Was Jesus Possessed?

What Jesus Possessed?

So you’re thinking, what? How could anyone ask that question, especially as we approach what is known as “holy week” for Christians across the world? As you tune into the Discovery Channel, PBS, National Geographic, and all the rest who are just now “rediscovering” the historical Jesus the claims are made. Jesus was a great man. Jesus was a Jewish sage with wisdom beyond that of common man. Jesus was mentally deficient. Jesus was a philosopher. Jesus was an amazing teacher. How could anyone make such a charge of demonic possession?

But this charge was leveled at Jesus during his three-year preaching and life vocation by his contemporaries. Why? The gospel and disciple of Jesus, John, records the charge of demonic possession in chapter 8:48 brought by the leaders of Israel. The reason why is because Jesus was a good teacher, he was a wise man, a good man, but he never saw himself or even taught himself simply as such. Jesus knew himself to be the Son of God, to be believed in for eternal life, who eternally pre-existed even Abraham the father of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian faiths (Jn. 8:58). This claim was blasphemous to a thoroughly monotheistic religion. Only a demon-possessed person would make such a claim as a Jew, which Jesus was.

This is why the leaders of Israel picked up rocks to stone Jesus, because He taught himself to be divine. This charge was either untrue and was worthy of capitol punishment according to Jewish Torah, or Jesus was simply crazy and still needed to be killed, or he was who he said he was, and was eventually killed upon a cross as he had warned and predicted to his disciples and the leaders of Israel. You must decide. But when you do honestly evaluate him, you must take into consideration the direct claims of Jesus concerning his own identity as the Son of God. Rather than evaluating Jesus with your own preconceived ideas, or through the objections of modern historians, evaluate the response of Jesus’ contemporaries first. He was a good man, but he wasn’t killed for being a good man. He was killed for multiple claims of being divine.

The Christian faith stands or falls upon the truth that Jesus was who he knew himself to be. “He who loves me abides in me.” Literally he, who knows me, believes me, loves me, listens to what I say about myself and obeys my teachings. Even more, those who love Jesus accept his life gift, where he would hang upon a cross for the penalty of our sin. He went to die the death of mankind as the perfect God/man. This is a mystery…some of it is beyond our finite understanding, but it is true and believable for forgiveness.

Do not fail where Jesus’ contemporaries failed. They failed to embrace a mystery, the mystery of God in man, personally taking the penalty of the mess of mankind. Do not fail where modern critics fail. They fail to evaluate Jesus as claiming to be divine and thus accept him as a great man, but not one who was able to come into creation, die, and rise for the purpose of restoring many in the human race and re-creating a new world. The charge of possession is more honest than those who reduce Jesus to simply a “good man.”