Who Are You?

So they were saying to Him, "Who are You?" Jesus said to them, "What have I been saying to you from the beginning? (John 8:25)

This question, though thrown out as an excuse by these leaders for their unbelief, is one of the most important questions that each one of us needs to ask from the deepest level of our heart. Until we come to the place where we honestly begin to wonder about who Jesus is and what He is all about, we have not yet even become aware that we are living in the wrong reality and that everything we think is so is mostly a mirage, a carefully orchestrated system of deception designed to keep us in darkness until our lives are permanently molded for ruin.

When this question was posed to Jesus He immediately began to review and remind them of the statements that He had already given them. In addition He again began to focus on the Father as the one who sent Jesus to this earth to reveal the real truth about God in sharp contrast to the concepts of God that they had believed in all of their lives. Most religions claim to have some systematic view of reality and of supernatural powers that explains life and its followers seek to get others to subscribe to their beliefs. But religion almost always ends up devolving into a self-focused system that seeks to maintain and perpetuate itself instead of directing people to connect personally with God for themselves. But in doing so the religion itself ends up becoming the god instead of directing each person into a personal dependence on God in a personal relationship of accountability.

Jesus' primary purpose for coming to this world from heaven, unlike any other human being who ever lived here, was to reveal the true character of God to a planet, even to a whole universe of intelligent beings, that were living in confusion about what God was really like. The accusations against God, the insinuations about His integrity and character and trustworthiness that have been circulated by the father of lies, God's archenemy Satan, have been so persuasive and effective that God needed to send His own Son into the very heart of the seat of deception, this sinful planet, to live out a life as a human being weakened by 4,000 years of the debilitation of sin on the human body and psyche, a demonstration of the real truth about God. He came as a weak human being who did not look any different than anyone else so that all of the attention would be focused on the contrast between His way of living and relating to sinners and all the other counterfeit representations of God.

Jesus came to show humanity and even unfallen beings elsewhere how to life is supposed to be in proper relationship and total dependence on God. He came to demonstrate what it looks like to live as a reflection of a higher power rather than trying to live from our own efforts independent of God. In the following verses Jesus explained how that everything He did and said was simply a reflection of the Father and that He Himself was choosing not to initiate anything of Himself even though He could have easily done so. For the greatest temptation that faced Jesus much of His life was to tap into His own inherent power as God to save Himself from discomfort or danger. But Jesus did not come to show us how to overcome sin through extreme effort on our part to overcome the symptoms of sin, but Jesus came to show us that the only way to overcome sin is to direct our efforts and attention constantly toward staying with God in a totally dependent, humble, trusting relationship of growing intimacy.

These men tragically missed the most wonderful opportunity of a lifetime without even realizing what they had done. If they had only opened their minds and hearts to really hear the answer to their question about Jesus' identity instead of fighting Him every step of the way and refusing to give His words any credibility, they could have been blessed with some of the most precious revelations about God that could have rocked the world and would have blessed their own lives beyond their wildest imagination.