Who is Jesus?

Whenever people are extremely challenged by the action(s) of another we will often hear or ask the question, "Who does that person think he/she is?" Such happened to Jesus quite a lot. He challenged what people thought about both God and people. My own thought is that one central way that Jesus challenged other people was by personally taking on too much authority. Here are a couple of examples -- Jesus forgave sins when only God could (and at this point Jesus was just seen as a human); and, he crossed barriers and limits such as hanging out with all the wrong people.

Here is the scene for this morning. Jesus is eating at a Pharisees' house. Now a Pharisee was a well-respected religious leader. And in the middle of the meal "a woman in the city" does a very beautiful act. She brought an alabaster jar full of ointment, wept, washed Jesus' feet with her tears and hair, and anointed them with oil. Now the well-respected religious leader was very troubled about this while Jesus recognized her welcoming love for him. Jesus even announced that her sins were forgiven. So Jesus used her welcoming love to challenge this religious leader (as well as today's religious leaders). Afterwards, the religious leaders asked, "Who is this (Jesus) who even forgives sins?" (Luke 7:49b).

If you want to read this whole story it is in Luke 7:36-50.

Who is Jesus? Well, if nothing else he is the one who has the audacity to say to me, "Hey, John, your sins are forgiven".

Such is true for you as well.