The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

by Lee Strobel

Now to Jesus: without dialoguing with him, how can we possibly delve into his mind to determine what his motivations, intentions, and self-understanding were? How do we know who he thought he was and what he understood his mission to be?

By looking at his ...

If we want to figure out whether Jesus thought he was the Messiah or Son of God—or merely considered himself to be a rabbi or prophet—we need to look at what he did...

The question of what Jesus thought about himself is ...

I decided to begin examining the issue of Jesus’ self-understanding with a question that often springs to the minds of readers when they’re exposed to the gospels for the first time. “The truth is that Jesus was a bit mysterious about his identity, wasn’t he?”

“He tended to shy away from forthrightly proclaiming himself to be the Messiah or Son of God. Was that because he didn’t think of himself in those terms or because he had other reasons?”

it’s not because he didn’t think of himself i...

“If he had simply announced, ‘Hi, folks; I’m God,’ that would have been heard as ‘I’m Yahweh,’ because the Jews of his day did...

“So if someone were to say he was God, that wouldn’t have made any sense to them and would have been seen as clear-cut blasphemy. And it would have been counterproductive to Jesus in his efforts to get people to listen to his message.

Consequently, he was very careful about what he said publicly. In private with his disciples—that was a different story, but the gospels primarily tell us about what he did in public.”

Witherington has gone back to the very earliest traditions about Jesus—

and discovered persuasive clues concerning how Jesus really regarded himself.

“What clues can we find about Jesus’ self-understanding from the way he related to others?”

his relationship with his disciples.

his relationship with the religious leaders

Jesus makes the truly radical statement that it’s not what enters a person that defiles him but what comes out of his heart. Frankly, this sets aside huge portions of the Old Testament book of Leviticus, with its meticulous rules concerning purity. “Now, the Pharisees didn’t like this message. They wanted to keep things as they were, but Jesus said, ‘No, God has further plans. He’s doing a new thing.’ We have to ask, What kind of person thinks he has the authority to set aside the divinely inspired Jewish Scriptures and supplant them with his own teaching?

his relati...

with the Roman aut...

Jesus’ relationships provide one window into his self-understanding,

Jesus’ deeds—especially his miracles—offer additional insights.

He’s not like other miracle workers who do amazing things and then life proceeds as it always has. No—to Jesus, his miracles are a sign indicating the coming of the kingdom of God. They are a foretaste of what the kingdom is going to be like. And that sets Jesus apart.”

“Jesus sees his miracles as bringing about something unprecedented—the coming of God’s dominion,”

“He doesn’t merely see himself as a worker of miracles; he sees himself as the one in whom and through whom the promises of God come to pass. And that’s a not-too-thinly-veiled claim of transcendence.”

I turned to the words of Jesus, in search of more clues concerning his self-understanding.

Instead of basing his teaching on the authority of others, he speaks on his own authority.

“So here is someone who considered himself to have authority above and beyond what the Old Testament prophets had. He believed he possessed not only divine inspiration, as King David did, but also divine authority and the power of direct divine utterance.”

Jesus used the term “Abba” when he was relating to God. “What does that tell us about what he thought about himself?”

“ ‘Abba’ connotes intimacy in a relationship between a child and his father,”

But Jesus used it of God—and as far as I can tell, he and his followers were the only ones praying to God that way.”

“In the context in which Jesus operated, it was customary for Jews to work around having to say the name of God. His name was the most holy word you could speak, and they even feared mispronouncing it. If they were going to address God, they might say something like, ‘The Holy One, blessed be he,’ but they were not going to use his personal name.”

“the significance of ‘Abba’ is that Jesus is the initiator of an intimate relationship that was previously unavailable. The question is, What kind of person can change the terms of relating to God? What kind of person can initiate a new covenental relationship with God?”

Jesus’ use of ‘Abba’

implies that Jesus had a degree of intimacy with God that is unlike anything in the Judaism of his day. And listen, here’s the kicker: Jesus is saying that only through having a relationship with him does this kind of prayer language—this kind of ‘Abba’ relationship with God—become possible. That says volumes about how he regarded himself.”

Jesus’ repeated reference to himself as the “Son of Man”—

This term,

is extremely important in revealing Jesus’ messianic or transcendent self-understanding.

There seemed little question, based upon the earliest evidence, that Jesus considered himself to be more than a doer of great deeds, more than a teacher, more than another prophet in a line of many. There was ample evidence to conclude that he thought of himself in unique and supreme terms—but exactly how sweeping was this self-understanding?

In its opening scene the gospel of John uses majestic and unambiguous language to boldly assert the deity of Jesus.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. . . . The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:1–3, 14

“Is there any evidence,”

“that Jesus ever had an identity crisis?”

“Not an identity crisis, although I do believe he had points of identity confirmation,” the professor replied. “At his baptism, at his temptation, at the Transfiguration, in the Garden of Gethsemane—these are crisis moments in wh...

In his book

Reasonable Faith

William Lane Craig points to a substantial amount of evidence that within twenty years of the Crucifixion there was a full-blown Christol...

“The real issue is, what happened after the crucifixion of Jesus that changed the minds of the disciples, who had denied, disobeyed, and deserted Jesus? Very simply, something happened to them that was similar to what Jesus experienced at his baptism—it was confirmed to them that what they had hoped Jesus was, he was.”

“Jesus thought he was the person appointed by God to bring in the climactic saving act of God in human history. He believed he was the agent of God to carry that out—that he had been authorized by God, empowered by God, he spoke for God, and he was directed by God to do this task. So what Jesus said, God said. What Jesus did was the work of God.

Jesus believed he was on a divine mission, and the mission was to redeem the people of God. The implication is that the people of God were lost and that God had to do something—as he had always done—to intervene and set them back on the right track. But there was a difference this time. This was the last time. This was the last chance.

“Did Jesus believe he was the Son of God, the anointed one of God? The answer is yes. Did he see himself as the Son of Man? The answer is yes. Did he see himself as the final Messiah? Yes, that’s the way he viewed himself. Did he believe that anybody less than God could save the world? No, I don’t believe he did.

So how was God going to get this done? How was God going to be the Savior of the human race? He had to come as a human being to accomplish that task. And Jesus believed he was the one to do it.