Who is Jesus?

The season of Advent has begun during which Christians remember afresh the coming of Jesus the Messiah over 2000 years ago. The Jewish Holy Scriptures had foretold this event hundreds of years previously.

Two thousand years ago, many Jews keenly anticipated the coming of the Messiah. They understood that he would be from the line of King David, who was considered the best of the numerous Kings the Jewish nation had known. They believed that this Messiah would be a King par excellence and would prosper his people and defeat their enemies. At that time, the Jewish community sensed the Messiah would come soon to deliver them from their Roman occupiers.

As the nativity plays remind us, Jesus was born of Mary in Bethlehem, the town of King David. Indeed his bloodline went back to King David, then back to Judah, Jacob, Isaac and Abraham. His human lineage was impeccable, agreeing as it did, with the messianic prophecies.

What most Jews didn’t see was that their Messiah would be in some inexpressible manner intimately linked to God himself in a way that no one else has ever been. As the life of Jesus, his teachings and miracles got underway, his uniqueness became increasingly apparent.

Jesus speaks of himself as having been with God prior to his conception; as having come down from God; as being on a specific mission and once that mission was finished he would return to where he had been before.

Was the Messiah simply to administer justice for the Jews and deliver them from their Roman occupiers? No. The mission that brought Jesus to live as a man amongst us is our salvation and deliverance. We all need to be delivered from the consequences of God’s perfect justice. God sees our lives as wrongly lived, his justice requiring each of us to be condemned. God, however, has intervened on our behalf.

A verse from John’s Gospel explains: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’

Jesus came to save us not to condemn us. He did this by dying in our place on a cruel Roman cross. I believe that to receive God’s gift of deliverance in this way should top our own Christmas list.

Religion - releasing all burdensome?

Sometimes people ask me if I’m religious. That’s a word I have something of an aversion to.

The word ‘Religion’ is to do with the purpose and direction of the universe in relation to a higher being (a god or gods), involving a set of beliefs, practices, worship, devotion, and morals. So why am I uncomfortable with being named a religious person?

For me it is a term too vague: it simply divides the atheist from the rest. I’m a follower of Jesus (albeit an imperfect one) and, as such, have no desire to be grouped in with what is sometimes called the ‘world religions’.

I wish to urge that we should sidestep ideas of religion per se and each of us consider coming first to a person - the man Jesus. A Christian is one who trusts his/her life, now and forever, into the hands of Jesus. Such trust or devotion are high stakes indeed unless of course Jesus is divine. If he is, then it seems to me that it logically follows that all God-honouring worship and devotion belong exclusively to Jesus. Many will disagree but actually that is orthodox, biblical, Christian teaching.

God recognises our ignorance in matters of religion. Whether we are religious or not, he lovingly offers us the opportunity to turn from the darkness that blinds us and then to embrace the light that gives sight i.e. Jesus, who says ‘I am the light of the world’.

Jesus was critical of the religious leaders of his day because they laid heavy burdens upon their people in the name of religious practice and tradition. That is why he said, ‘Come to me all of you who are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest for your souls’.

Is your experience of religion releasing or burdensome? Maybe there are other pressures from which you wish to be free. Whatever, Jesus says he is the answer to our deepest need.

The Manifestation of Jesus

The 2025 political party conferences are almost over. I wonder how many times manifestoes were mentioned.

Obviously, the word manifesto comes out of the word manifest and means to publicly put forward a set of intentions, objectives and motives. I’ve always liked the sound of that word ‘manifest’, even the way it looks in print on the page!

After I became a Christian, I found that the word manifest was to become essential to my understanding of Jesus. Here is why.

The God of everything is a personal being but, as humans, we have no categories or capacity with which to understand and relate to him. In love, God condescended to come to us as a man, showing forth (or manifesting) his very self. In this way we could know and understand what he is like in human terms. When we ask, ‘So what is God really like?’ The answer is, ‘like Jesus’.

In light of this, has Jesus anything to say to the hopeless, those who are sad, the complacent, arrogant and proud? What about the unbelieving or those with just a little faith? What is his mind towards religious leaders who don’t actually feed those in their charge with true spiritual food? We can go into the four Gospels in the New Testament and see Jesus addressing these things and other matters, while being assured that what he says is perfectly in line with God. Jesus himself said, ‘I and the Father are one’.

We may say Jesus has a manifesto. He has a plan: a purpose in which his intentions, objectives and motives are all present. Central is his objective to fulfil the role of God’s Good Shepherd who, as foretold in the Old Testament, is intent on seeking out his lost sheep and saving them from ultimate harm. So dedicated to his sheep is Jesus, that he laid down his life and took the slaughter that otherwise would have befallen them.

How do we feel about being referred to as a lost sheep? If such talk offends us we will likely want to evade or hide from the things of God and so forfeit the good intentions that he has for us. Those who are glad and thankful to be found by him, can genuinely relate to the 23^rd Psalm that’s often sung at funerals, ‘The Lord is MY Shepherd…’.