Have you ever experienced an identity crisis? This usually happens to most people during their teen years as they are trying to figure out “who they are”. For some, maybe it hits them during their “mid-life crisis” when they wake up one morning and seemingly don’t know who they are anymore.
Or have you had your identity stolen? A total stranger has stolen something that was uniquely yours and is now pretending to be you.
Have you ever been mistaken for someone else? This happened all the time in my family because I have identical twin sisters who were constantly being mistaken for each other.
The point is, mistaken identity happens all the time. Luke 9:1-50 shows us that it happened to Jesus during His time on earth. It still happens to Him today.
Yet Luke brings his readers to an incredible revelation concerning Jesus' identity - He is the “The Christ of God”.
This of course was not the general consensus of the people during Jesus’ day. People continually struggled with understanding who Jesus really was. Part of this was due to their misunderstanding of Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah. But I think the bigger issue is that their view of Jesus is what THEY wanted Him to be. Not much has changed since then, as people today do the same thing. We want to pick and choose what kind of Jesus we want and in doing so, worship a false God.
What about you?
- Have you mistaken Jesus’ identity because you don’t truly KNOW Him?
- Have you mistaken His identity by aligning yourself with popular opinion?
- Have you mistaken His identity by creating YOUR version of Jesus?
The only way we can avoid misidentifying Jesus is by continually relying on God’s revelation to us through His written Word.
John 7:38 “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
Praise God we have the completed canon of scripture and can confidently through study, meditation, and prayer believe in and worship the One True and Living God!