Jesus Identity

Identifying Jesus of Nazareth

on August 9, 2021

Like all living things, divine revelation has an organic character. It grows and develops over time, but what it becomes is not different in kind from what it was originally. Hence the divinely revealed identity of Jesus of Nazareth remains the same even as it develops over time from the traditions about Jesus in the Gospels to the apostles’ proclamation concerning him and then to the doctrine of the church.

The disciples’ recognition of the personal presence and activity of God in the words and works of Jesus of Nazareth was illuminated by the resurrection of the crucified Jesus from the dead so that they could see his personal identity more clearly. As the apostolic church became catholic by engaging in mission to the Greco-Roman world the church’s knowledge of Jesus’ identity–during the time of the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon–was epitomized by the Nicene Creed (in the year 381). The Creed emphasizes that the human Jesus of Nazareth and the eternal Son of God are one and the same being and person.

Through it all runs the mysterious paradox of the incarnation by which there is divinity and humanity in the same person. There is a straight line from Caesarea Philippi to Nicaea and Chalcedon through the apostles’ testimony to the identity of Jesus. At Caesarea Philippi, Peter made a confession of Jesus’ identity that was revealed to him by the heavenly Father of Jesus (Matthew 16:17). Following his crucifixion, resurrection from the dead, and ascension into heaven, the apostles’ eyes of faith were opened to see that he is the Messiah of Israel, the Lord of the world, and the Son of God (Romans 1:1-6). The church’s teaching that Jesus is the incarnation of the eternal Son of God was formulated as an official creed in order to protect the faith of the church from misleading speculations of some of its own teachers and to communicate with an uncomprehending society. Because of the integrity of the organic character of divine revelation, whatever theologians say today about Jesus’ identity must be based upon the Gospel traditions, the apostolic testimony, and the doctrinal formulations of the church universally attested by all orthodox Christian communions.

The beginning of this story of the development of Christology, the church’s teaching about the identity of the person of Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world, takes place at Caesarea Philippi where Jesus retreated with his disciples and asked, “Who do people say that I am?”

This story is found in each of the Synoptic Gospels (Mark 8:27-38; Matthew 16:13-28; Luke 9:18-27). The modern scholarly consensus is that the Gospel of Mark is the first Gospel that was written and disseminated and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as their primary source. This consensus coheres with the very early tradition of the primitive church that Mark is based on the preaching of Peter in Rome, indicating that Matthew and Luke followed Mark because of its Petrine apostolic authority. Nonetheless, the longer account in Matthew 16:13-28 can include elements which are as early as the briefer account in Mark 8:27-38. 

Although it seems to me that the public reading of Mark 8:27-38 in worship deserves a more prominent place in the liturgical year, it is read during Ordinary Time in Year B according to the common lectionaries of the Western churches. 

Caesarea Philippi

The city of Caesarea Philippi was located in the tetrarchy of Herod Philip outside of the jurisdiction of both Herod Antipas in Galilee and Pontius Pilate in Judea. Caesarea Philippi was a bolthole where Jesus could retreat from the crowds of Galilee and the Decapolis and also from the suspicious eyes of Antipas and the antagonism of the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. 

While Jesus avoided drawing attention to himself when performing miracles, at Caesarea Philippi he confronted his disciples with direct questions about who he was. 

Jesus’ choice of Caesarea Philippi as the location to raise these questions was propitious because it was a place with a long history of religious claims about divine identity. It was in this area that the northern King Jeroboam set up one of his two golden calves intended to represent the God of Israel, an act of idolatry that was condemned by the prophets of Israel (1 Kings 12:25-33). Later when this area became a part of the territory of Seleucus, one of the generals of Alexander the Great who succeeded him, it became a site for the worship of Pan, the Greek god of flocks and idyllic pastoral life. When Herod the Great was awarded rule over this area by Caesar Augustus during the era of Roman rule, he built a temple of white marble which he consecrated to Augustus, a temple that was enlarged by Herod’s son Philip when he rebuilt the city and named it Caesarea Philippi in honor of the emperor. The entire jurisdiction of Philip was a predominantly pagan Gentile region, the location of many shrines for the worship of various Greek gods and goddesses. The very site of Caesarea Philippi begged for a discussion of Jesus’ identity and how he fit in the history of the faith of Israel in the midst of pagan idolatry.

Some guesses about Jesus’ identity

When Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”, his disciples answered, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets” (Mark 8:28 NRSV). Each of these guesses about Jesus’ identity makes sense as a matter of sober historical judgment. Because Jesus identified with John’s movement of national repentance to restore the people of Israel to their true identity and he was baptized by John, naturally many would view Jesus as John’s successor as the leader of this movement. Because Jesus was from the north and performed miracles, naturally others would think of him as being very much like the ancient northern prophet Elijah who was known for his miracles and for his message against idolatry and demand for single-minded loyalty to the God of Israel (1 Kings 17-2 Kings 2). Those who were most impressed by the authority and power of Jesus’ words would identify him as a new representative of the company of the ancient prophets of Israel. Matthew’s specific association of Jesus with the prophet Jeremiah is interesting (Matthew 16:14). Perhaps some people thought of Jesus as being most like Jeremiah because Jesus manifested a personality that evoked recollection of the passionate spirit of Jeremiah which left a memorable impression upon the people of Israel. There may have been others who viewed Jesus as a sage because his teaching contained many sayings similar to those of the teachers of wisdom.

Peter’s confession of Jesus’ identity

After receiving reports of the various impressions that people had of him, Jesus asked, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29 NRSV). The Hebrew participle that is translated into Greek as Christos (Mark 8:29) or Messias (John 4:25) means the “anointed” one and is rendered into English as “the Messiah.”

There were several different messianic expectations in the era of Jesus. The primary vocation of the Messiah was viewed variously as prophetic (Deuteronomy 18:15), political (2 Samuel 7:12-17), priestly (Psalm 110:4), heavenly (Daniel 7:13-14), or a combination of these.

While the exact profile of the coming Messiah was ambiguous, it was clear that the one anointed by God’s Spirit to be the Messiah would play a decisive role in God’s purposes for Israel, the nations, and even all of creation. When Peter made his confession, “You are the Messiah,” he was saying in effect that all the other categories which people were using to identify Jesus were not quite adequate, but only the vocation of the Messiah was apt to depict the role that Jesus was playing in God’s purposes for Israel and for all creation. God illumined the mind of Peter to perceive that Jesus of Nazareth was much more than the successor to John the Baptist as a leader in the restoration of Israel or one of the prophets. He was nothing less than the promised Messiah–the focal point of God’s purposes in history and creation which God was beginning to accomplish in and through Jesus.

Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah is the bedrock of Christology. He who is the Messiah is also the Lord of the world because, according to the prophecies, the nations will serve the Messiah of Israel (e.g. Psalm 72:11). Moreover, he who is the Messiah is also the Son of God because he is elected by the God of Israel to be God’s son (2 Samuel 7:14). Accordingly, Matthew’s version of Peter’s confession is, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16 NRSV).

The Suffering of the Son of Man

Jesus acknowledged the truth of Peter’s confession concerning his identity, but he “sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him” (Mark 8:30 NRSV). The reason why Jesus forbade them to speak of his messiahship is rather obvious. Since there were various expectations among the people about the Messiah’s vocation, going around and telling people that Jesus is the Messiah would get in the way of Jesus being able to offer and actualize his own understanding of his messianic vocation. 

Jesus’ own interpretation of the vocation of the Messiah became evident immediately when Jesus began to explain to his disciples that “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31). 

In the Gospels, the term “the Son of Man” or “Son of Man” nearly always appears only on the lips of Jesus himself. It is neither a term that others used to describe him during his career nor a term that the apostles and the early church used to describe him following his death and resurrection, Stephen’s testimony in Acts 7:56 being the notable exception. Clearly this term was selected by Jesus precisely because of its ambiguity. It could mean nothing more than “a human being” or a “mortal” as in the prophet Ezekiel’s usage (e.g. Ezekiel 2:1 NIV; cf. NRSV), or it could refer to “one like a human being” who would be presented before God himself to be given “dominion and glory and kingship” forever (Daniel 7:13-14 NRSV; cf. NIV). It was a term that seemed to be a way for Jesus to acknowledge his humanity while, at the same time, to hint of extraordinary divine authority. Using such a term as “the Son of Man” enabled Jesus to avoid making direct statements about his own identity both in order for him to be free to demonstrate his identity by his own actions and teaching to his disciples and also to challenge everyone to make a decision of faith about who he or she believes who Jesus is.

Jesus’ clear teaching about the suffering of the Son of Man indicates that Jesus found the script for his own understanding of the vocation of the Messiah in the Servant poems of Deutero-Isaiah, especially Isaiah 52:13-53:12. These unusual prophecies about a Servant were reinforced by cryptic oracles in Zechariah 9-14 as well as by some Psalms. Since the Messiah is not only a person but also a representative of the people of Israel and of God’s will for the people, Jesus took upon himself the vocation to be and do what God intended Israel to be and do, and the highest expression of God’s will for Israel and Israel’s representative was to be a Servant who offered his whole self as a vicarious, redemptive sacrifice for the nations, for “many” (Isaiah 53:12). As Jesus taught his disciples, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45 NRSV).

Moreover, the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah concerning the Servant of the LORD envisage the Servant drawing to himself a company of “servants” who constitute a holy remnant within the people of Israel whose vocation is to bear witness to the Servant, his sacrifice, and to God’s purposes for Israel and all the nations (e.g. Isaiah 54:17; 65:8-10; 66:22-23). While this kind of vision entails a “political” agenda of creating a visible, historical community that bears witness to the rest of Israel and also to the nations, it is a very different vision from that of the politico-religious establishment in Judea led by “the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,” who were all committed to preserving an arrangement that was not only compromised by its subjection to the pagan authority of Rome, but also by its inability to accomplish God’s historical and eschatological purposes for Israel as God’s distinctive people called to be a light to the nations. Jesus’ different vision of the vocation of Israel and of his messianic vocation undoubtedly explain why he downplayed messianic expectations for “the son of David” as being too close to the hopes and dreams of the politico-religious establishment (Mark 12:35-37). Jesus was a descendant of David, but he considered that God’s anointing rather than his genealogy constituted his credentials to be the Messiah. Jesus’ vision for Israel was clearly a threat to the established order, which is the reason that members of the Sanhedrin turned Jesus over to Pontius Pilate to be crucified. As it turned out, the apostolic church located in the mother church of Jerusalem and spread throughout the world in a mission to Gentile peoples fulfilled the vision for Israel and the nations found in the prophets and inaugurated in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Peter, who had been blessed to perceive the exceptional role that Jesus was playing in God’s purposes, nevertheless failed to understand that this role entailed suffering. Jesus rebuked him sternly in front of the other disciples (Mark 8:33), calling him “Satan” or God’s adversary, in order to extinguish in their minds any desires or hopes for a messianic vocation for Jesus except that of the Suffering Servant.

The call to discipleship

The English translators of the German text of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship (1959 revision of first edition in 1949, reprinted by Macmillan in 1963) made Bonhoeffer’s words memorable when they translated his German text as follows:  “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” This pithy saying epitomizes the message of Jesus to a crowd in the aftermath of his conversations with his disciples concerning his personal identity. 

What Jesus said to those who heard him then is what, as living Lord, he says to all today:  “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mark 8:34-35 NRSV).

As the Messiah who is the Suffering Servant, Jesus invites and summons others to be his disciples. Not everyone will heed this call. Not everyone will be a disciple of Jesus, a servant of the Servant of the LORD, a member of a community called to be faithful to God and his Servant and a witness to all the peoples. This call entails lifelong self-denial of suffering the consequences of faithfulness and bearing witness to the world. 

This vision of the Christian life as one of suffering was compromised during the era of Christendom. Monks and hermits did give the rest of the church a view of the Christian life as one of prayer and ascetic discipline, of continual trust in God and never-ceasing repentance from sin. However, most people, including many Christians, tended to think of the Christian life as a matter of being civilized and giving up coarse self-indulgence, immorality, and cruelty. In this understanding, “taking up the cross” was, in the end, not too difficult because it was acquiring the virtues necessary in order to live a good life of respectability or even worldly success. But as Christendom comes to an end, and Christians find themselves being a distinctive minority within society, suddenly Jesus’ call to discipleship becomes clearer, for the Christian life is no longer a way to acquire social respectability or success. Even just bearing the name of “Christian” may be an occasion for being snubbed or ostracized. Even worse is probably in store in the future for those who bear the name of the Messiah, the Christ.

If the demands of the Christian life become more real after Christendom, then so do the rewards. Jesus promised that those who deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him will “save their life” (Mark 8:34-37 NRSV). The Greek word translated as “life” is psyche, “soul.” While Jesus spoke Greek since every craftsman in Galilee had to speak Greek to do business, he usually taught in his native Aramaic. The word “soul” is intended to communicate a meaning that a Jew speaking Aramaic would have meant. In other words, we ought not attach to the word “soul” a sense of something that is a part of ourselves in distinction from our body. Nonetheless, the occurrence of “soul” here does connote the inner substance of a person that represents a person’s mind and character which are of the most value. Jesus is promising that following him will feed our soul in a way that the following the usual ways of the world never can. It will make of our life something that is of worth to God, to the world (whether the world acknowledges it or not), and to ourselves which is impossible whenever we give ourselves over the world’s ways of glorifying sex, money, and power in all their various forms and manifestations. And, although no idea of an immortal soul is present in the teaching of a Jew, Jesus is indeed speaking of our future beyond death when he talks about saving our “soul,” for, as another Jew who followed Jesus wrote, “For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil” (1 Corinthians 5:10).

In the end then, what we decide about the identity of Jesus of Nazareth determines what we shall make of our identity. What is at stake is nothing less than our “life” or “soul,” which we have received as a gift and for which we alone are responsible.

Timothy W. Whitaker is a Retired United Methodist Church bishop who served the Florida Area.

  1. Comment by Timothy on August 9, 2021 at 2:11 pm

    Rev. Whitaker’s article was informative, easy to understand and good medicine for me today.

  2. Comment by Jeff on August 10, 2021 at 10:24 pm

    I see David, our Prince of the Dark Non-Sequitur, has weighed in with yet another irrelevant comment.

    Nevertheless. Bro. Whitaker, thank you for the wonderful, inspiring, and well-supported writing. I am grateful.

    Blessings
    Jeff

  3. Comment by David on August 11, 2021 at 5:45 pm

    My comment was on a post that was subsequently removed. I requested the removal of my response.

  4. Comment by Bill Rodgers on August 21, 2021 at 11:55 am

    Good article overall. The use of the terms “Lord” and “Lord of the Earth” may be misunderstood by most Christians to denote “deity” instead of meaning “Master”, I’ve encountered that here in my community.

    But my main concern is that the author, and all of Christianity for that matter, has not understood Yahshua’s directive to “follow me” (in a Torah obedient lifestyle), as G. Steven Simons preaches in his YouTube videos. By keeping the “times and laws” of Mystery Babylon/Paganism instead of the “times and laws” established in scripture, Christianity fulfills the definition of “you workers of lawlessness” found in Mat. 7:23 (CJB), and will be cut off from the Millennial Kingdom and consigned to the second resurrection. I don’t want that for anyone, and it grieves me especially for the sake of the ones I love who have yet to have their spiritual eyes and ears opened to it.

The work of IRD is made possible by your generous contributions.

Receive expert analysis in your inbox.