Apologetic Tract The Important question of life
Have You Answered the Important Question of
Life?
If we would meet Jesus today and He asked us, “Who do you say I am?,” how
would we answer? This is not a strange
question. It was the one Jesus asked the
Apostles one day as He was in Caesarea Philippi. To it Peter answered: “You are the Messiah!”
Would that be our answer? Peter blurted
this out without realizing the full import of what he was saying. His concept of Messiah and the reality of who
Jesus was as Messiah were not identical.
It was only after the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, and
the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, did Peter come to a more complete
understanding of the identity of Jesus.
As Peter answered differently after
Pentecost, hopefully our response is different now from any earlier responses
we may have made. Even though Jesus is
the same yesterday, today and forever, our relationship to Him must be changing
from yesterday, to today and into tomorrow.
If it doesn’t, then our faith may be stagnant.
The status
of any relationship is determined by whether it is growing or declining. Relationships do not just maintain themselves.
They demand attention and focus, support and affirmation. If this is true of
human relationships, how much more true is this when we look at our personal
relationship with Jesus?
Maybe the
corollary question to "Who do you say I am?" is "What is your
relationship with me now?" Or, to fine-tune the question so that its
urgency is clear, what if death occurred tonight and we faced Jesus in
judgment? What if He asked these
questions? How would we answer? What if He further asked: "Why should I
give you everlasting life?" What if
he showed us our whole life in an instant from the moment of birth till death,
what would our life indicate in relationship to these crucial questions?
The urgency that is implied in the
questions is underlined by three parables given by Jesus:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a
field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all
that he has and buys that field. Again,
the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes
and sells all that he has and buys it.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which
collects fish of every kind. When it is
full, they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets. What is bad they throw away. Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the
wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there
will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” (Mt 13:44-50)
What is
this great treasure? Eternal life with God. It is not something we can buy or
earn but it is a decision to accept the
gift given to us by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
How does
Jesus speak of eternal life in John’s Gospel?
“For God
so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in
him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16)
“Whoever
believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see
life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.” (Jn 3:36)
“For
this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in
him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him (on) the last day." (Jn
6:40)
“Now this is eternal
life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent,
Jesus Christ.” (Jn 17:3)
To know “the only true God and the one whom he sent” is not
a head trip. It is not to know about
Jesus as we know any other person that has lived. To know Him is to accept Him and commit our
lives to Him as our Lord and Savior, as the Christ, the Son of God. Not to know Him in this way, when we had
every opportunity to do so, will result in the dire consequences spoken at the
end of the parables. “The angels will go
out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery
furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” This is not some idle threat, but a
forewarning statement of the consequences
involved in refusing to know, accept and do the will of Jesus because of
who He is and what He has done for us.
“Who do you say, I am? Why should I give you eternal life?” Yes, these questions and their respective
responses are not speculative spin-offs.
They are keys to whether we will experience eternal life in glory with
God or eternal alienation away from God.
Jesus died that we may have life to the
fullest. He freely gives this life to
those who choose to receive it and consciously respond to its demands. The demand can be simply stated thus: Jesus
is to be the All in All of our life.
Because of who Jesus is, because the gift of life to the fullest is of
inestimable value, anything less than a relationship that reflects the Lordship
of Jesus would be lifeless. Obviously,
the demand does not presume a perfect relationship now. But it does demand the desire to actively
pursue a fuller relationship of unity and love with Jesus.
Though Peter answered the question “Who
do you say I am,” by stating Jesus was the Christ, for him to fully understand
the meaning of that awareness he had to experience the death of Jesus on the
cross and His resurrection. Because when
he made that initial response, Jesus’ death on the cross was far from his mind.
As a result, Peter was not ready to embrace the cross in his life at that
moment.
However, after the resurrection of
Jesus from the dead, He manifested himself to Peter and asked him three times:
“Do you love me?” Peter answered each time “Yes.” To know Jesus as the Christ means to enter
into a love relationship with Him and embrace the daily cross of our own death
to self in order to share more fully in the eternal life offered by Jesus.
The questions I have raised are
serious. Thus, they require our serious attention and active response, not at
some future day, but today. We know
neither the hour nor the day Jesus will ask these questions of us. But He will.
Thus, the need to make the right choices is the urgency of the moment,
of each moment of our life.
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