A few years ago, most of the English-speaking world experienced a phenomenon that was as unexpected as water flowing uphill. After a decade of the "God is Dead" emphasis, after years of campus, revolutions and a firestorm attack on traditional values and authority of any kind--a curious thing happened, and of all places, first in New York City.
In the first year of its running, a Broadway play grossed $20 million and went on to earn many more millions. And the name of the play? Jesus Christ Superstar!
Overnight, it seemed, Jesus had made it "big" in the music industry, for other religious plays and movies followed. And He opened up a skyrocketing market in the book industry where many of the best-sellers were concerned about Him and His Second Coming.
In the chorus of Jesus Christ Superstar, a great question was asked: "Jesus Christ, who are you?" Although the right answer was not given, the question is deeper than musical entertainment and broader than mere curiosity. For everyone on Planet Earth, there is nothing more important than who Jesus is, what He has done, where He is now, and what He is presently doing for the human race.
But, strange as it may seem, even Christians have been divided over the centuries as to who He really is. They have overemphasized either His Godhood or manhood. Rarely has the real Jesus been given His rightful place. He has been described in such varied and sometimes odd terms that an interested observer feels like asking, "Will the real Jesus stand up?"
And so the great question remains: "Jesus Christ, who are you?" Who is He who became the focus of a "Jesus revolution" among youth of the Western world in the 1970's, perhaps the most unexpected and unpredicted event of modern times? Then again, who is He who could transform self-serving skeptics in occupied Palestine two thousand years ago into devoted followers who would live or die for Him?
The question, Jesus Christ, who are you? Hovers above every person who seeks purpose in life or who tries to run from that inner voice that haunts with guilt. We can tune Him out. We can salute Him, while not seriously following Him. We can "use" Him by claiming His pardon, but not His power. However, we cannot really ignore Him. He is always there, like no other person who has ever lived.
But, who is He? Where did He come from? Paul, in writing his letter to the Hebrews, referred to Jesus' unique status as mankind's "pioneer" (chapter 12:2) and to His human record that permitted Him to be regarded as humanity's "perfect leader": "It was right and proper that in bringing many sons to glory, God (from whom and by whom everything exists) should make the leader of their salvation a perfect leader through the fact that he suffered. For the one who makes men holy and the men who are made holy share a common humanity" (chapter 2:10, 11, Phillips).
But, who is He? Where did He come from? For Paul, Jesus the Man is the benchmark for humanity He has shown men and women what humanity is like at its best.
Bible writers also make it clear that Jesus also showed us what God is like, that Jesus Christ is God in every respect. John declared: "The Word was God" (John 1:1). "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." (verse 14). Jesus stated His divine mission: "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (chapter 14:9). He recognized the successful completion of His mission: "I glorified thee on earth, having accomplished the work which thou gayest me to do; and now, Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made" (chapter 17:4, 5).
If we are to answer that haunting question Jesus Christ, who are You? We must begin where the first Christians met Him and had to make their decision. They knew Him as a man who was totally involved in their common humanity He was not a "reverse astronaut" who came to this world from "out of the blue" merely to tell us that God is alive and well, and that He loves us very much.
We can send men (and for that matter, women) to the moon, but they are still "earthmen"; they live within spacesuits that keep them untouched by the situation existing where they land. They live and eat, perform normal acts common to created beings, yet they are insulated from "life as it is" as they tramp around the moon.
No, Jesus was not an astronaut. As His early followers described Him (guided by His Spirit, whom He promised would help them to see, hear, and feel accurately when they wrote about Him), He became man without a protective spacesuit, either visible or invisible, that would separate Him from the kind of life lived by His contemporaries.
A very helpful Bible commentator described His identification with the human family on Planet Earth: "Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin. Like every child of Adam He accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity. What these results were is shown in the history of His earthly ancestors. He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life."--The Desire of Ages, p. 49.
Although He was born under the shadow of the Fall, taking humanity as any babe would find it 2,000 years ago--"with all its liabilities" (ibid., p. 117)--He showed that men and women were not locked into a hopeless battle, that the shadow was not irrevocable, that sin was not inevitable, that God has always had a way out and up. He pulled the curtain back and showed all of us how to be truly human, the way God had meant for men and women to live.
Jesus Himself asked the big question one day in Caesarea Philippi, "But who do you say that I am?" And Peter shot back, with deep conviction, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:15, 16).
Those are spine-tingling words. Imagine eating and drinking, hiking and praying, with God! But they knew Him also to be man, truly man. God who became man! Incarnation! Why? To reconcile sinners with God; to bridge earth's troubled waters with love and power! Paul described our Lord's marvelous mission: "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation" (Romans 5:10, 11).
Jesus Christ is the way back to Eden, the solution to human despair. He alone is the ground of mankind's hope and the only basis for man's redemption. See Him hanging between heaven and earth on Calvary's cross; the just suffering for the unjust, showing love for the unlovely! Measure your life by His! Claim His offer of pardon and full acceptance! Listen to His saving words, "I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself" (John 12:32). "For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him" (chapter 3:7). Surely He is just what the angel promised and what I need--"a Savior, who is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11).
Another reason for our Lord's coming to earth and becoming truly man, "in every respect" (Hebrew 2:17), was to settle once and for all one of the basic questions of the great cosmic controversy--whether fallen men and women could live lives of happy obedience such as God had made provisions for.[1]
Jesus demolished the accusations of Satan that sin was inevitable and obedience impossible; that fallen humanity could not expect to live victoriously over sin. He demonstrated not only that men and women could keep God's law with the power provided but that God Himself was willing to risk the security of heaven in order to rescue men and women. He proved that there was nothing God asked from His creation that He was not willing to do for His creation. We do not need to go into an extended treatment of how Jesus became the eternal solution to the sin problem in order for our hearts to be drawn out in gratitude, praise and adoration to God, who sent Jesus "as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith" (Romans 3:25).
The death of Jesus "for us" (1 Thessalonians 5:10) is the focal point of time, the center of the plan of salvation, the prism through which the universe can see the full spectrum of God's love for His creation. The sacrifice of the Man Jesus proved God to be just, not unfair and capricious. It showed Him to be loving beyond human imagination. God proved that the violation of the basic laws of the universe have terrible consequences which He demonstrated by allowing the "curse of the law" (Galatians 3:13) to be fully drained in Jesus' life and death.
What an assignment God assumed by becoming man in Jesus! What a risk! But through His humanity, by becoming truly man, Jesus paid the price of man's folly and opened the door back to Eden.[2]
No wonder Ellen White sums up the adoration of our hearts when she wrote: "The humanity of the Son of God is everything to us. It is the golden chain that binds our souls to Christ, and through Christ to God. This is to be our study. Christ was a real man."--Selected Messages, book 1, p. 244.
One of the amazing aspects of God becoming man is that this gift was not temporary. God became man forever! "He [God] gave His only begotten Son to come to earth, to take the nature of man, not only for the brief years of life, but to retain his nature in the heavenly courts, an everlasting pledge of the faithfulness of God."--Ibid., p. 258. (see The Desire of Ages, p. 25.)
Contemplate the thought. It staggers the human mind. We can understand somewhat the marvel of our Lord's birth in Bethlehem when He imprisoned Himself within His own creation. But for the Lord of Creation, who walked among the stars and whirled new universes into their orbits, to be forever cabined within time and space--this stretches the mind of men and women across unlimited oceans of love. Jesus truly gave Himself to Planet Earth and for you and me. God adopted human nature forever!
Men and women last saw Jesus on earth as they gathered on Mount Olivet shortly before He ascended into the sky and beyond their sight. But He left as they had known Him for 33 years--a human being such as themselves. As they watched, lost in wonder, "he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight" (Acts 1:9). Was He gone forever? Would those devoted followers ever see Him again? Where did He go?
Their questions were quickly dissolved with the angel's comforting statement: "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the some way as you saw him go into heaven" (verse 11).
Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth, the Friend of multitudes, the gracious Healer, is now in heaven, not m a disembodied spirit, not with the "form of God" that was His before He came to this earth (Philippians 2:6), but as man, retaining His human nature forever.
As such Stephen recognized Him when God graciously parted the veil between heaven and earth moments before his life was crushed out under the stones hurled by men who couldn't stand the troth. "But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, 'Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God' " (Acts 7:55, 56).
Paul heard His voice on that fateful day on the Damascus road. In the midst of Paul's spiritual banditry Jesus stepped into his life with the breathtaking question:"--'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' And he said, 'Who are you, Lord?' And he said, am Jesus, whom you are persecuting'" (chapter 9:4; 5).
John was given an awesome glimpse of his Master while he was exiled on rocky Patmos. Wasn't that a gracious gesture on our Lord's part--to give His old friend, who had witnessed gloriously to His cause, the final assurance that all was not in vain! "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand upon me, saying, 'Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades" (Revelation 1:17, 18).
But as time went on something very curious and sad happened to the Christian church. They lost sight of where Jesus now is and what He is now doing on our behalf. Over the centuries many in the church fixed their attention on Him dying on the cross--the personification of human tragedy They have exalted Jesus as the greatest teacher of righteousness mankind has ever heard, honored Him for untainted integrity in full blossom, revered Him for the moral impulse He has injected into human history. They are moved by the utter abandonment to His ideals that drove Him to the cross rather than flinch or concede to evil. But that is where they last see Him--on the cross.
Other Christians went further; they fixed their attention on Jesus as the resurrected Saviour They saw Him mingle with His followers for forty days and then marvelously ascend to heaven. But somehow they lose Him in the vagueness of light-years and theological jargon regarding the atonement. Although they know that He is in heaven "at the right hand of God" they have no clear cut understanding of Christ's continuing role in the working out of the plan of salvation.
To see Him only on the cross is seeing only in part; glorious, but only in part. To see Him only as the resurrected Lord is also seeing Him in part. Appealing and winsome is this beautiful picture of love unlimited--God paying the price for a fallen race, and rising triumphantly from the grave--a dual demonstration of love and power. But a partial picture of Jesus leads to important misunderstandings, such as (1) believing that His love is irresistible and that someday in God's good time all men and women will be convinced and thus won back to a reunited kingdom of grace and love. Or, (2) that simple gratefulness in recognizing that He died for everyone's sin is in itself the test of a person's fitness to be saved.
Seventh-day Adventists believe that there is more to our Lord's role in the plan of salvation than to see Him only on the cross, wonderful and indispensable as His death was. Or even to see Him as our resurrected Lord, glorious in all of its implications. They follow Jesus into the heavenly sanctuary, they fix their eyes on Him, the Great High Priest of the human family, the living hope of everyone who seeks pardon and victory over the forces of sin.
Throughout the book of Hebrews Paul sings the glorious song of our Lord's continuing ministry for fallen men and women. For example: "Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession" (Hebrews 4:14).
Paul declares that a clear understanding of Jesus as our high priest is "a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf' (chapter 6:19, 20). He proclaimed that Christians can boldly enter "the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the home of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water" (chapter 10:19-22).
Something very significant to the plan of salvation is going on in heaven today because Jesus is our high priest. Something significant and special should be going on in the lives of His followers on earth became of Jesus' role as our high priest, as we will study in the pages to come.
Following Jesus into the heavenly sanctuary does not depreciate the cross. God forbid. Without the cross them would have been no high priest in the heavenly sanctuary today. But what Jesus is now doing is probably the most important subject to be understood by those on Planet Earth.[3]
Our concern for ecological imbalances, for population explosions, for the proliferation of nuclear weaponry, for waste disposal--for whatever, all such concerns fade into insignificance compared with what we should know about Jesus and what He is trying to do for this shuddering planet. Where Jesus is now, and what He wants to do, must be understood by all who seek lasting peace in their heart and a part in hastening the return of their Lord.
No wonder Ellen White wrote, "God's people are now to have their eyes fixed on the heavenly sanctuary, where the final ministration of our great high priest in the work of the judgment is going forward--where He is interceding for His people."--Evangelism, p. 223.
Easily we can understand why Paul urged his readers: "For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy [pardon] and find grace [power] to help in time of need"--(Hebrews 4:15,16, R. S. V.).
In the following pages we will follow our Lord into the sanctualy[4] of the universe, see Him in His role as sacrifice and priest for all who claim Him as Lord, and listen to Him as He invites us to cooperate with Him in completing His grand rescue plan for sinners on Planet Earth.
Notes: