Spiritual Corner -- Who Do You Say That I Am?

At Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” Today, Jesus is also asking the same question to each one of us. And Peter replies,: “You are the Christ,” which also means he is the Messiah, the Son of God, the Holy One of God, the one who has come to change the world. Is that your answer too?

And right after that, Jesus begins to tell the disciples and to each one of us, “Yes, I am the Messiah, and now I will teach you the way of the Messiah: The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and will rise after three days.” He said all this quite openly. (Mk. 8: 31) And so Peter replies, “Oh, my goodness, Lord you can’t do that.” And Jesus stops him abruptly, “Go behind me, you, Satan.”.

The way of the Messiah is to learn how to love, not the way we love, but to love the world as God loves the world. How does God love?

God loves by creating a lovely world, a wonderful world. God loves by sharing His creation with someone who will be able to appreciate all that he has done. When Adam and Eve failed because of their selfishness - to have everything for themselves, they lost everything that had been given to them freely.

But God’s love is very strange. He is a giver. God does not take anything from us. God loves. Everything goes out of Him towards us.

And so He says to us, “This is how much I love you. I am a giver and I give you My Only Son.”

God so loved the world He gave His Son that he might come among us, and all those who could accept him and become one with him and one with his love, these will have eternal life. And so Jesus is also the giver. And he comes among us and he works. He also becomes the lover, he preaches, he teaches, he serves and he forgives. 

And so Jesus is telling us this is the way of the Messiah: to learn how to love without counting the cost; to learn how to serve and not to be served. You must give yourself if you are going to experience what is good in life. 

He says, “If you do not learn how to lose your life in giving to others, you will never find it”, because finding your life is in the heart of finding the people you love.  

If we confess Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, we should love as God loves, as Jesus loves; we should serve as God serves, as Jesus serves, even by laying down our lives.

Yours,
Deacon Thomas Kung