Editor’s Note: This series on the Bible is from the book Catholicism & Scripture. Please feel free to use the series for high schoolers or adults. We will continue to welcome your questions for the column as well. Send your questions to the postal address or the email address found at the end of this column.
Special Course On Catholicism And Scripture (Chapter 17)
One day Jesus conducted an opinion poll among the Apostles. He asked them, “Who do you say that I am?” Some of the Apostles suggested one of the Old Testament prophets, like Elijah or Jeremiah, but Simon Peter replied, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” (Matt. 16:15-16).
How would you answer that question? Was Jesus just another prophet, or was He the Prophet? Was He just another religious leader, like Buddha or Mohammed, or was He the long-awaited Messiah? Your answer is important for if Jesus were just an ordinary man, we really wouldn’t have to pay too much attention to Him. But if He is God, as He said He was, then we had better listen to Him if we want to get to Heaven.
We know that the Gospels are reliable history books, so what did His contemporaries think of Him? John the Baptist called Jesus “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). Future Apostles Andrew, Philip, and Nathanael (Bartholomew) all thought that Jesus was the Messiah. During a conversation with a Samaritan woman, who was not a Jew but a Gentile, Jesus told her that He was the Messiah. When she ran to tell people about Him, the people returned with her and, after listening to Jesus, they said that they didn’t need her word anymore because “we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world” (John 4:42).
Some people today don’t believe that Jesus is God; they think that He was just a good man, and nothing more than that. But Jesus said that He was God, most convincingly when He was on trial for His life on the morning of Good Friday. The high priest Caiaphas asked Him directly, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” Knowing that an affirmative answer would mean His death, Jesus replied, “I am” (Mark 14:61-62). If Jesus said that He was God, and He wasn’t, then He was a liar, and liars are not good men. Furthermore, claiming falsely that He was God and knowing that such a claim would mean His death means that Jesus must have been crazy, and a crazy person cannot be a good man.
As the English writer C.S. Lewis once said, there are only three possibilities about the identity of Jesus: He was either a liar, or a lunatic, or the Lord. Those who carefully read the Gospels will not find any evidence that Jesus was either a liar or a lunatic. What they will find is evidence that Jesus was the perfect man, but He was more than a man; He was God at the same time.
Some illustrations of His divinity are the Old Testament prophecies that He fulfilled, the prophecies that He made about the future, and the many spectacular miracles that He performed. Jesus of Nazareth is the only person whose biography was written hundreds of years before He was born. He and only He fulfilled all the prophecies about the Messiah who was to come — that He would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:1) of a virgin mother (Isaiah 7:14), that He would be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12-13), and that He would be “pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins” (Isaiah 53:5).
Jesus also made many accurate predictions about the future, something that only God could do. He predicted His betrayal by Judas (John 13:21-27), His Scourging and Crucifixion (Matt. 20:19), His Resurrection from the dead (Luke 9:22), and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (Luke 21:24), which happened forty years later, in AD 70. He also performed many miracles to demonstrate that He was God. He changed water into wine, cured the blind and lame, walked on water, brought several dead persons back to life, and multiplied five loaves of bread and two fish to feed more than five thousand people.
Jesus told the Apostle Thomas that “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Following Jesus’ way means keeping the Ten Commandments, living the Beatitudes, and carrying the cross of suffering and ridicule.
“Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me,” said Jesus, “is not worthy of me”(Matt. 10:38).
We must repent of our sins and believe in the Gospel (Mark 1:15), He said, warning that “not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matt. 7:21).
He told Pontius Pilate that He had come to earth to “testify to the truth” (John 18:37), and He called the Devil the “father of lies” (John 8:44). Jesus taught us many truths — about the Blessed Trinity, the importance of prayer, the need to listen to the Church He founded on the “rock” of St. Peter, the existence of Hell, His coming again to judge the world, and the resurrection of our bodies at the end of time.
Jesus also said that we can share in His life through weekly attendance at Mass and the seven sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist. He explained that “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day” (John 6:54).
List of Answers:
CAIAPHAS
COMMANDMENTS
CROSS
DEVIL
ETERNAL
FUTURE
JESUS’
JOHN
MIRACLES
PETER
SACRAMENTS
SAMARITAN
Quiz:
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