Now that we've kind of consecrated our time here in prayer, we have to look at this very important question, who is Jesus Christ? We've been leading up to this point for the past eight lectures now, everything that we've discussed about divine revelation and inspiration and narrancy of scripture, salvation history, all the topics that we look at, it really leads to this point like who is Jesus Christ? And Jesus Christ is what an argue of course is God. He claimed to be God, we're going to talk about all of that.
But just in continuity with what we've been seeing before, He's the fullness of God's revelation. As we said back in the very beginning of this little essentials 10 part essential course here, scripture 101, God reveals Himself to us through in words, indeed, throughout salvation history. But the fullness of that revelation is the person of Jesus Christ. So we need to look at this brief hour, obviously untold amounts of books and articles and sermons and lectures are preached on this topic.
Absolutely. And again, this is just an essential introduction to this discussion. But who is Jesus Christ? We have to look at this because everything else rides on this question, everything.
So when we look at the life of Jesus Christ, we look at His teachings, His words, His deeds, His miracles, everything about this person. All right, Jesus, the Messiah, He invites everyone, everywhere, no matter the generation, no matter the continents, no matter the language, the color of their skin, He invites every single human being to make a decision about His identity. Every single person must choose who is Jesus Christ. Now, Jesus asks this question to us directly through scriptures, a famous, famous passage in Matthew 16, when essentially Peter gets the promotion of a lifetime.
He's made al-ha-bai-it. He's made the Prime Minister of the New Kingdom that Jesus is restoring here, of the look at that whole context and of the time. In fact, you go to the Salvation History Course that I have for you uploaded on the website. You can see it.
I mean, we'll talk about it a lot. But this particular exchange between Jesus and Peter is very important for every single human person. And so let me just read this for you. It's in the notes, just a couple passages, a couple verses, Matthew 16, verses 13 and following.
Jesus came to the district of Caesarea Philippi and he asked the disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, well, some say you're on the Baptist and others say, Elijah, still others Jeremiah are one of the prophets, right? There's no real consensus. Then he said to them, all right, fine.
But who do you say that I am? And this is the question. This is preached all the time. It's so beautiful.
Jesus asks them, well, who do you say that I am? And he asks us the same question. Now Peter, inspired by God and moved by the grace of God, he confesses, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And then of course it goes on.
There's so much to talk about, but I want to zero in on this exchange. Who do you say that I am? And this is the same thing today, right? Back then the apostles said, oh, you're in the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets, you know, there's no real consensus.
Today, when Jesus says, who do you say that I am or who do people say that I am, there's all kinds of things that are thrown out there as well. He's a good moral teacher. He's a moral guide. He teaches us to love one another.
The golden rule, do unto others. As we have them do unto you, he's a religious leader. Whatever it might be, all platitudes, all nice things. Some people of course say he is like Peter confesses with Peter, you are the Messiah, you are the anointed one, you are the Son of God.
So this question is asked of everybody. Now the church has always taken the position naturally that he truly is the Son of God. The church professes the faith of Simon Peter, our first pope. And we have here this great catechism quote paragraph 4, 2, 3, 4, and 23.
We believe in confess that Jesus of Nazareth, born a Jew of a daughter of Israel at Bethlehem at the time of King Herod the Great and Emperor Caesar Augustus, a carpenter by trade, who died crucified in Jerusalem under the procurator Pontius Pilate during the reign of Emperor Tiberius is the eternal Son of God made man. He came from God. He descended from heaven. He came in the flesh.
That's a beautiful profession of faith. Obviously we go to the creed, right? We have so many great creeds and professions of faith. But this is great.
And the reason why I selected this particular passage is because our faith in Christ is rooted in history. We don't say Jesus is God. He kind of magically appeared in the books of mythology or folklore and kind of like the Greco-Roman gods did. No, he's a historical figure.
And we confess that he was born in a particular time, a particular place. This is all verified according to all the ancient documents that we have. Even if we just look at the Scriptures as the Gospels as just historical documents and we don't even consider them as inspired. They are true historical biographies of this person who live in a time and a place under certain rulers secular and political and religious rulers during the time born here in Bethlehem, etc.
So this is a historical belief. It is not fantasy. It is not myth. It is not folklore.
And so we're going to see like he claimed to be God and he was God. And so we believe him. Okay. And so St.
Paul famously says in Galatians 4-4 something similar. When the fullness of time had come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law in order to redeem those who are under the law, why? That we might receive the adoption of sons or the adoption as children. And this is what salvation is all about.
I've said it so many times before. It's really salvation is divine affiliation where we become children of God through Jesus Christ. And so Paul is saying him when the fullness of time had come at the very height of salvation history, like we discussed in our very last lesson here, that overview of salvation history, the fullness of time had come. Jesus fulfills all things.
He's born in this time in this place of a Jewish, young teenage girl here born under law to redeem us. Okay. So Jesus is at the center of salvation history. Now we professed his faith like Peter professed it.
We share in his faith, the rock of his faith. But there are five reasons that why this question is so important. Who is Jesus Christ? We need to discuss this.
Now these five reasons I pulled from a great book. It's called the Handbook of Catholic apologetics down here in the footnote from the Crief into Celly. It's a great, quite thick, right? Quite meaty handbook on general apologetics, belief in God, defense of the resurrection, divinity of Jesus Christ, et cetera, et cetera.
It's not a catch all. It doesn't discuss every last little topic of apologetics, but it's fantastic. And in this chapter on Jesus Christ here, chapter seven, Crief into Celly lists five reasons why this question is so important. Number one, no other religion claims that God became incarnate in this way.
Yes, you've got other religions who, you know, may say God appeared, you know, or the divinity appeared in some way to humanity, but no other religion claims that God became incarnate. He's true God and true man, right? He is a divine person. Jesus is a divine person, but he has taken to himself our humanity.
So he has a human intellect and a human will and he has human emotions. Okay. And so he kind of redeems all of humanity through the incarnation. No other religion claims that.
That's mind boggling. It truly is. We can't take that for granted. Okay.
Number two, or B, as it is in the notes. This is the capstone of guarantee of all other Christian beliefs. If you're going to look at everything about Christianity, the mystical body of Christ, we're looking at redemption and salvation, the Paschal Mysteries, Jesus dying and rising again. All other beliefs that we have in Christianity is rooted in the incarnation.
Jesus is God and he didn't come in the appearance of humanity kind of like he just kind of like was a ghost that took human form or something like that. No, he really, truly took our human form. So this is the capstone of the bedrock for all of Christianity that God became in. Next point here.
And if this is true, if Jesus Christ truly is God, become man, then the incarnation is the most important to vent in human history. It really truly is. Think about it. Like what tromps, what takes the cake for this belief that God became man.
It's incredible. And this is why we have divided history into before Christ and after Christ. The idol-domini, right? The year of our Lord.
And even the secularists and the modernists who tried to change that and they say, you know, CE is the common era and BCE is before the common era. It's still totally random. It still doesn't attempt to remove Jesus out of the question because what does the common denominator of that common era? Well, it's still Christianity.
It's still Jesus Christ. It's still the incarnation. So it is the most important event of all of human history. And next, if it's true, then our lives can be redeemed and transformed forever.
It's so beautiful to think like why did God become man? He came out of love. And I've quoted, I don't have it right here, but I remember the first paragraph of the Catechism. It's so beautiful talking about God freely, right?
Without constraint because he loves us. He came down to redeem us. So our lives can be transformed forever. We truly are enslaved to Satan, to sin, and to death.
And Jesus has come to free us from that slavery, to give us peace, to give us hope, to give us redemption, right? To give us back divine sonship that Adam and Eve lost in the garden. So our lives can be transformed and redeemed if we just accept this beautiful truth of God's incarnation. And then finally, if this is true, here's where it gets sticky.
If this is true, then we owe him our complete obedience and love. If he comes, if God, the creator of the heavens and the earth comes down and takes on humanity, right? In order to redeem us, we owe him our loving obedience. We owe him our faith, our obeisance.
We absolutely injustice must respond to the God who created us. And if we reject this God who created us, of course, then that's our choice, but we do injustice, it's called the virtue of religion. Also the virtue of justice. We need to worship him and love him and adore him.
We have free will to refuse that, but we are his children and he has come to give us life. And this is the sticking point because this is why most people do not want to admit that Jesus is God because they don't want to change their lives. It requires, I mean, it is a beautiful message. It is a good news of salvation, but it does require to change your life.
You've got to repent of your sins. These are the first words out of our Lord's mouth in the gospels. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So most people don't want to repent.
They're attached and they're enslaved to their favorite sins, to their lifestyle, whatever it might be. And that's why most people say, oh, Jesus is a religious leader, a good moral teacher, a rabbi, and they kind of will him down to just these simple platitudes because they don't want to accept the challenge that they must repent of their sins. Okay. So this is the reason why this question is so important as we're introducing this lesson.
I think we get a sense of the gravity of the matter, right? If Jesus is God, we owe him our love and our obedience and in exchange we're given eternal life. Okay. So the question is, well, but is he really God?
Peter confessed. He was the son of the living God. The church confesses this along with Peter, but is he? Is he really God?
And that brings us here to our next section.