Take a few deep breaths to center your heart and your mind as you prepare to meet with God.

Meditation

Some of the first words in John’s gospel account of Jesus are this: “So the Word[, God,] became human and made his home among us.” Jesus is fully God, but additionally became fully man, and this pairing has been a mystery that the church has reveled in for our thousands of years of existence. Take a moment and ask yourself this question: when I picture Jesus, do I tend to see Jesus as the Son of God, or Jesus as the perfect man?

Teaching

Six days later Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up a high mountain to be alone. As the men watched, Jesus’ appearance was transformed, and his clothes became dazzling white, far whiter than any earthly bleach could ever make them. Then Elijah and Moses appeared and began talking with Jesus. Peter exclaimed, “Rabbi, it’s wonderful for us to be here! Let’s make three shelters as memorials—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He said this because he didn’t really know what else to say, for they were all terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my dearly loved Son. Listen to him.” Suddenly, when they looked around, Moses and Elijah were gone, and they saw only Jesus with them. As they went back down the mountain, he told them not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept it to themselves, but they often asked each other what he meant by “rising from the dead.” Then they asked him, “Why do the teachers of religious law insist that Elijah must return before the Messiah comes?” Jesus responded, “Elijah is indeed coming first to get everything ready. Yet why do the Scriptures say that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be treated with utter contempt? But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they chose to abuse him, just as the Scriptures predicted.” (Mark 9:2-13)

Who is Jesus? Well, one chapter and two devotionals ago, we covered the passage where Peter states who he thinks Jesus is: “You are the Christ.” If you haven’t picked up on it, Jesus has been playing a lot with His identity throughout the Gospel of Mark. He constantly does miracles or has conversations that leave people with the realization that there is more to Him than meets the eye, but when people conclude that He is the prophesied savior, using the word Messiah or Christ, he tells them to keep it quiet. Scholars call this the messianic secret. Even after Peter says outright that He is the Christ, Jesus follows up by strongly telling them all to tell no one. He does this after many of His healings, exorcisms, encounters with the religious leaders, and even resurrections, but the person blessed by Jesus is often so overcome with joy, freedom, awe, and wonder, that they usually go blabbing to everyone in town anyways. 

Colossians 1 says that Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God, and Hebrews 1 says he is the exact imprint of God’s nature. People who have studied God say that Jesus is the best revelation of God that there ever has, is, or will be, so if we want to know God, we have to know Jesus. But what is Jesus like? We have accounts of his life that give us a detailed look at his 3-year ministry as well as some of his earlier life, but many Christians like myself forget the picture painted of Him in Revelation 1: “His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.” Passages like these show more than the meek teacher from Bethlehem–He is divinely mysterious and cosmically powerful.

While Jesus came to Earth to be born as a man, thoughtful Christians have always said that he remained fully (100%) God while becoming fully (100%) man. This is a hard truth to swallow because we cannot see both sides of Him at the same time to their full extent, so he chooses to lean toward revealing one or the other more at different times. When we see the divine Jesus all the time, our relationship with Jesus can become impersonal, cold, stoic, and fearful, but when we see the human Jesus more often, we meet a man with empathy for our struggles, forgetting that He has the power to do something about it. The disciples lived with Jesus for years, watching Him brush his teeth in the morning, order his coffee from the Starbucks stand in the market, and hit his thumb with a hammer while doing physical labor. The human side of Jesus was emphasized in their personal experience, so in an effort to balance their understanding of Him and show the Father’s full approval of His life and mission, he revealed his divinity. Jesus stood there in all His glory, and the Father spoke to His three present disciples that Jesus is His Son, commanding them to listen to Him. In the same way that God spoke at Jesus’ baptism to prepare Him for His ministry, God is speaking here to prepare Jesus and His disciples for his death and resurrection. From this point on, the cross can be seen in the distance of all of Jesus' ministry, speech, prayers, and mission.

Examination

No one has a perfectly balanced view of Jesus in their own mind, but we can always correct ourselves toward the middle. Do you need to see Jesus as the cosmic victor over death, riding a white horse with His own sacrificially given blood on His white robe? Look at Revelation 19:11-16. Or do you need to see Jesus as he ate meals with people that everyone else wanted to forget about? Look at Mark 2:13-17.  In order to balance your own view of Jesus, take a moment to plead with  Jesus to reveal himself to you.

Memory Verse

In an effort to continually realign your allegiance to Jesus, repeat the words of God the Father to yourself throughout your day.

“This is my dearly loved Son. Listen to him.” (Mark 9:7b)