Who Jesus Is

 
So, who is this Jesus Whose birth we still commemorate?

He was at least a good person; a real person from history, right?  Even atheists concede Jesus was a pivotal moral figure in time and place.  Some people today want to stop the universal practice of recognizing our world’s existence by His life – using B.C. and A.D. – and adopt a less religious context for dating time.  However, even if such efforts are successful, wouldn't they represent defiance against His legacy, not proof that He really wasn't that important after all?

Others of us continue to claim His legacy as a model for how we want to live our lives.  To varying degrees, we venerate at least some of His teachings, and at least pay lip service to His moral code.  However, we fancy ourselves as being a bit more sophisticated than He was, and our modern cultures often celebrate ourselves more than Himself.  Even many of us who presume devotion to Him don't literally believe He is the genuine Son of God, and that His words really are the text of life.  Calling ourselves “Christians” generally represents an acceptable way to categorize our convictions relative to other people who worship other deities, people, and concepts.

Then there are people for whom simply settling for nostalgic religious pastimes is insufficient.   We believe He offers something more intrinsic than moral stories, suggestions, and rituals.  Deeper inspection of the teachings His contemporary followers documented gives us a broader perspective of how He models a counter-cultural principle called servanthood.  And ironically, His identity as a member of the Holy Trinity tells us He’s also the Creator of all things - even the things He came to serve.  He certainly has power and authority, but in His incredibly lowly birth, He demonstrated utter humility.  We believe He literally intended to suffer for our sake.  He willingly relinquished His Heavenly status to be abused by His creation.  After all, Who else ever in history has received embalming herbs (myrrh) in commemoration of their birth?

In our contrivances of angst, hatred, and selfishness, it would be so easy to find hope and comfort in the panoply we’ve made of Christmas, especially those of us here in the West.  But re-visit this little post on December 26, and tell me how much hope and comfort remains from the day before.  Instead, contrary to what many of us want to believe, Jesus Christ never said He came to make us comfortable.  He didn’t even come to provide some sort of heroic caricature of virtue to a world more accustomed to depravity.  He didn’t come to provide anybody political freedom.  He didn’t come to make anybody financially secure.  He didn’t come to establish any mortal government or economic system.  He came to be a servant King and Savior, and from His birth until today, He's forever proving His servanthood, and calling us to replicate it within our own spheres of influence, however imperfectly we trust Him to accomplish that servanthood through ourselves. 

Many say Christmas is a season of peace.  However, many still doubt, and scoff, and agitate, and even rise up against Christ, His legacy, and those who claim Him as their Lord.  But 2,020 years later, where are those deniers, and where is He?
 
So, who is Jesus?

If He was just an exceptionally moral person, don’t you think our human race – inventors of democracy, airplanes, the Internet – would have found an even more iconic person or thing to universally venerate?  By now, we’ve trashed so many other traditions, and proven so many other fables wrong, isn’t it more than implausible that Jesus Christ would remain one of the most influential figures our world has ever known?  We’ve commercialized His birth.  We’ve tried to over-religion it, too, with all sorts of kitschy cultural tinsel.  But even if a government or a people group could forbid the observance of Christ’s birth, that wouldn’t mean His birth didn’t happen.  Or that Christ didn’t happen, or that He wasn’t Who an eternity’s worth of testimony validates Him as being.

So, who is Jesus?  He's more than the merely historic personality many people want Him to be.  He is the Son of God, the only Sacrifice worthy of appeasing the Holy wrath of Almighty God, Who cannot look upon sin.  It's an exceedingly uncomfortable notion:  sin.  But every culture, society, race, and people group ever known has had the concept of wrongfulness or violation, whether defined within a context of Greco-Roman law, or some other hierarchical code of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors.  Societies cannot function without a code of behaviors they accept and reject.  Indeed, no matter who we are, our sin is as real as Christ's identity, whether we find such a notion comfortable or not.  Christ's relatively short time upon the very earth He created wasn't a demonstration of royal panoply.  He didn't come to force the deference owed to Him by His creation.  He didn't come to lord it over sinners, but to be the Lord of sinners.  And how better could He prove his Lordship except to serve as our Savior?

Otherwise, Jesus would have been just another ruler, just another teacher, just another enigmatic personality.  We might dare to minimize His true identity, to make His legacy a bit less intimidating to our ego.  But 2,020 years of Christianity is more veneration to one Man's legacy than would be sustainable to such a robust degree than could be explained away as mere morality, don't you think?

So, who is Jesus?  He is the only deity that has ever deigned to condescend to the level of its subjects.  He did that to be my Savior, so even in my present mortality and moral failings, I can worship Him as my Lord.  

Is He yours, too?