Who Is Jesus To You?

Who is Jesus to you?

Luke 9:18 – 27

Rabbi Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz

18 And it happened that while He was praying alone, the disciples were with Him,

and He questioned them, saying, “Who do the people say that I am?” They

answered and said, “John the Baptist, and others say Elijah; but others, that one

of the prophets of old has risen.” 20 And He said to them, “But who do you say

that I am?” And Peter answered and said, “The Christ of God.” But He warned

them and instructed them not to tell this to anyone, 22 saying, “The Son of Man

must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes,

and be killed and be raised on the third day.” 23 And He was saying to them all,

“If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily,

and follow Me. 24 “For whoever wants to save his 1life will lose it, but whoever

loses his 2life for My sake, this is the one who will save it. 25 “For what good does

it do a person if he gains the whole world, but loses or forfeits himself? 26 “For

whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of

him when He comes in His glory and the glory of the Father and the holy angels.

27 “But I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will

not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”

In the ninth chapter of Luke starting on the 18th verse and going to the 27th we have

Jesus asking a very interesting question. The question is: Who am I? At first, it seems a

bit odd that Jesus would have to ask who he was, but he was really looking to find out

what people thought of him. A little bit of history is in order here to let you know that

hundreds of people have been going in and out of all the holy land saying they were the

Messiah for numerous years after the last prophet. The conclusion of the people was

that God was about to send his most special prophet, who was the Messiah.

There were five general ideas about what was going to happen when the Messiah

arrived. Jesus did not fulfill any of them. It wasn’t until after his death that the book of

Isaiah was examined with Zachariah chapter 9 verse nine and the people figured out

that Jesus was the Messiah. The first appearance of the Messiah was to bring back the

spiritual kingdom of God. The second appearance, we call it the second coming of

Jesus, will be to win back the holy land and restore the Kingdom of Israel physically.

I think it is interesting that the author in the creation of the story had some of the

disciples saying to Jesus that people were calling him John the Baptist. There was a

belief that John the Baptist, who was beheaded several chapters earlier, could return to

life. That would be quite unusual because Jesus was six months younger than John the

Baptist. However, there was a belief that anything was possible with God, and could it

be that God would be sending John the Baptist back? That idea did not get a lot of

traction in the ancient world. Rather, the idea that Jesus was Elijah did.

According to tradition, Elijah the prophet was going to return to introduce the Messiah

to the world. According to what we called midrash stories of Jesus time; the prophet

Elijah would physically return. There was a belief that when God took Elijah in the fiery

chariot up to heaven, he stripped the soul out of the body and God placed the body in

a northern cavern where nobody could find it. It might sound a bit strange to you, but

if the belief was that Elijah was going to return, he needed a body. Therefore, the

midrash goes on to say that when Elijah returned, his soul would reenter his body, and

he would be among us. Of course, there was another belief that the spirit of Elijah

would come back, meaning that a prophet would be brought up out of the people who

acted and sounded just like Elijah.

In Christian tradition, the Elijah doppelgänger is John the Baptist. The Gospels tell us

that John the Baptist was the one who announced Jesus to the crowds, therefore

fulfilling the tradition that Elijah would return and tell us all about the coming of the

Messiah. John the Baptist was not Elijah, but rather he acted in the spirit of Elijah. And

as we know from the stories of John the Baptist doing all the baptisms in the Jordan, it