The Spirit of the Lord is Upon Jesus

In many circles today, it is considered okay to believe that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah, that He never consciously thought of Himself as the long-awaited deliverer of God’s people. However, to hold such a view one has to toss out massive amounts of the historical accounts that we have of Christ. For example, according to Luke, by the way one who is very concerned with historical accuracy (reference the prologue of his gospel), Jesus, at the start of His public ministry, went to his home town of Nazareth and entering the synagogue was asked to read aloud from the prophet Isaiah. Here was His text: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind to set free those who are down trodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” Now just in case you didn’t notice, the passage He was asked to read was a blatant reference to the promised Jewish Messiah. No big deal though except for the fact of what was to follow. Luke records that Jesus “closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all the synagogue were fixed upon Him. And [Jesus] began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” Whoa! Jesus did not merely read the prophecy, but He also claimed to be the fulfillment of it. Did Jesus think of Himself as the Messiah? The only way to answer “no” is to ignore or reject massive amounts of the New Testament records.

Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.”