18 Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?”
19 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.”
20 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.”
In thinking over this passage, I realized how important it is to correctly identify who Jesus is, as Peter did. During the past 2,000 years or so, many have misidentified Him. This phenomenon started during Jesus' own lifetime, as we can see in this passage. Many of Jesus' contemporaries believed Him to be a reincarnation of John the Baptist, or perhaps a reincarnation of Elijah or of another Old Testament prophet. Some six centuries later, Mohammed, the founder of Islam, also identified Jesus as a prophet (though not as the reincarnation of an earlier prophet). More than 1,000 years after Mohammed, Thomas Jefferson, in his LIfe and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, portrayed Jesus as a great moral teacher--a view that many still hold to today, listing Jesus among other prominent moral/religious teachers in history like Moses, the Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates. According to a popular author of our own times, Professor Bart Ehrman, Jesus was a mere "Jewish preacher from Galilee" (to quote the subtitle of one of Ehrman's books) who never claimed to be divine but was later deified by His followers.
The problem with all of these ideas about Jesus' identify are that they are demonstrably incorrect. First of all, contrary to what Ehrman says, Jesus did claim to be divine. Ehrman argues that nowhere in the so-called Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) does Jesus make a claim to divinity--this only takes place in the Gospel of John, which was written later than the Synoptic Gospels and whose reliability, consequently, is suspect. The problem with this argument is that careful reading would reveal that Jesus does make claims to divine status in the Synoptic Gospels--even if these claims are (usually) less direct than in John's Gospel (for example, in the Synoptics Jesus claims to have the authority to forgive sins, something that the Jews of His time believed only God had the authority to do). One might make the argument (as many have) that the Gospels are not a reliable record of what Jesus actually said, but the evidence for the relatively early composition of the Gospels (within a few decades of Jesus' lifetime) is quite strong (not to mention other books in the New Testament, like the letters of Paul, which were probably written before the Gospels and also portray Jesus as divine). Given their relatively early date of composition, it seems highly unlikely that the authors of the Gospels would have attributed to Jesus claims that He never made.
Second, if we have clear evidence that Jesus did in fact claim to be God, then, as C.S. Lewis famously pointed out in his Mere Christianity, we have no reason to identify Him as a "great moral teacher." A "great moral teacher" would not claim to be God when he knew this claim was false. Such a person would not be a "great moral teacher," but a horrific liar. If he believed his claim to be true when it was not, he would be a lunatic. Consequently, the Jeffersonian view (which is the view of many even today) is clearly incorrect.
Third, if Jesus claimed to be God, then He was much more than a prophet, who is merely a spokesman for God. Thus, Mohammed (as well as many others) was also mistaken as to Jesus' identity.
Nevertheless, perhaps it is not too surprising that many over the centuries have misidentified Jesus. After all, believing that Jesus was merely a great moral teacher or a even a prophet makes Him a much less challenging figure for us. We can respect a great teacher or a prophet without having to make a life-changing decision about him. On the other hand, the incarnate Son of God demands more of us than mere respect. He demands our allegiance and worship. This is something that many are unwilling to give. However, if we are willing to acknowledge, as Peter did, that Jesus is "God's Messiah" (and commit ourselves to Him), we shall receive the greatest of all blessings in this life and the next.
Image: The Confession of Peter (anonymous artist) from grace.allpurpose.guru.com