THE IDENTITY OF JESUS

      During the past century a multitude of books has been published which attempt to tell us who Jesus was (is!) and what His role has been in human history. Each book has presented someone's own understanding, according to how he has interpreted available information. Preconceived ideas and philosophical bias usually factor into the process.  Often the view of Jesus is little more than speculation, which in many cases becomes rather bizarre.  In this article I would like to let Jesus Himself identify His nature, His position, and His role with respect to people. He does this with economy of words in Rev. 1:17-18, when He revealed Himself to John.

      "I am the first and the last, and the living One. And I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever more. And I have the keys of death and of Hades."

      In this statement Jesus identifies Himself to us in terms of four aspects of His divine nature and transcendental powers. First, He says, I am the first and the last.  This declares that He is an eternal Being. He was first because there was no one before Him. This is the same assertion with which the Fourth Gospel opens: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God," (Jno. 1:1-2). As the past of Jesus is eternal, His future is also eternal. When this earth and universe have been annihilated, never more to be, Jesus will still be fully existent in heaven, a glorious dimension beyond time, space, and matter.

      Second, Jesus identifies Himself as the living One. As the eternal One Jesus is also the essence of life. He possesses to the fullest all the functions of life: consciousness, energy, personality, power. We are told in Jno. 5:26 that "just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself." Before there were angels and people on earth, Jesus lived in heaven with the Father. In fact, we humans are alive and have being only because Jesus, the Source of life, gave that gift to us. In Jno. 1:3 we are assured that "all things came into being by Him; and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being."

      Third, Jesus identifies Himself as the One who was dead, and behold, I am alive forever more. This refers to Jesus' time on earth in human form, in which He was crucified, buried in a tomb, and then raised to live again. This historical FACT! is the centerpoint of the Gospel, emphasized over and over throughout the New Testament. It is the foundation of Christian faith that Jesus of Nazareth was in reality the Son of God from heaven, to which He returned after His resurrection. This was Peter's proclamation in his sermon before Jews assembled for Pentecost in Acts 2:23-24, "[This Jesus], delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. And God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power."

      Fourth, Jesus identifies Himself as the One who has the keys of death and Hades. Hades refers to the state of confinement of the souls of the dead between death and the resurrection. When Jesus died, His soul also went to Hades and spent three days until He was resurrected. In that great triumph He was granted absolute power over death and Hades. At the time of God's choosing, Jesus will use the keys given Him to unlock the gate of Hades and release all souls held there. This is the subject of a major scene in Rev. 20:11-15. There in v.13 it says, "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them. And they were judged every one of them according to their deeds."

      My friends, this is the presentation of who Jesus is and what He does in which I put my faith. Any which does not accord with it I dismiss as the product of fallible human construction unworthy of serious consideration.

   

THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-DENIAL

Jno. 5:30 ... "I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me."

      When God created man and set him on earth to inhabit it, he did not make man to be a robot programmed to do what God intended. Rather, God endowed man with a mind capable of making moral decisions. He even allowed man the capacity to choose whether he would acknowledge his Creator and pay any attention to the advice and instructions He gave him. His first directions to Adam and Eve were: "From any tree of the Garden you may freely eat; but from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat from it you shall surely die," (Gen. 2:16-17). God gave them license to enjoy the fruit from every tree in Eden except one, which He explicitly commanded them to leave alone. Nevertheless, He allowed them to exercise their own will when Satan tempted them to partake of that very tree. When they chose to take fruit from it and eat, God did not intervene. He could easily have come between that couple and the beguiling serpent to prevent what was about to occur, but He refrained. Knowing what the catastrophic consequences of their bad decision would be, God nevertheless withheld His power and watched as they exercised their freedom of choice.

      If a person had not the liberty to choose evil, his worship of God and service to Him would be devoid of meaning and honor. Religion can begin only when a person chooses to deny his own will and submit the direction of his life to God. As long as one vacillates between pleasing himself and trying to please God, he is not yet ready to profess religion. And whatever religion he does profess in that state of vacillation is offensive to God and laced with hypocrisy. Jesus made this very plain in Mt. 16:24, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." The most prevalent and also the most serious fault of Christians is the reluctance to submit EVERY part of their lives to the will of God.  Nearly everyone reserves some area of his life to himself, and will not let Christ enter into it. Our most fervent prayer should be that the Lord would show us these restricted areas before He takes full possession of our existence in death and condemns us for our failure to submit totally.

      Jesus lived on earth as the Representative Man unto God. His life is now our model, both in attitude and behavior. Thus we are instructed to "let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus," (Php. 2:5). Jesus' attitude is that which we are to develop within us. In I Pet. 2:21 we are told that Jesus "suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps." Therefore, His manner of conduct is the one we must follow in our daily behavior. The lead text (above), Jno. 5:30, reveals the essence of Jesus' attitude and behavior; He denied His own will in order to obey the will of His Father. Many might think, "Well, Jesus could not have done anything else but subject His will in the path predetermined for Him." But this is far from the truth! Jesus could have denied God and sought His own glory anytime He wished. The devil knew this and therefore exerted every effort he could to persuade Jesus to sin, (Mt. 4:1-11). Had Satan succeeded, even for a second, to influence Jesus to think and act on His own and without reference to God, he would have destroyed Jesus.

      The challenge of every person is to learn to deny his own will and submit his life in every respect to God through Christ. The extent to which we exercise our freedom to choose to yield decisions to God's direction is the same extent to which we gain God's approval and favor. The extent to which we claim the right to go on thinking and acting as we wish is the same extent to which we risk the eternal ruin of our souls. Faith is the key to success in this great struggle, for it convinces us that God's choices are best for us. Those who demand their selfish right to make their own decisions without reference to God are saying that their wisdom is greater than His.