Who Do You Say Jesus Is? – Part 2

My last Musing ended with the following paragraph. “It is imperative that a person takes a real, honest and historically accurate look at the person of Jesus of Nazareth. What does the data tell us about him? Is there non-Christian material that one may look at? When did he live, what did he teach and how and when did he die are facts of history one must know to truly understand who this Son of Man really was. I hope over the next couple of months to delve into this subject. I hope you and I will learn from it. For now, my question to you is, “Who do you say Jesus is?””

There have been many writers who have tried to “reconstruct” the history of Jesus Christ and the Christian Church. This work is a mirror of what many in the education and political world are doing with our Nations history, erasing statues of major historical importance, making claims about how all light skinned (white) people are racists, but if you have a higher portion of melanin in your skin (brown or black) then you cannot be racist, blaming slavery in the western world all on those from European descent, when Africans were enslaving each other long before the Europeans landed on their shores. To take historical facts and events and reshape them into todays philosophical lens is a grave injustice and abuse of history and those who lived it.

Some writers, such as G. A. Wells have developed their own chronology of when the New Testament books were written. He believes the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were fabricated works. He even states the historical facts of Jesus’ life were of no interest to the Apostle Paul, and that Christianity started not with the person of Jesus who was resurrected and sent the Holy Spirit to kick-off the Church Age (Ats 2), but from the later writings which added details to make the story “sell” so to speak.

However, the Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian Church, clearly stated facts in what is often termed the first creed of the Christian Church. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4. “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,”.

This is perhaps the most important and early creedal statement of the early church. Paul was converted in possibly 33 AD, just maybe 2 years after Christ’s death and resurrection. 1 Corinthians was written around 55 AD. Paul visited Jerusalem three years after his conversion and met with Peter and James (Galatians 1: 18-19). It would have been normal for these pillars of the early church to discuss the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The friends and Apostles of Jesus, Peter and James would have shared their eyewitness accounts with Paul.

This creed, statement of fact, would have been developed immediately after the death and resurrection of Jesus. It would formalize the prophecies of the Old Testament writers, the teaching of Jesus himself to his disciples prior to his crucifixion and become the premier statement of fact for the church throughout the ages.

This statement, developed in the shadow of the events themselves, by eyewitnesses, is a powerful fact. Early eyewitness testimony has always been the most valuable in the legal arena. This statement links the persons who were present with Jesus, to the facts of his life and death. Jesus was a real person in time and space. He impacted real people in real time. And you know what, He still does!

German historian Hans von Campenhausen and author A. M. Hunter both state this passage of scripture meets all the demands of historical reliability and preserves unique and reliable testimony. There are many documented, non-biblical historical references to the life of Christ, but that must wait until next time! Jesus really lived, died by crucifixion, and was resurrected. He changed the lives of his first century followers, and he will change yours too if you will let him in.

Dave Carroll is an area missionary with InFaith, America’s oldest Christian home mission agency, and Pastor of the Wolf Creek Baptist Church. Source material for this article comes from the book, “The Historical Jesus”, by Dr. Gary R. Habermas, 1999. You can contact Dave at 406.459.8935 or davecarroll@infaith.org.