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April 7, 1996

Special Easter Message

If you could receive the answer to any question, what would that question be? That’s another way of asking, “What is the most important question in the world for you?”

If you’re young and single, that question might be, How can I be popular? Or, How can I get a particular boy or girl to like me? If you’re facing graduation the question may be, What career should I pursue? Whom shall I marry? For those who have been married a few years, it might be, How can I have the kind of fulfilling marriage I long for? How can I properly raise my children? Or, How can I find a satisfying job? For those further along, it might be, How should I plan for retirement? What should I do with the final years of my life?

All of these are important questions. But none is the most important question you could ask. The reason is that the answer to all of these questions ultimately rests on your answer to another question: Who do you say Jesus is? You may be thinking, “That’s an abstract, irrelevant theological question if I ever heard one!” But, what you think of Jesus will determine whether you receive or reject Him as your Savior and Lord. If Jesus truly is the Lord and Savior, and you recognize that and follow Him, then you have a basis for answering all of the other fundamental questions in life. If you have not grasped the meaning of that most basic question, then you have no consistent basis to grapple with all of life’s other pressing questions. Also, your relationship with Christ affects not only your life on this earth, but your eternal destiny. So,

The most important question in the world is: Who do you say Jesus is?

Jesus put that question to His disciples as they traveled near Caesarea Philippi, about 25 miles north of the sea of Galilee. Jesus was seeking to bring the disciples to a more clear knowledge of who He is: the Messiah (Christ, = “Anointed One”) sent by God. In one sense, they had believed that from the beginning. When Andrew first told his brother Peter about Jesus, he said, “‘We have found the Messiah’” (John 1:41). But they still were confused about what that meant. Jesus had brought them to this point of outward confession. But, they still had a ways to go.

Mark 8:31 is a hinge verse in this Gospel. The first half of Mark emphasizes Jesus as the Son of Man who came to serve; the second half emphasizes that He came to give His life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). From this point, Jesus began to teach the disciples about His coming death and resurrection. Three times in chapters 8, 9, and 10, Jesus tells the disciples that He is going to be killed and raised from the dead (8:31; 9:31; 10:33, 34), but the disciples didn’t get it. Jesus follows each of these predictions of His death with a call to discipleship, to self-denial and servant-hood. Mark wrote his gospel initially for suffering Christians in Rome. If they were going to endure persecution and be faithful to the Lord Jesus, it was crucial that they understand who Jesus truly is as He revealed Himself. The matter is just as relevant for us if we want a faith that remains strong, even through trials. So I want to explore with you some of the ramifications of this most important question, “Who do you say Jesus is?”

1. The question has an objectively correct answer.

I mean, only one answer is correct. It is not, “Jesus, however you conceive Him to be.” A person may say, “For me, Jesus is always accepting and loving.” One popular TV preacher says he likes Jesus because He is always a positive person. But Jesus isn’t whatever you want Him to be. There is a single correct answer to the question. And that answer is not based on subjective feelings or personal opinions, but on objective truth.

This is important to affirm because we live in a day when people think that spiritual truth is not objectively true. Rather, they see it as existentially true. They do not view spiritual truth in terms of propositional revelation, where God has spoken to us in the Bible in language we can understand. Nor do they see spiritual truth in terms of verifiable history, centered in the historical Jesus of Nazareth, whose teaching, miracles, death and bodily resurrection are reported in the New Testament by eyewitnesses.

Rather, our generation views spiritual truth in terms of each person’s experience of it. As such, it is not verifiable. If it’s true for you, then it’s true. If your spiritual experience is different from mine, one is not necessarily right and the other wrong, even if they contradict one another. They can both be true, according to the existentialist view of truth, because spiritual truth is determined by personal experience, not by objective, verifiable means.

The way this filters into the church is that people are encouraged to “invite Jesus into their hearts.” They are promised that He will help them with their problems. But in many cases they have no idea who Jesus really is or what He came to this earth to do as revealed in the Bible. But, they prayed or walked the aisle. Maybe it was even accompanied by tears. At first, they felt better and thought their problems would go away. But then, some problems got worse and they didn’t understand why Jesus wasn’t “working.” So they fall away. At the heart of this sort of defection is a faulty concept of the nature of spiritual truth, especially concerning the person of Jesus Christ. The person who professed to believe never knew who Jesus really is.


2. The question divides people.

This is always the case with objective truth. It divides people into opposing camps. Like Peter and the disciples, you may have to go against public opinion to arrive at the correct answer concerning Jesus.



The disciples had to stand against three public currents to affirm their conviction that Jesus is the Christ. First was the Roman government, which didn’t care if Christians worshiped Jesus as long as they also affirmed Caesar as Lord. But the disciples insisted, “No, Jesus is the only Lord!” That narrow view cost many of them their lives. In the same way, if you take your stand with the disciples in affirming Jesus as the only way to God, you will have to go against the pagan culture of our day. People don’t mind if you hold your personal beliefs in Jesus, just so that you don’t contend that He is the only way! That’s too narrow and dogmatic. I saw a bumper sticker that said, “If you’re against abortion, don’t have one.” The idea is, “You can have your personal views of morality, but don’t tell me that my behavior is sin. If you want to believe in the Bible, that’s your privilege, but don’t judge me for my beliefs!”





3. The question has deepening levels of correct understanding.



One of the beautiful things about the Christian life is that you grow into deeper and deeper levels of understanding about the infinite, unfathomable, sovereign person of Jesus Christ. Do you know Him as your Savior? That’s great! You start there. But don’t stop there! There’s much more! If I could pick one place in history to return to, it would be to join those men on the Emmaus road that first resurrection Sunday, when the risen Lord Jesus, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures (Luke 24:27). All the seminary educations in the world could not compare with that one experience!


4. The question reveals the state of our hearts.

This point is revealed by the Lord’s strong warning that the disciples tell no one and by Peter’s subsequent rebuke of Jesus and Jesus’ rebuke of Peter. Peter’s notion of Messiah meant power and dominion, not suffering, rejection, and death. So, when Jesus began to speak plainly about His coming death, it jarred Peter so much that he took Jesus aside to rebuke Him. But Peter’s rebuke drew from Jesus the strongest rebuke He ever gave to one of His followers: “Get behind Me, Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s” (8:33).

I think Peter was truly concerned about Jesus. He didn’t want Jesus to die. But his mistake was that he didn’t see things from God’s perspective. He wanted Jesus to spare Himself, not realizing that if He had done so, the cross, which secured our redemption, would have been subverted. It was the same temptation Satan put before Jesus when he showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and said, “All these things will I give You, if You fall down and worship me” (Matt. 4:9). So Jesus met Peter’s temptation the same way He met Satan’s: “Begone, Satan!”

The disciples were in sympathy with Peter, which is why Jesus addressed His rebuke so they all could hear (Mark 8:33). And that explains His strict prohibition that they tell no one that He was the Christ (8:30). Both the disciples and the Jewish people were looking for a political Messiah who would put a chicken in every pot and a donkey in every stable. But Jesus wasn’t sent by the Father to make everyone happy, so that they could go on living self-centered lives. He came to deal with the fundamental problem of the human race: sin. The essence of sin is our stubborn self-will that says to God, “I’ll run my own life, God. Just help me feel good when I need You.” The cross, where the Lord of Glory took the penalty we deserved, was the only divine solution for our sin problem.


So you can see how your answer to the question, “Who do you say Jesus is?” reveals the state of your heart. If your Jesus is an Aladdin’s Genie whom you use to make you feel good, then your heart is in bondage to self and sin, not subject to Jesus as Lord. You actually are following the Jesus Satan tried to establish, not the Jesus sent by the Father. The Jesus sent by the Father was delivered up on account of our sins and was raised so that we could be right with God (Rom. 4:25). We who follow Him are also to die to ourselves and live to God (2 Cor. 5:15).

Through the trials we encounter, God is seeking to break us of our sinful self-will and make us subject to His will. Instead of living to please ourselves, He wants us to live to please Him. So when He challenges our will, if we submit to Him, we grow to be more like Jesus. If we resist His breaking process, we’re setting our minds on the things of man, not of God.

So tell me what kind of Jesus you follow and I’ll tell you where your heart is at. The Jesus of the Bible is the Christ of the cross. If anyone wishes to follow Him, he must deny himself and take up his cross (8:34). He is the risen Lord to whom all must submit. Until we understand that, we haven’t grasped the primary reason Jesus came to this earth.


What’s your answer to Jesus question: “Who do you say that I am?” You may be standing with the multitude, saying, “Jesus is a fine example, a great teacher. But He is not the Sovereign Lord of my life.” That is a terribly mistaken answer. You may be standing with Peter, saying correctly, “You are the Christ,” but not understanding the sort of Christ He really is. That’s an improvement over the first answer, but it is inadequate. You must stand with Jesus who came as God’s Anointed to bear your sins, who was raised in triumph over sin and death, who calls us to follow Him in obedience to the will of the Father. As Peter later preached, “God has made Him both Lord and Christ--this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). If you stand there, ready to do God’s will no matter what the cost, you have correctly answered the most important question in the world: Who do you say Jesus is?

If Jesus is not your sin-bearer and your Lord, I encourage you to read the Gospels with the prayer, “God, show me who Jesus is. If You show me that He is my Savior and Lord, I will follow Him.”

Discussion Questions


Copyright 1996, Steven J. Cole, All Rights Reserved.


Related Topics: Easter, Resurrection, Soteriology (Salvation)