Who Is This Man?Sýnishorn

Who is this man? Overcoming familiarity.

When I finally opened a Bible and read the Gospels for myself, as a young adult atheist in France who was considering the claims of Christianity, I expected to find boring platitudes. Instead, I found the gripping character of Jesus, who spoke with wisdom and authority, skillfully navigated tough conversations, and had everyone wondering, Who is this man? I was captivated.

So much of the drama in the Gospels revolves around the question, Who is Jesus? Christians today know the correct theological answer: Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior of the world. And yet we may fail to appreciate the shock and awe that Christ’s first followers experienced when they began to catch glorious glimpses of his identity.

When Jesus started making some amazing and unexpected claims, many people who knew his background struggled to overcome their familiarity: “Isn’t this Jesus the son of Joseph whose father and mother we know?” they asked in the Capernaum synagogue. It was hard for people who knew Mary and Joseph to swallow the idea that Jesus was “the bread of life that came down from heaven.”

The same thing happened in Nazareth, when Jesus read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah—“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19)—and then claimed to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s words. The crowds “were amazed,” but they also asked, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:23). Again, they stumbled over the barrier of familiarity.

Thankfully, familiarity doesn’t always prevent knowledge of Jesus. His mother, Mary, knew who he was. She had been told by the angel Gabriel that she would bear a son who would be called “the Son of the Most High” and would reign on the throne of his father David. “He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end” (Luke 1:33). And he would be called “the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Mary “treasured these things in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

So it’s possible to be very familiar with the story of Jesus—maybe you heard it a million times in Sunday school—and yet overcome that familiarity to recognize him for who he is: the living Son of God. Let’s take a closer, fresher look at when Jesus first appeared, and marvel with those who saw it firsthand: Did he really just say that? Did he really just do that? Who is this man?