Jesus asked the ultimate question, "Who do you say that I am?" His disciples responded with what their history and experience told them to say... Then Peter makes his declaration, “You are the Christ the son of the living God." Jesus responds with a blessing and lays out the foundation for living an inspirational life. The question is unchanged, Who do we say that He is? How can we live a divinely inspired life that gets us to the point that we too say “You are the Christ!”
The accumulation of more information is not what we need. We need inspirational moments and power encounters that leave us changed from the inside out. Our Western way of thinking has profoundly shaped our understanding of spiritual formation. Why is there a disconnect between what we say and the inner way of our being. As we answer the question “Who do you say I am?”, we will encounter the reality of the claim of God on our lives that goes way beyond the Sunday morning experience.
The Biblical foundation for understanding Jesus as Lord is rooted in the Old Testament Shema - Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one God. It is on this bed rock of understanding that the New Testament believers confess that Jesus is Lord. On this understanding, Paul would write that there is no other foundation than that which is Jesus Christ. The claim of Lordship is actually much deeper and broader than acknowledging him as Lord; it is coming to the point that as Paul did, we live and move and have our being in Him. To put it another way we live to him, for him and by him.
When we answer the question of Christ, we are at ground zero for our life in God and are on the threshold of living a missional incarnational life rhythm.
The centrality of Christ touches upon the deepest possible currents in Biblical revelation.
Why is it that we have major Biblical teaching on a vast array of topics yet many of those only give a token acknowledgement to Jesus? I would say that His demands are so exacting that we are inclined to subconsciously do all we can do to avoid His demands, while at the same time seeking to participate in His church and be in relationship with His people.
