Jesus, In His Own Words

When I was a child, I had a painting of Jesus above my bed. It was one of the most popular images of Jesus ever produced, depicting Warner Sallman’s 1940 blue-eyed, fair-skinned Jesus.

Then there’s the painting of Jesus attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450.3 million in 2017. It depicts Jesus in blue Renaissance attire, holding a crystal orb in one hand and raising the other hand in benediction.

Neither portrait shows Jesus as He is.

We, too, may carry inaccurate or incomplete ideas of Jesus.

So Who Is Jesus, Really?

But is there anything more important than knowing the real Jesus? And not based on what we learn from a teacher or a preacher or a next-door neighbor, but from Jesus Himself. He talked a lot about who He is and why He came to rescue us. We just need to turn to the Gospels to find out what He said.

John 8 describes a tense exchange with the religious leaders. Jesus said, “Before Abraham was even born, I AM!” (John 8:58). They immediately picked up stones to kill Him because Jesus was not simply saying that He existed before Abraham. His words echoed the name God used when He revealed Himself to Moses: “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14).

John later records Jesus as saying directly, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), and that He is the only way to God: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

There’s no wiggle room for suggesting that Jesus was just a great teacher or healer or anything else that reduced Him to something comfortable. In fact, Jesus never allowed people to remain comfortable in His presence. His questions called for a decision: Who do you say I am? And if I am who I claim to be, are you ready to follow Me?

Wanting Jesus—or What He Can Give Us?

Sometimes people followed not because of who Jesus was but just because they wanted something from Him. The crowd in John 6 had watched Jesus feed thousands of people with five loaves of bread and two fish. The following day, they searched for Him again—because they were hungry for bread, not Jesus.

Jesus redirected them with these words: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal” (John 6:27 ESV). He told them not to seek bread but Him, the Bread of Life.

It can be easy for us to wonder how on earth they missed the miracle and got stuck on the food. But are we ever guilty of the same? Do we ever want His direction without surrendering our plans? His provision without our total dependence on Him?

Let us never be distracted from who Jesus is by what we want from Him. The first leads us to worship; the latter, to idolatry.

What’s in this Toolkit: