Who is Jesus?

A guy I met recently had a problem. His identity had been stolen. He had been at one of those cart/kiosks at the mall to buy a cell phone and unbeknownst to him the clerk who sold him the cell phone had secretly taken down his credit card number. A few days later my friend found that over $600 dollars had been taken from his account. The crooked sales person had stolen my friends identity!

According to 2 studies done in July 2003 (Gartner Research and Harris Interactive), approximately 7 million people became victims of identity theft in the prior 12 months. That equals 19,178 per day, 799 per hour, 13.3 per minute. It is a rampant evil in this country.

Identity is such a important thing in our culture, who you are is one of the only things that counts. For your identity to be questioned, for someone to reject you for who you say you are and come up with their own opinions would be hurtful and outrageous.

Can you imagine if a you went to a doctor to perform surgery on you and you found out halfway through the procedure that he wasn’t a doctor at all but had gone to school to be a lawyer and upon graduating decided to practice medicine, without any training. You would be outraged because you had put all of your faith in what that doctor claimed about his identity.

I think the same thing happens with Jesus. It is possible for men to have good thoughts of Christ, and yet not right ones, a high opinion of him, and yet not high enough. Jesus means so many things to so many people. I hear people say all the time well I believe in Jesus, I just don’t think he was the Son of God

Matthew 16:15-17 "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven."

You can speak of Jesus as prophet, holy man, teacher, or spiritual leader, and few will object. But speak of Him as Son of God, divine, of the same nature as the Father, and people will line up to express their disapproval

It's sad that people, the media, schloars...etc portray Jesus as just a regluar person after He told us so plainly who He was. Jesus has been a victim of identity theft. His credibility has been dragged through the mud by our culture. But we know who he is, he’s told us, and we can put our hope in Him.