who do you say that I am...really?

What do you think God is like… really? Most people seem to have this vague image of a beneficent, benevolent being beaming at the world like a ray of sunshine giving everyone a warm and fuzzy feeling. Others perhaps see some judgmental father figure that condemns them and makes them feel guilty. The truth is though that how we may think about God is irrelevant to the reality of God. In other words, my perception of God does not change who God really is. If He is just a figment of our imagination then it’s fine to have your own view point of what you may think God is like, or what you think He may be capable of. But if He really exists, if He really is the God of the universe, then we better figure out exactly what He is like and what He expects from us.

While the Bible says that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the creation teaches us about God, those are only signposts that point in His direction. They cannot teach us much more than that there has to be a Creator to design all this wonder. But yet we know that man has for years strived to find a way of reasoning to circumvent that obvious conclusion, and it is in fact being taught today as evolution.

The only real source of truth then about God has to be God’s word. Not man’s speculation, not man’s revelations, nor any other contrivance of man can comprehend God and declare it to man. God chose His word, and wrote it down, by which He would manifest Himself to the world.

John says in chapter one that Jesus was the Word. That the Word was with God and that the Word was God. And that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. When He became 30 years of age He began a three year pilgrimage to teach the world about God and manifest Himself to the world, which culminated in a final march into Jerusalem during the Passover to offer Himself as the sacrificial Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

But in spite of everything He said about Himself and why He had come to earth and what the purpose of His kingdom would have, people were unable to accept the reality of His mission. They were so focused on what they wanted God to be like that they completely zoned out on the real message. They were looking for a fix for their earthly problems and He looked like He could be the guy to take care of them. But Jesus came to take care of the problem of eternity and the problem of sin. He was focused on the spiritual, and they were focused on the physical.

Unfortunately, not much has changed in the last 2000 years. We’re still focused on the physical. Jesus came to destroy the stranglehold that the ruler of this world had on mankind and to set his captives free, taking them into the kingdom of heaven. But most of us seem to have difficulty abandoning the physical and living in the spiritual. We’re trying to have the best of both kingdoms. But if you’re really a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven then you must concur with the final answer that Jesus gave Pilate just before His crucifixion. “My kingdom is not of this world.”