Dethroning Jesus: What Popular Culture Says About Jesus – Part 8

[This material is excerpted from our television series, “The Battle to Dethrone Jesus,” with Dr. Darrell Bock and Dr. Daniel Wallace. The entire series is available in our online store.]

Who did Jesus say that He was?

Dr. John Ankerberg: If someone was investigating the historical Jesus and wanted to come to grips with some of the things He said about Himself, where would they turn?

Dr. Darrell Bock: Well, I’m going to set a context for it by basically asking this question: Who did Jesus say that He is? And there are really three passages that get us there, the last one shows up in the last week.

The first is, Jesus walks into a synagogue, opens up the text to Isaiah 61, reads it, talks about the Spirit having anointed the figure in question and that the year of jubilee is being declared, the year of release is being declared. And Jesus sits down and says, “Today this has been fulfilled in your hearing.” [Luke 4:21] So that tells you that Jesus is the promised figure of deliverance, and He belongs to the time of what theologians call the eschaton. Just think of it as the time of salvation, the time of God’s promised salvation. That’s the first passage.

Second passage is where John the Baptist is sitting in jail and asking himself, “What am I doing in jail? If I am the one who is the forerunner of the era to come, if I’m announcing that God’s salvation and deliverance and rescue is coming, then how is it that I’ve ended up here?” And so, he sends messengers to Jesus and he says, “Are you the one to come or should we expect another?” [Luke 7:18] Now, looking at Jesus’ answer I’d say he didn’t ask that the right way. He should have asked it like you see in the movies, you know, “Are you the one to come or should we expect another, yes or no?” Because the answer that he gets is actually an answer that’s echoed somewhere else in Judaism. In 4Q521, which is one of the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it says this, “For the heavens and the earth shall listen to his Messiah, and shall not turn away from his commandments. And he will have an eternal kingdom. He will set prisoners free, open the eyes of the blind, raise up those who are bowed down.” And it goes on, “He shall make alive the dead, he shall send good news to the afflicted.”

Now, if you read Jesus’ answer in Luke 7 and in the parallel in Matthew, you get basically many of those same phrases. It is, “Go tell John what you see and hear.” [Luke 7:22-23] And He talks about the deaf hearing, and the lame walking, and the blind seeing, and the poor having the gospel preached to them, very much along the lines of what we see in 4Q521. And so what we’re saying here is that when Jesus announces who He is, there is some context for understanding some of what Jesus is saying.

The last scene is when Jesus comes before the Sanhedrin, before the Jewish leadership. He gets asked, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the living God?” [Mark 14:61] And I think what Caiaphas is asking is, “Are you claiming to be Messiah, or are you claiming to be a king?” And the reason I think he’s asking that is that he needs a charge he can take to Pilate to get Jesus executed and crucified. Well, one of the quick ways to do that is to claim that you’re a king when you weren’t appointed by Caesar. The Romans weren’t happy with that kind of arrangement. And so that’s the backdrop.

So he asks this question, and Jesus answers this way in Mark 14. It’s one of the most important passages in the Gospels. The question is, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One,” a roundabout way of referring to God. And the answer is this, “‘I am,’ said Jesus, ‘and you will see the son of man sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.’ Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, ‘Why do we still need witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy. What is your verdict?’” [Mark 14:62-64]

And the question is, why did he tear his clothes? Well, he tore his clothes because what Jesus was claiming was not merely the ability to walk into the Temple and go to the Holy of Holies, which is something only the High Priest could do once a year—it was sacred, restrictive space, because it represented the presence of God. He said, “No, God is going to invite me to park at His side and to operate like a cosmic judge, seated on the clouds, having dominion.”

Now, in Judaism—put on your yarmulke or kippot for a second—in Judaism, every time you went into the synagogue, every time there was a service, you got up and said the shema, “Behold, O Israel, the Lord your God is one.” No one shares God’s glory. So when Jesus claims that He can share God’s glory and God’s presence, that is a claim of exaltation that is an offence to a Jewish mind that says there is only one God.

And you’ve got a theological train wreck in which exaltation is running into blasphemy. Either Jesus is right or Jesus is wrong. And what His claim is, when He says, “You will see this,” He’s saying, “When my tomb is empty in a few days, then you can know not only where I’ve gone, but what it is that God has made of me.” And that is a powerful testimony about who Jesus says that He is.

And notice that He does it not by saying something direct, you know, “I am the son of God.” No, He does it very indirectly by what He does and what God does through Him.

Dr. John Ankerberg: And it would make sense, because if you can’t even say the name of God, you’re not going to make that kind of a statement in that society.

Dr. Darrell Bock: Yes. You’re going to be very careful about how you get people to think about how you’re really crashing the ultimate glass ceiling.

And then He replies by saying, “And I will be seated at the right hand of power,” respecting Caiaphas’s question that shows respect towards God. He shows equal respect back on the one hand by saying “the right hand of the power,” or “the right hand of the Almighty.” But at the same time He’s not holding back. He’s saying, “This is something God’s going to do, and you’re going to see the effects of it.”

Dr. John Ankerberg: And the prophet Daniel, chapter 7 of Daniel, what does he say?

Dr. Darrell Bock: Well, the title “son of man” is one of these beautiful titles that’s able to hold a lot of content. What it does is, the son of man is a way of referring to a human being. But this is a particular human being. This is a human being who rides the clouds. Now, in the Old Testament, when you ride the clouds, that’s something God, or the gods, do in the Old Testament. It’s the way it’s described. In the Psalter it’s attributed to Baal. In other texts it’s attributed to something that God does. So this is something that deity does. So I’ve got a human being doing deity stuff, a human being doing deity stuff. That’s Jesus.

Dr. John Ankerberg: And Jesus applies that to Himself.

Dr. Darrell Bock: Jesus applies that to Himself. That’s Jesus doing that. And the resurrection is God’s vote about Jesus’ claim about who He is.

Dr. Daniel Wallace: Let me pick up on Mark 14. I think what Darrell had to say is absolutely right on target, and it’s a key thing that we have to wrestle with. I want to add a couple of other points here. Jesus is coming in before Caiaphas and He’s on trial. Caiaphas, the High Priest gets to go into the Holy of Holies once a year and to actually be in God’s presence, at least in terms of the Temple configuration on earth. Jesus is claiming that He’s not only going to be able to go into God’s presence, but He’s going to be able to park there in the real Temple, where really God is, where this is an example of it, if you will, or a pattern of it. And consequently He’s turning the tables on Caiaphas and He’s saying, “You’re the one who’s on trial. I’m the one who’s judging you.” He could have just said, “I’m king.” And that would have been enough. But what He does is He says, “I’m in the same throne room as God. I still sit on His seat. I’m the judge of you.” This is incredible stuff.

Now, if you go a little bit later to another chapter, Acts 14, you see Paul and Barnabas preaching in Lystra. And these people who did not speak Greek are claiming that we’ve got a couple of Greek gods here. When Paul finds out about it, Acts 14:14, the first thing he does is he rips his clothes. And the reason he does that is it’s symbolic to say, “You have blasphemed.” Now, Caiaphas does that when Jesus claims what He does; Paul does that when these Lystrans claim that Paul and Barnabas were gods. And consequently, for Jesus to make this statement is a thing that would be blasphemy if He truly were not God Himself.

Dr. Darrell Bock: And even just as significant as the idea that the very title or concept that Paul refuses to receive is the very title or concept Jesus does welcome. And so it shows a difference between Jesus and His followers. And sometimes people who claim Jesusanity say that Jesus was trying to reveal that we all are children of God in the same sense. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not at all. Jesus is unique, and He’s unique in His claims. And He makes us children of God and sons of God, but not in the unique sense that Jesus is son of God.

Dr. Daniel Wallace: Not only that, but you have that in Revelation 19:10 where John gets so overwhelmed by the presence of an angel that he bows down before him. And the angel says, “Get up. Don’t do that. I’m just a servant like you are.” So, it’s not just human beings, but even angels are not in the same category as Jesus Christ.

Next up: Part 9