesus reveals the Father. When we see Jesus in Scripture, He is revealing God to us.

-Now it’s true that the Bible also tells us that nature reveals things about God—you can see God’s power and glory, but you don’t experience God in the full. When you experience Jesus, you experience God as full as any mere human can

-To me it is like the difference between a picture and the real thing. When you see a picture of the Grand Canyon, you can know some things about the Grand Canyon. It isn’t until you are personally at the Grand Canyon experiencing it for yourself that you really get to KNOW the Grand Canyon.

-Nature might tell you some things about God, but it isn’t until you experience God in the flesh in Jesus do you really get to KNOW God. And we can experience Jesus, the Revealer of God, through His Word and He is accessible all the time.

And to see more about His identity, we see further that Jesus is…

2) At one with the Father (v. 10a)

-In v. 10 Jesus says that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him. There is a complete mutual indwelling of Father and Son, and yet they remain distinct persons within the Trinity.

~They are one in essence, one in character, one in nature, one in purpose. The Father is completely God and lacks nothing divine. The Son is completely God and lacks nothing divine. They are united in all that is important, and yet they are also distinct.

-Now, this is where the Trinity comes into consideration, and we have to be careful walking this path so we don’t go in the wrong direction with Jesus’ identity. Jesus is not saying that He is the same person as the Father. The Son and the Father are completely different personalities.

~But their oneness is why only Jesus can reveal the Father, because when you experience Jesus’ nature as God, He reveals the Father’s nature as God. When you experience Jesus’ attributes and characteristics, you also experience the Father’s character and attributes.

-You can see this oneness in Scripture through declarations and actions and words where Jesus made claims or took prerogatives that belong exclusively with God. For example:

~Only God can forgive sin, yet Jesus said to the paralytic and others that their sins are forgiven

~In the beginning God created everything, and yet John tells us that all things were made through Jesus

~Only God is worthy of worship, and yet Jesus accepted the worship that is due to God for Himself

~Only God can give life, and yet Jesus raised others and Himself from the dead

~Only God is eternal, and yet Jesus claimed to be the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end

-As mind boggling as that might be, we have to further wrestle with the fact that Jesus is making the claim of divinity as a human, so one must come to grips with Jesus being both human and divine. A human who is completely at one with the Father in a way that no other human can.

~This is possible because Jesus is more than human, and yet He is not less than human. Jesus is one with the Father and has been for all of eternity, and yet Jesus is as human as you and me, yet without sin.

-I know I am getting into deep theological waters here, but this is necessary. We Christian need to know what we believe and why we believe it. We’ve got to get away from the milk of the faith and get into the meat of the faith.

-I know this might be confusing, but some early church councils tried to specify exactly what it meant for Jesus to be one with the Father and yet completely human. So, at the Council of Chalcedon they summarized the biblical teaching on the Incarnation, and here are five truths:

1. Jesus has two natures — He is God and man.

2. Each nature is full and complete — He is fully God and fully man.

3. Each nature remains distinct.

4. Christ is only one Person.

5. Things that are true of only one nature are nonetheless true of the Person of Christ.

Author Matt Perman further explained:

We must understand that the two natures of Christ remain distinct and retain their own properties. What does this truth mean? Two things: (1) They do not alter one another’s essential properties and (2) neither do they mix together into a mysterious third kind of nature.

First, it would be wrong to think that Christ’s two natures mix together to form a third kind of nature….This view is unbiblical because it demolishes both Christ’s deity and humanity. For if Christ’s two natures mixed together, then he is no longer truly and fully God and truly and fully man, but is some entirely different kind of being that resulted from a mixture of the two natures.

Second, even if we acknowledge that the natures do not mix together into a third kind of nature, it would also be wrong to think that the two natures changed one another. For example, it would be wrong to conclude that Jesus’s human nature became divine in some ways or that his divine nature became human in some ways. Rather, each nature remains distinct and thereby retains its own individual properties and does not change.

As the Council of Chalcedon stated it, “. . . the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved . . .” Jesus’s human nature is human, and human only. His divine nature is divine, and divine only.

~And yet Jesus is both and is one with the Father—He is in the Father and the Father is in Him

3) Minister of the Father (vv. 10b-11)

-At the end of v. 10 Jesus tells His disciples that the words He speaks are not His own words, but they are the words of the Father said under the Father’s authority. Jesus is the preacher and proclaimer of God’s truth because He was sent by God to say and speak the things that He said and spoke.

~Just as Jesus sent the apostles under His authority to preach the gospel, Jesus Himself was sent by the Father to proclaim the Kingdom of God being at hand.

-So, as we read the Bible, and we see all these wonderful things that Jesus said, we have in the back of our mind that everything Jesus is saying is what the Father wanted Him to say. Jesus was the mouthpiece of the Father. Jesus ministered the Word of the Father.

~Jesus Himself is the revelation of God, but then Jesus through His words revealed more truths about the Father so that humanity could know who God was.

-But then also at the end of v. 10 Jesus says that the Father does the works through Jesus—Jesus was the conduit of God’s ministerial actions on this earth. When Jesus ministered, it was the Father doing the work through Jesus.

~And Jesus offered these works as an apologetic/defense of His claim to being one with God. He says in v. 11 that if you don’t just take Jesus’ word for him being in the Father and the Father in Him, then look at all the works He did. Listen to all the sermons and teachings. Think of all the miracles He performed: healings and exorcisms and bringing people back from the dead. That should be more than enough to prove that Jesus’ claims are true.

-Jesus’ ministered to humanity on behalf of God demonstrating God’s love for humanity, but also His own holiness and justice…leading ultimately to the cross=the ultimate act of ministry that Jesus could do.

-But what we then find out in the following passage (which we will hopefully get to next week) is that we then are called to further that ministry that He began.

Conclusion

-Jesus’ identity is vital. If we do not grasp the truth of Jesus, then we ourselves will suffer an identity crisis. If Jesus is not who we have just learned Him to be, He could not be our Creator, He could not be our sustainer, and He could not be our Savior.

~And if Jesus is none of those then nothing that the Bible says about us is true either. We are then without hope and without purpose and without peace.

-But Jesus is who He is, therefore if you have trusted in Christ you are who the Bible says you are—a beloved child of God, righteous in His presence, the apple of His eye.

~But you will only find comfort in that if you are growing in your experiential knowledge of Him. You say you want to know God more, you want to experience God more, then you look no further than Jesus Christ. And you come to know Jesus through His Word.

-But there may be some here who have never trusted in Christ. Jesus died for your sins and rose again and you can have eternal life only through Him. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. If you would like to do that, speak to one of us pastors or fill out a card or contact us…