WHAT does it matter to you who Jesus is? You can eat and drink, work and sleep, live and die without knowing, as thousands of others are doing. Why should you bother your head about such a question? Nobody asks you who Epictetus was, or Marcus Aurelius, or the Venerable Bede. Jesus may have been as good as, or much better than, all these, but what can it matter to you?
Listen! It matters everything to you, for your eternity, either of weal or of woe, hangs upon your attitude to Him. The men that I have mentioned, and millions more, are dead and gone. What you think of them is of no concern. But the Lord Jesus Christ is not to be numbered among those “dead and gone.” He died, but has risen again, and the question, not “Who was He?” but “Who is He?” is the most urgent and clamant of all questions.
No one can really trust a person of whom they know little or nothing. When the once blind beggar was challenged with the inquiry. “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” instinctively the question sprang to his lips, “Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him.” (John 9:3636He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? (John 9:36).)
Now believing in Him is the God-appointed way of salvation for sinful men. I do not say believing about Him, for it is no mere matter of creed or orthodoxy. The Bible says, “Believe ON the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved”; and again, “Whosoever believeth IN Him shall receive remission of sins.”
Therefore you need to know who He is; that you may believe in Him, trust Him, and stake all your confidence upon His trustworthiness.
Who, then, is Jesus?
The Emperor Theodosius, though professedly a Christian, had no true idea as to the Person in whom he professed to believe. He thought of Him as a mere man amongst men, the best of men perhaps, but no more than a man.
After occupying the imperial throne for some years, he determined to make his son Arcadius, a boy of sixteen, a partner with himself in the government of the empire. The nobles and great men of the day assembled to congratulate the new wearer of the imperial purple. Among them came a certain bishop, named Amphilocus. He made a handsome address to the Emperor, and was about to take his leave, when Theodosius exclaimed: “What! do you take no notice of my son? Do you not know that I have made him my partner in the empire?”
Upon this the good old man went up to the young Arcadius, and, putting his hand upon his head, said: “The Lord bless thee, my son.”
The Emperor, roused to fury by this slight, exclaimed: “What! is this all the respect you pay to a prince that I have made of equal dignity with myself?”
Upon this, Amphilocus, looking the Emperor full in the face, with an indignant tone of voice, said: “Sire, do you so highly resent my apparent neglect of your son, because I do not give him equal honors with yourself? Then what must the eternal God think of you when you degrade His co-equal and co-eternal Son to the level of one of His creatures?”
“These words,” says the historian, “were like a thousand daggers plunged into the Emperor’s heart, who held the reproof to be just.”
We should like you to convince yourself, for your own sake, reader, that He who lived for thirty-three years on earth, and was persecuted, insulted, and ultimately crucified, was God, the eternal Son. If He had been less than that His death would have had no significance, no result, beyond that of any other holy martyr. He became Man, a true Man, that He might die for sinners. But He never ceased to be what He always was, and is today, “God over all, blessed for evermore.” Prophesied of, long centuries before His birth, as Immanuel, God with us; hailed in prophetic anticipation as “The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father.” (Isa. 9:66For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6).) His entrance into human life is recorded with majestic simplicity by the inspired penman: “The Word was God... and the Word was made flesh.” (John 1:11In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1), 14.)
The deity of Christ is no mere article of a creed. It is that which gives atoning efficacy to the blood which He shed upon the cross, and makes salvation possible for sinful creatures like the reader and the writer of these lines. Do you not perceive, then, the vast importance of the question: “Who is He?” and the necessity of having a right answer, in order that you may believe on Him as your own personal Saviour?
H. P. B.