“Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? … Where did this man get all these things?”
Matthew 13:54, 56
There is a grave danger in seeing Jesus from only one side. Such is the case with Jesus’ neighbors in Nazareth. They knew Jesus… but they could not accept that He was anything more than just a guy from their hometown. What they knew about Jesus, captured in the phrase “this man” shows their exclusive focus on just His humanity:
- an astonishingly articulate rabbi whose teaching was heard in their synagogue.
- the son of the carpenter.
- the son of Mary.
- the brother of James, Joseph, Simon, Judas, and sisters.
Yet those four facts were where their belief about Jesus stopped. They could relate to the human Jesus… the amazing teacher… the son of their town… and even a worker of unexplained wonders. But they failed to see His wisdom as God’s wisdom or His miracles as God’s work. The human Jesus alone will never be the true Jesus. He demands more than an earthly origin story. Jesus requires an acceptance of His divine reality as the Son of God and Lord of His people.
Many are all too comfortable right now with a human Jesus. He spoke powerful words of peace and understanding. He identifed with the outcasts and the downtrodden. He accepted those who came to Him. He was gentle and was greatly misunderstood. But His life was much more than that simplistic human assessment of Him!
The ones who truly misunderstood Him, including those who only saw Him as a Nazarene citizen, misunderstood that He was sent from God to redeem the world from sin. They reject His gospel mission by only looking at His human side. Jesus was no mere activist. He is instead, the very God of heaven, a Savior, our Lord, God in the flesh demanding our worship and our action in His call to follow Him, to live like Him, to be transformed by Him, and to call this world to repent and believe in the God-man Jesus Christ our Lord!
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