Who is Jesus?

by Jeff Curtis

Near the end of Jesus’ debates with the religious leaders, Jesus also made one of the clearest affirmations in His entire earthly ministry regarding who He was and is. It is His quotation of Psalm 110 in His discussion in Mark 12:35-37 that catches our attention. He quoted from the early portion of the psalm, showing that He was David’s Lord. He then asked His hearers, in effect, “How can this be if I am not the Son of God?” Matthew 22:46 says, “No one was able to answer Him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on ask Him another question.” By making this psalm – a psalm that His hearers accepted and believed – the centerpiece of His argument, Jesus closed the mouths of His critics and sent them away with His divine claims ringing true in their minds.

Using this messianic psalm and our Lord’s use of it as a foundation, let’s use it as a foundation to ask, “Who is Jesus?”

1. Jesus is David’s Lord. He is the Promised One, the Messiah. Jesus interpreted Psalm 110 by saying, “David himself said in the Holy Spirit,

 ‘“The Lord said to My Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, until I put your enemies beneath Your feet.’” David calls Him “Lord”; so, in what sense is He his son?” (Mark 12:36-37).

 David could not have been referring to one of his later descendants who would be such an excellent king that he would become David’s Lord. Such an argument does not harmonize with Jesus’ claim. He was asserting that He was more than David’s descendant; He was claiming that He was David’s Lord and that David was led to acknowledge this fact through the Holy Spirit.

2. Jesus is the Son of God; otherwise, He could not have been David’s Lord. The psalm He quoted said that He was Lord, Yahweh, said to Him, “Sit at My right hand until I put your enemies beneath Your feet (Mark 12:36). The eternal God, the Father of all of us, asked Jesus to come take His seat at his right hand, a place of honor and power. He asked Him to sit at this place until all His enemies had been made His footstool. The symbolism of the footstool has always been that of conquest. When one puts his feet on a stool, he obviously has complete control over that stool.
3. Jesus is our Lord. Since Jesus is the Messiah, He is the One whom God sent to save us and lead us to eternal glory. If Jesus was David’s Lord, He is also our Lord and everyone else’s Lord. God sent Him to be the Savior and Messiah of all people. God who loves everyone wants everyone in the world to be saved, sent Jesus, incarnate among men, to be the mediator between God and man. Is sacrifice on the cross reaches backward to the people of the past and forward to the people of all remaining time.

Conclusion. Whoever believes the testimony of Jesus as He presented this argument of His deity to the Pharisees has to believe that He is the Promised One, the God-man, the Son pf God, and our Lord. The integrity of Jesus demands these far-reaching conclusions. In light of these weighty implications, we shouldn’t be surprised that the same application of this psalm appears throughout the New Testament. Jesus’ quotation of Psalm 110 is the most clearly stated confirmation of His Messiahship in the New Testament.

The remaining part of Psalm 110 proclaims the victory that will accompany the reign of the Messiah. God will hand the scepter to Him, and He will lead His followers into complete victory. What a Savior!

The Christian’s “Day of Atonement”

by Jeff Curtis

The Day of Atonement was part of the Mosaic Law, and the Mosaic Law is no longer applicable today. Does the Christian living under the new covenant have a “Day of Atonement”?

One could say that our “Day of Atonement” occurred on the hill of Golgotha around two thousand years ago. There our Savior, Jesus Christ, died to make atonement for the sins of mankind. He died as a sin offering, taking the sins of all mankind on Himself. We can rejoice that Jesus has made it possible for our sins to be taken away.

In another sense, we could say that every day is, for mankind today, a “day of atonement.” Paul wrote, “Behold, now is the acceptable time,’ behold, now is the “day of salvation’” (2Cor. 6:2). The “day of salvation” sounds very much like the “day atonement.” When does it happen? “Now”! Today! Every day is “the day of salvation” in that every day salvation is available to anyone who will “call upon the name of the Lord” (Rom. 10:13) in the biblical way. The day on which Jesus made atonement for our sins by dying on the cross made possible the day anyone can experience salvation or atonement.

The laws in Leviticus make it obvious that the faithful Israelite was to offer a sacrifice for his sin whenever he did wrong. In addition, sacrifices for sin were offered at the tabernacle on a daily, a weekly, and a monthly basis. Since all these sin offerings were made regularly, and since Leviticus 4 assured the Israelites that they would be forgiven if they presented those sacrifices according to God’s directions, why was an annual “Day of Atonement” necessary? Wouldn’t all the sins of the people have been removed before the Day of Atonement occurred? While the Bible doesn’t plainly answer that question, at least two answers are possible.

One idea is that the Day of Atonement was intended to forgive sins that had been somehow overlooked during the year. Maybe people had not noticed these sins or had forgotten them; maybe they had never recognized them as sins. For example, someone could have unknowingly entered the tabernacle area in an unclean state. The Day of Atonement might have been designed to deal with such sins for which sacrifices had not been previously made. While this view seems possible, the scope and extent of the sins forgiven on the Day of Atonement, and the manner by which forgiveness was attained, seem to argue for a more comprehensive answer.

A second answer is that the daily atonement achieved by regular sin offerings resulted in a kind of forgiveness, but it was a temporary, conditional forgiveness. Maybe the daily sacrifices succeeded in removing sins from individuals but not in obliterating them. The sins were piled up or stored in the place of cleansing, the tabernacle. Then on the Day of Atonement, the special rituals took those “stored up sins” and altogether removed them.

The sin offering made for the people in the most holy place may have resulted in God’s forgiving the guilt of the people’s sin. The live goat turned loose in the wilderness with the nation’s sins on its head indicated that the punishment for that guilt had been taken away as well. If this second answer is correct, then the Day of Atonement was necessary for each day’s atonement to be effective.