HOPE! - Testimonies About Jesus

Jesus claims that God has made him the Judge of the world… a role only filled by God himself. Only God can judge humanity. But Jesus says that in his role as the Son he is in fact better equipped than the Father to judge humanity, because in his role as the Son, Jesus is both fully human and fully God, and so he understands both sides equally well and can be a fair judge. But he adds that whatever he does he does not for the sake of his own pleasure but for the pleasure of the Father who sent him into the world.

These claims of Jesus are rather ostentatious. He is equalizing himself with God after all. But after he makes all of these claims, he point to John the Baptist’s testimony about himself. John had previously made the exact same claims about Jesus. And John was pretty popular guy among the people. They loved his teachings that he gave with a fiery passion. And Jesus is saying that if they believed anything that John said, they ought to believe in what he said about Jesus.

But Jesus also adds that his own testimony stands on its own. He doesn’t need John’s word to prove that he is who he says he is. He is equal with God after all, and God doesn’t need any human to vouch for him. He only points to John’s testimony in the hope that this will cause people to believe since they already respected John for the most part.

Jesus says of John:

“He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.”

Jesus is saying that the ministry of John the Baptist was solely to point towards the ministry of Jesus. We read before that this was John’s belief as well. He says of Jesus, “He must become greater, I must become lesser.” John wasn’t jealous of Jesus – the whole point of John’s ministry was to usher in the coming of the Messiah – Jesus! John’s ministry was a temporary one.

Jesus also says that the people don’t have to just rely on John’s word to vouch for him as the true Messiah. They have witnessed Jesus’ own actions which bear witness to his Messiah-ship as well. They have witnessed Jesus perform many miraculous signs, and these signs testify to Jesus’ message.

But the leaders don’t recognize Jesus for who he truly is. They don’t see that he is truly God in the flesh. Why is this? It is because they do not know their own God. The very God they claim to worship and serve is standing right in front of them, talking to them… but they just don’t see the truth. If they had truly known the character of the God they claimed to love, they would have recognized him in Jesus. They would have stood in awe and worshiped him.

They could identify a passage from the Bible, but they couldn’t identify the Spirit who inspired that passage. They had closed off their hearts and minds to the work of God’s Spirit. And because of this, they went on to accept false messiahs, who looked nothing like the Messiah that Moses had looked forward to. They had shut themselves off from the spring of living water.

“Oh, Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!”

― C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew